Rebecca Vendemo is the founder and conductor of the Spring Hill Orchestra (SHO) located in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Prior to starting the SHO in 2014, Rebecca spent eight years in New York City. She got her start there freelancing and teaching for the Brooklyn Conservatory before beginning a seven-and-a-half-year journey in arts administration at the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic in Development, Marketing, E-Marketing and Customer Relations.
While at the Philharmonic, Rebecca studied orchestral conducting privately with Assistant Conductor Daniel Boico, and composition at Juilliard’s Evening Division with Conrad Cummings. She attended conducting workshops with Maestros Gustav Meier, Mark Gibson, Nicholai Ulrich, Alexander Polishchuk, Jorma Panula, Robert Gutter and Ovidiu Balan among others. In 2010 she was a competition winner at the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic workshop in Russia, where she conducted Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony in concert with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic. In the summer of 2012 she performed Liszt’s Les Preludes and Prokofiev Classical Symphony with the Bacău Philharmonic in Romania and selections from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at Cincinnati Conservatory, both as a workshop participant. Later that same year she was invited to guest conduct the Filarmonica Jovem Camargo Guarnieri and Laetare Chamber Orchestra in São Paulo, Brazil. She performed Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, Strauss’ Beautiful Blue Danube and the Vivaldi Double Cello Concerto among other works.
Wanting to focus more on conducting, Rebecca left arts administration and returned to Tennessee in November 2014. Within a year she started the SHO, which has become an outlet for anyone wanting to play standard orchestral music, drawing professional musicians, amateurs, students and retired individuals, some traveling over two hours round trip for weekly rehearsals. The SHO is bringing much needed classical orchestral music to an underserved area.
Rebecca has a master’s degree in trumpet performance from the University of Tennessee, and bachelor’s degree in music education from Valdosta State University. Her graduate assistantships included co-teaching the trumpet studio, performing with the faculty brass quintet, and playing principal trumpet with the Oak Ridge Symphony. Rebecca has also performed with the Bronx Opera, Musica Bella, Korean Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Conservatory, Valdosta Symphony and Albany Symphony. In addition to directing the SHO she has a growing studio of trumpet and cello students.