Rebecca Zapen

A third-generation musician in a family tree including players of violin, piano, double bass, guitar, and accordion, Rebecca Zapen has developed into a versatile performer: jazz crooner, classically-trained violinist, and award-winning multi-instrumentalist songwriter. Her formal violin studies began at age 3, and singing always came naturally. She graduated with honors from Florida State University, with degrees in Music and Biology. It was during her years at FSU that she fell in love with jazz and bossa nova. Past appearances include Jacksonville Jazz Festival, Clearwater Jazz Holiday, and Florida Folk Festival. Zapen has been a musical guest on Public Radio International show Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know?, as well as being a featured soloist with the Hollywood Philharmonic Orchestra.
The versatile vocalist and violinist has released 4 albums. Award-winning albums Nest and Japanese Bathhouse feature her eclectic folk-pop songwriting; Hummingbird and ZapStar feature jazz standards and bossa nova, as well as several original compositions. Awards and accolades include: Florida Album of the Year 2011 for Nest, which debuted at #12 on the Folk DJ charts; Jacksonville's Musician of the Year 2008; and Best Cabaret Album & Best Cabaret Song in Just Plain Folks Awards 2009 for Japanese Bathhouse. Zapen's original songs appeared in a national promotion for Crocs Shoes. She placed 2nd in the Bushman World Ukulele Video Contest, and she was a Finalist in the 2007 DiscMakers' Independent Music World Series. My Old Kentucky Blog says of Zapen's newest release Nest: "There抯 a sense of arcane, jazzy pop; fifties romanticism, classical music, and Yiddish and other folk traditions; a bowl of ingredients from which Zapen intuitively ladles the right elements for her evocative compositions...Nest is something of a miracle."
An award-winning composer, she earned the Silver Medal of Excellence for Best Use of Music in a Short Film at the 2008 Park City Film Music Festival. Her original songs appear in Look Both Ways, which won for Best Music in the 2009 San Francisco Seven Day Film Festival. Her music has been featured on NPR's All Songs Considered: Open Mic. In addition to performing extensively in Florida and touring throughout the United States, playing at venues such as The Bitter End (NYC), Genghis Cohen (L.A.), and Katerina's (Chicago), she has also delighted audiences abroad at venues such as Les Temps Modernes (Switzerland), Le Caveau des Oubliettes (France), and Paganini Auditorium (Italy).
A native of Jacksonville, Florida, she now calls St. Petersburg home, where she lives with her husband, pianist and recording engineer Jeremy Douglass, and their young son Joel.
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About Nest
"Nest is a deeply personal CD, pulling at your collar and tugging at your sleeves long after the first play."
- Florida Album of the Year 2011, Florida Times-Union
Rebecca Zapen's latest album Nest is as delicate as a newborn, not only in sound but in subject. The album is filled with varied instrumentation and genres where strings and horns (and the ukulele's South American cousin the Cavaquino) mix with finger-picked folk and cinematic vocal harmonies. Thematically, the album is about Zapen building a nest of her own and was recorded while she was pregnant with Joel, her now two-year-old son with husband and fellow musician, Jeremy Douglass.
Born into a music-making family in Jacksonville, Florida, Zapen's earliest memories are of sitting beneath the grand piano while her mother practiced Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart. All grown up, Zapen attended Florida State University on a music scholarship, filling her college years with opera, chamber music, and late night jazz jams. Later expanding her repertoire to include swing, classical, klezmer country, folk, rock and spoken word, Zapen's current sound is an accompished combination of these influences that gets in your head and doesn't leave.
Little Joel probably learned a lot about music in the womb, giving him a jump on Mom who began her own classical training on violin at the age of three. It's her lifelong dedication to musical technique and the wonder by which she practices it that makes Zapen's music so appealing. Like a birh, Nest is an arrival at a more solidly focused sound for Zapen after several releases that tried out different musical approaches. Like the albums of folk music greats, Nest contains a spirit that is simple but complex, appealing universally while being intensely personal.
The record often sounds like a lullaby and not the kind that starts you dreaming, but one that you can only hear when you're already sleeping. It's a lilting, crooning counterpoint to Beck's Sea Change where characters come together (mostly, anyway - see the heartbreaker single "Lakewood") instead of fall apart. Other notable tracks include the stark Appalachian twang of "Colorado," arranged with only violin and vocals (uncharacteristically belted this time), and the cinematic "You Did Me Wrong" which incorporates folk, pop and jazz into one tune.
There's even a cover of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" on Nest. Zapen's love of jazz, and especially bossa nova, comes out in her version of the Palmer hit, taking it to a brand new place. Zapen ignores all the typical cues one might take when covering the tune. It's a truly unique spin that stands on its own without being cheeky. Given the context of the album's theme the song is given a different, maybe even deeper, meaning as well.
Rebecca Zapen's Nest is now available nationwide on her own Bashert (Yiddish for "fate") label. The record has already been awarded the distinction of "Florida Album of the Year" by the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and Zapen's local performances there have become sold-out, standing-room-only events. Zapen is now making room for everybody, with the promotion of Nest expanding to include the rest of the country.
- Josh Bloom