Biography

Becca Schack is a New York based performer, composer, and lyricist. Becca’s music spans a large spectrum. She has written classically-driven pieces for full orchestra and chamber groups. She has incorporated video, live electronics and dance into her work and has also written compositions for short films. She composes, arranges and produces music that she performs, moving from acoustic piano to electro-dance pop and often incorporating a rhythmic base, rooted in jazz, Brazilian and Middle Eastern sounds.

As a solo performer, Becca has appeared at several New York clubs, including Spirit, Splash, Show, Don Hill’s and Frying Pan. Her music shows “intricate layers of ambient textures and trip-hop beats,” combining to create “a heady artistic endeavor and a guilty pleasure all at once,” wrote the editor of Download.com.

Becca began singing, playing and composing music at the age of five, entertaining friends and family members at birthday parties and family gatherings. When her mother finally called the local piano teacher to sign her up for lessons, she already knew who Becca was. It was apparent her calling was music. Becca started winning public recognition for her compositions at the age of eleven at ASCAP’s Young Composers competitions and later studied abroad on full scholarship at the prestigious Dartington Music Festival in the United Kingdom.

A graduate of The Julliard School with a BM in Music and a major in composition, Becca studied under world-renowned composers Samuel Adler, Christopher Rouse and Elliott Sharp. In 2006, Melodia Women’s Choir commissioned Becca to write its second commissioned choral work which premiered in November 2007. Her composition, In My End Is My Beginning, is a work in four movements based on Four Quartets by the acclaimed poet, T.S. Eliot. Like the poetry, the score savors nature’s elements -- air, water, earth and fire. As reflected in the score’s title, each musical movement ends as it begins, attesting beautifully to the cyclical rhythm of life, death and rebirth.

In 2005, Becca received a Gold Record for her involvement playing keyboards with the Trans Siberian Orchestra on “The Lost Christmas Eve.” Also in 2005, she received a commission from the Austin Ballet working in collaboration with choreographer Tawn Dao and percussionist Alex Fortuit. She was featured in the 2005 Moby video “Lift Me Up” and the 2007 Chris Cornell video “Arms Around Your Love,” both of which aired on MTV. In 2004, Becca was a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest (Electronic Division) for her song “Metal Factory.”

She has worked with other well-known musicians, including Mark Wood, Alex Skolnick, Teddy Thompson, Eric Mingus and members of the New York Philharmonic. Her debut album with her dance/pop duo, Tonica is now available on iTunes.