Conductor, curator, bassoonist, composer, and educator Rebekah Heller’s multifaceted career has one clear throughline — creating and sharing new music with a generosity of spirit that invites and welcomes new audiences at every turn.

Heller is thrilled to share her vision from the podium as a conductor of clear and emotionally charged performances. Informed by her robust career as a new music bassoonist, and long-held curatorial and decision-making roles in the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble, Heller’s leadership style is curious, collaborative, and deeply engaging. “Heller’s crisp direction, sans baton, guided the players through the score’s intricacies, marshaling their energetic reading,” wrote the South Florida Classical Review in response to her 2022 Conducting Debut with The New World Symphony. Alex Ross, in The New Yorker, wrote of her 2023 Park Avenue Armory concert featuring the music of George Lewis: “the International Contemporary Ensemble, under the direction of Rebekah Heller, lit into the 2013 piece Assemblage, …The ensemble had no trouble adopting (George) Lewis’s turn-on-a-dime energy, conveying a kind of happy exhaustion at the end.” In the Spring of 2024, I Care if You Listen, called Heller’s interpretation of Courtney Bryan’s gorgeous, vocal-heavy program at Miller Theatre “marvelous.” 2025 sees Heller curating and conducting a month-long residency with two ensembles at The Oberlin Conservatory, a Darmstadt Summer Courses Conducting Debut, along with a featured appearance at the TIME:SPANS festival in NYC in August.

Called "an impressive solo bassoonist" by The New Yorker, Heller is a sought after solo artist — wearing commissioned clothing and using custom lighting, along with playing the most complex music from memory, to draw audiences into her exciting and physically embodied performances. And as comfortable as she is playing the gnarliest of notated new musics, Heller is just as comfortable in the free improvisation space, collaborating with artists from across the musical spectrum at venues like NYC’s experimental music hub, The Stone. 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, at the TIME:SPANS festival, at Miller Theatre’s Portrait Concerts and many others. Upcoming 2025 solo invitations include the Kanazawa Contemporary Music Festival, Miller Theatre’s Pop-Up Concert Series and Harvard University’s Radcliffe series. 

A curious and unceasing advocate for the bassoon as a solo instrument, Heller has worked side-by-side with dozens of composers to forge an exciting new repertoire of works for solo bassoon, bassoon ensemble, and bassoon with electronics. Many of these compositions can be found on her solo albums: 100 names, which was called "pensive and potent" by The New York Times, and METAFAGOTE, which ArtMusicLounge insists is “here to explode…any preconceived notions you may have had about bassoon music.” In 2024, Heller released a collaboration with Steve Reich — a multi-track bassoon piece called Grand Street Counterpoint (on which Reich and Heller are co-producers) — along with her first solo EP featuring her own compositions, ONE, on Relative Pitch Records. Next up is a full length album of bassoon ensemble pieces, that Heller either commissioned or arranged, on Cantaloupe Music.

A member of the esteemed International Contemporary Ensemble since 2008, Heller has long been on the forefront of experimental music. Her tenure in the ensemble started as a bassoonist, but quickly expanded to encompass deeper roles — including fundraising, curation and then, in 2018, Co-Artistic Director. This leadership role saw Heller working with top presenting organizations across the world, overseeing commissioning programs, curating up to 100 concerts a season, and empowering her fellow artists in the ensemble to embrace a more collaborative leadership structure. 

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.

A passionate and committed mentor, Heller is invited to give classes, lectures, and workshops across the globe. She gives talks on topics as wide-ranging as collaborative practices, conscientious curation, contemporary bassoon techniques, and composing for the bassoon, as well as intensive seminars on non-traditional career paths and how to create and sustain community-centered spaces in music. She has given classes at The Juilliard School, The Royal Conservatory in Brussels, The Manhattan School of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory, The Peabody Institute, Ensemble Connect, the Chicago Civic Orchestra and The New World Symphony, among many others. Heller often participates in mentorship programs for female-identifying, trans, and non-binary composers and performers, most recently serving as a mentor in the Blueprint Program — a partnership between The Juilliard School and National Sawdust for young composers.

Heller earned degrees from The Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Texas at Austin, followed by stints at the well-respected training orchestras The Chicago Civic and New World Symphony. She held a brief tenure, in the 2008-2009 season, as Principal Bassoonist of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. 

Learn more at rebekahheller.com