Rebekah Heller, bassoon, Artistic Director Emeritus

Bassoonist, conductor, educator, composer, and curator Rebekah Heller’s career has focused primarily on creating and sharing new music with a generosity of spirit that invites and welcomes new audiences at every turn.

In 2018, Heller made her solo debut with the New York Philharmonic, and has been a featured soloist with the Seattle Symphony, at the Tokyo-based Born Creative Festival, the TIME:SPANS festival, and many others. Called "an impressive solo bassoonist" by The New Yorker, she has released two acclaimed solo albums of new music written for and with her by a diverse community of composers. In 2024, she released a collaboration with Steve Reich — a multi-track bassoon piece called Grand Street Counterpoint (on which Reich and Heller are co-producers) — and she released her first solo EP featuring her own compositions, ONE, on Relative Pitch Records.  

As bassoonist (since 2008), and former Co-Artistic Director of the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Heller has collaborated with hundreds of composers worldwide to make countless groundbreaking new pieces come to life as a co-conspirator in the creative process. 

As an exciting new force on the podium, Heller has conducted the International Contemporary Ensemble, the New World Symphony and the Helsinki Metropolitan Orchestra, among others, with "crisp direction" (S. Fla. Classical Review) and "...turn-on-a-dime energy" (The New Yorker).

Heller has been on the faculty of The Mannes School of Music at The New School since 2019, where she leads a bassoon studio, co-chairs the wind department, and teaches classes in contemporary repertoire, improvisation for classical musicians, and new music practices.