Actress, Writer, Producer and Musician Rebecca Comerford, otherwise known as The Balladista, is an award winning artist who has been hailed by Variety Magazine as a "standout character actress,&q ...Show More
Actress, Writer, Producer and Musician Rebecca Comerford, otherwise known as The Balladista, is an award winning artist who has been hailed by Variety Magazine as a "standout character actress," "the future of lyric theatre in America" by Classical Voice Magazine, and "brilliant" by the Commercial Appeal, Memphis. Rebecca's voice and original compositions have been felt in concert halls, theaters and movie screens across America and Europe.As a concert soloist she has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fischer Hall/Lincoln Center, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Symphony Space, Alhambra Theater Spain, Spoleto Music Festival, Italy to name a few. She was awarded the top Lotte Lenya Prize through the Kurt Weill Foundation from opera legend Teresa Stratas and Metropolitan Opera conductor Julius Rudel for her interpretations of Kurt Weill's music and is a frequent cabaret performer, often appearing as a regular at New York's famed Cafe Sabarsky. As a performer, her sensibilities create a bridge between the worlds of classical music, cabaret, jazz and folk, landing at the intersection of something both new and nostalgic.As an actress she has appeared in various award winning features opposite Jesse Eisenberg in The Living Wake, Tariq Trotter and Naomie Harris in Mark Webber's directorial debut Explicit Ills, and most recently as the bar singer in legendary Iranian artist and film maker Shirin Neshat's, Land of Dreams, for which she also wrote original songs and arrangements as part of the soundtrack.As the artistic director of Ojai Youth Opera, the first autonomous youth Opera Company on the West Coast, Rebecca was responsible for developing and co-composing the premiere of Nightingale and the Tower, an inter-generational, electronic chamber opera that explores the intersection of nature and technology for children and the cautionary dangers of screen time in the modern world. The adaptation and creation of Nightingale and the Tower into a feature animated film is through Palodeon Pictures, Comerford's production company she co-founded with her husband, director and producer Sol Tryon in 2021. Other projects created and produced through Palodeon include Amerikatsi starring actor and director Michale Goorjian, Sulphur Mountain, starring William Mosely and a musical biopic on the life of blues legend Huddie Leadbetter.Rebecca Comerford is a proud member of SAG/AFTRA, Actors Equity and Tim Robbin's Actors Gang, based in Culver City California. She holds a Bachelors Degree in Vocal Performance from Eastman School of Music and a Masters of Music where she studied in the studio of Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music faculty chair Edith Bers. She is a proud native of Maine and the youngest of four children from a large Irish Catholic family wherein she learned to sing and tell stories that were steeped in legend and folklore. Hide
