Rebecca Comerford, also known as The Balladista, is a multi-talented artist who has earned recognition as an actress, writer, producer, and musician. Variety Magazine has hailed her as a "standout character actress," while Classical Voice Magazine has praised her as "the future of lyric theatre in America." The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, has described her as "brilliant."
As a concert soloist, Rebecca has performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fischer Hall/Lincoln Center, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Symphony Space, Alhambra Theater Spain, Spoleto Music Festival, Italy, and many others. She has been awarded the top Lotte Lenya Prize through the Kurt Weill Foundation for her interpretations of Kurt Weill's music. Rebecca is a frequent cabaret performer, often appearing as a regular at New York's famed Cafe Sabarsky. Her performances seamlessly blend classical music, cabaret, jazz, and folk, creating a unique sound that is both new and nostalgic.
As an actress, Rebecca has appeared in various award-winning features, including The Living Wake, Explicit Ills, and Land of Dreams. In the latter, she wrote original songs and arrangements as part of the soundtrack. She has also worked with renowned artists such as Jesse Eisenberg, Tariq Trotter, and Naomie Harris.
As the artistic director of Ojai Youth Opera, the first autonomous youth Opera Company on the West Coast, Rebecca developed and co-composed the premiere of Nightingale and the Tower, an inter-generational, electronic chamber opera that explores the intersection of nature and technology for children and the cautionary dangers of screen time in the modern world. The adaptation and creation of Nightingale and the Tower into a feature animated film is through Palodeon Pictures, a production company co-founded by Rebecca and her husband, director and producer Sol Tryon, in 2021. Other projects created and produced through Palodeon include Amerikatsi, Sulphur Mountain, and a musical biopic on the life of blues legend Huddie Leadbetter.
Rebecca Comerford is a proud member of SAG/AFTRA, Actors Equity, and Tim Robbins' Actors Gang, based in Culver City, California. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Vocal Performance from Eastman School of Music and a Master's of Music degree, where she studied in the studio of Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music faculty chair Edith Bers. A native of Maine, Rebecca is the youngest of four children from a large Irish Catholic family, where she learned to sing and tell stories steeped in legend and folklore.
