Since winning first place at the First International Clarinet Competition in Kraków, Poland in 1994, Rebecca Rischin has established an international reputation as a performer, pedagogue and author. She has performed as a soloist and recitalist with orchestras and at international clarinet festivals in England, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Serbia, Canada, Colombia, and the United States, including at Carnegie Hall, where her 2014 solo debut recital with pianist Youmee Kim was met with a standing ovation. Her 2017 Centaur Records compact disc of fantasies for clarinet and piano in a Romantic style with  Kim, Clarinet Fantasies, received rave reviews in Fanfare magazine: Rischin won praise for her "enormous virtuosity…whipped cream legato… and beautiful phrasing…Rischin has a superb technique and a musicality to match; her legato line is a joy, and she shades melodies as a singer might... Rischin’s fluid decorations seem spun from silk...Rischin breathes magical life into the music’s glorious melodies. There is actually a palpable feel of the music ‘breathing,’ of natural inhalation and exhalation, both on the small scale and the larger scale... This is a wonderfully life-enhancing disc." Rischin’s compact disc of unaccompanied clarinet compositions, One of a Kind (Centaur, 2009) also received critical acclaim.

Rischin is currently Professor of Clarinet and Woodwind Division Chair at Ohio University, where she received the 2002 College of Fine Arts Outstanding Teacher Award and was twice nominated for the university-wide Presidential Teacher Award. Her students come from all over the United States, Asia and Latin America and have won awards both here and abroad. She has given master classes and coachings at universities and schools of music nationwide and has published numerous articles, including for The Clarinet 's renowned "Master Class" series (March 1999) and for The American Music Teacher 's pedagogy series (Oct/Nov 2002). Her ground-breaking book, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet  (Cornell University Press, 2003; 2006), on which she has lectured worldwide in both English and French, has received critical acclaim and is considered the definitive work on the subject. It is now out in French, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and in paperback and has been adapted into a screenplay to be made into a motion picture: "By turns moving, astonishing, challenging and funny, it is a story that deserves to be heard. Strongly recommended."—BBC Music Magazine. "The clarinetist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book…her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 première…Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicians…who played with Messiaen, the pianist at the première."--The New Yorker. "Rischin's illuminating look at the participating personalities and historical context of the creation of Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, one of the greatest artistic triumphs of the twentieth century, provides valuable insight into the complex circumstances surrounding this extraordinary premiere and allows us a very special glimpse into the warmth and strength of the human spirit" (Kent Nagano, Music Director, Montreal Symphony).

A native of San Francisco, at the age of seventeen Rischin was selected by the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman to be the featured soloist at the 1985 San Francisco Mayor's Command Performance. She holds the Bachelor of Arts, cum laude and Master of Music degrees from Yale University, the Doctor of Music degree from Florida State University, and the performance Diplôme from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where she studied under the auspices of a Harriet Hale Woolley grant, awarded in 1993 to only two other visual and performing artists in the United States. Her teachers include David Shifrin, Frank Kowalsky, Guy Deplus, Donald Carroll, Alain Damiens, Pascal Moragues, Gregory Smith, Joaquin Valdepeñas, Keith Wilson and David Weber. She is an active member of the International Clarinet Association.

Educational Background:

B.A., cum laude, Yale University; M.M. Yale University; D.M. Florida State University; Performance Diplôme, Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris

Classes Being Taught:

• MUS 3510/MUS 5432 Clarinet
• MUS 2541/MUS 5541 Chamber Music
• MUS 4571/MUS 5571 Woodwind Instrument Pedagogy and Repertoire: Clarinet

Lab Space:

588 Robert Glidden Hall