Originally from Glasgow, Rebecca has played the lever (Celtic) harp for over fifteen years. She studied Theatre at Glasgow University, spent some time in New York and Belfast before coming to Liverpool in 2004. Her first play Last Child was performed at the Arches Theatre in Glasgow in 2001 and at HERE Arts Center in NYC in 2002. Her play Danger: Hollow Sidewalk was performed at the Arches Theatre in 2006. Around 2004 she started combining her musical and writing activites to produce the harp and spoken-word pieces that now form the core of her practice as a performer. She frequently collaborates with other musicians, writers and artists, most recently composing the harp score for Liverpool poet Eleanor Rees' work Eliza and the Bear (2008). Among many things, she is inspired by folklore, memory, cities, sadness and magic. She continues to perform at venues and festivals throughout the UK and in April 2009 released her first EP of original lever harp compositions and spoken-word, The Mystery Workshop.

In May 2010 Rebecca staged a new performance she wrote while in residence at Edge Hill Station called 'The Ballad of Juniper Davy and Sonny Lumiere'.  Read more here.

Press / reviews

BBC website, May 09 (live review)

'Her harp, her words and her voice are an absolute joy to listen to.  The stark wording set against a delightful shower of chimes, harmonics and soaring chord progressions is utterly beguiling’

The Glasgow Herald, April 06 (on Danger: Hollow Sidewalk)

‘Sharp has penned a fascinatingly complex, audacious and at times brain-poppingly clever work…  A major find…’

Extracts:

From Danger: Hollow Sidewalk -

‘Here I am now’, he wrote, so I stopped reading and looked around.  Liar.  I can remember five years ago.  I can remember it fine, that’s not the problem.  I just can’t believe I’m not there anymore.  I know he’s not there – that I know every day.  So what I’m left wondering is, what the hell have I been doing since then, where have I been?  I asked him once, when we were younger, ‘Why do you like stations so much?’  He said ‘They take you away’.  Liar.  The years take you away, that’s what they do.  But this is not a story told in chronological order, so you have to keep waiting.

Persuasion  (published in Obsessed With Pipework #45, January 09)

When I tug
just to hear the cartilage

or read about foliage
my sewing machine

when I talk
like I’d never believe

or tell apart a bilberry
from a den of thieves