Rebecca Oswald
Rebecca Oswald is an award-winning composer with many areas of experience and excellence. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree in Music Theory and Composition, summa cum laude, from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton, NJ. She completed her Master of Music degree in Music Composition from the University of Oregon School of Music in Eugene, OR, where she earned a Masters Fellowship in Music Research and Scholarly Activity. From 2002-2004 she was on the adjunct faculty at the University of Oregon School of Music, teaching composition, orchestration, and upper-level aural skills.
Two of her orchestral works have won readings by the Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco, and a choral work received Top Honors in the Waging Peace Through Singing international choral composition competition. Twice she has been a full participant in the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium. Rebecca's concert music catalog includes works for various choral ensembles, works for solo instruments, chamber groups, full orchestra, and one choral/orchestral work. Many pieces in her catalog were written on commission and have been performed all over the United States, as well as in Canada, France, and Finland.
Rebecca composes for all types and sizes of choral ensembles and often writes her own choral texts for sacred or secular pieces, a cappella or accompanied. She is also a pop music lyricist, and has written words for her own and other composers' works.
Enjoying great variety in her musical output, Rebecca wrote and produced the music for two CD-ROM strategy games, "Heroes in the Time of the Three Kingdoms (I and II)" by OdinSoft Co., Ltd. (Taiwan, 1997 and 1998), and the soundtrack for the video documentary series "A History of the University of Oregon" (2001, 2005).
FROM THE COMPOSER
" Reciprocity "
The ethic of reciprocity, "Do to others as you want others to do to you," has evolved over the course of millenia to become a guiding principle behind most faiths today. Its flexibility and universality allows humans of varying but overlapping moral codes the possibility of treating each other with mutual respect, understanding, and, potentially, love. Reciprocity honors both the positive and negative formulations of these similar teachings by quoting eleven of our planet's history-shaping religious teachers and philosophers in their original languages, as much as possible. The text is organized chronologically. In each language the quote spreads from one voice to a few voices, to the masses, symbolizing the dissemination and embrace of the reciprocity ethic from teacher to pupils, then person by person, culture by culture, throughout our planet's history. The choral settings of the teachings pay homage to the homelands of the quoted teachers by incorporating archetypical characteristics found in the music of those cultures. - Rebecca Oswald
