Rebecca started singing as a baby, and at the age of four she was given a violin. She studied singing with her opera-singer father, Dr Norman Platt O.B.E. and first sang professionally at the age of nine. When she was twelve she became the first child to perform the role of Flora in Benjamin Britten’s opera “The Turn of the Screw”, touring throughout the UK for Kent Opera, directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner.
Rebecca was a soprano in The Tudor Consort of Rochester Cathedral, performing madrigals around the south of England, before attending the Royal Academy of Music, London, to study violin, piano and chamber music, with Emanuel Hurwitz C.B.E. and the Amadeus Quartet. She performed chamber music throughout the UK before being invited to join The Australian Chamber Orchestra in Sydney.
Rebecca was the Orchestra Leader for the Sydney productions of “Phantom of the Opera”, “Les Miserables”, “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Sound of Music”; she also performed in productions of “West Side Story”, “A Little Night Music” and “The Hunting of the Snark”.
She has recently expanded her musical range, writing arrangements, and recording piano, violin, viola and voice with, among others, William Ackerman, Christine Wheeler, appearing on the CD “Christine Wheeler and Friends, Rain In The Mountains-Songs from Henry Lawson“; and pianist/composer Fiona Joy Hawkins.
It is with Fiona Joy Hawkins that she appears in the Blue Dream Ensemble. A group of musicians that come together with their exceptional orchestral and improvisational skills to perform Fiona’s work, but with their own unique contribution. The Ensemble includes some of Australia’s finest musicians, including Andy Busuttil, Dave Ellis, John Napier and Bukhu (Mongolian throat singer). Rebecca is the Producer of the CD, ” Fiona Joy Hawkins and the Blue Dream Ensemble, Live at the Q”.
Rebecca is acclaimed for her versatility as a musician, and is equally at home in the recording studio as the concert hall stage. She combines violin and voice (sometimes simultaneously), piano, music arrangement, composition and production.
She plays an Andrea Castagneri violin from 1741.