Rebecca Hennessy

Instructor, Trumpet

Jazz

Biography

Rebecca Hennessy is an award-winning trumpeter, singer, composer and bandleader. In April 2023, she released her acclaimed second vocal album, “Joy Will Find Us,” which followed her 2020 celebrated debut vocal album, “All The Little Things You Do.” Both albums feature world-renowned guitarist Kevin Breit (Sisters Euclid/Norah Jones). In 2020, Rebecca was awarded a Toronto Arts Council grant to write new music featuring the poetry of acclaimed indigenous author, Thomas King. This grant would be a continuation of a previous working relationship with King that started 2017 when she was commissioned to write music using his poetry. The music that Rebecca wrote for King’s Poem, “Dig Up The Stories”, was featured as an instrumental big band arrangement for Christine Jensen’s = Orchestra at The NAC in 2019.

Besides these recent vocal albums, Rebecca has released 9 other albums to date as co-leader or bandleader and has toured Mexico, Panama, Sri Lanka, Europe, USA and extensively in Canada. She has also performed and recorded with internationally recognized artists including Adele, Kevin Breit, Ron Sexsmith, Andy Kim, Owen Pallett, Broken Social Scene, Feist, Ab Baars and Ken Vandermark. In 2021 she joined the Yamaha Artist roster and currently plays on a YTR-8310Z. She was the bandleader and trumpeter for Massey Hall’s Women’s Blues Revue (2013-2022) and in 2018, won the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Jazz Artist Award and was nominated for Montreal Jazz Festival Grand Prix de Jazz in 2016.