Rebecca Schmid, PhD, profits from a two-track career as a musicologist and culture journalist. Her book Weill, Blitzstein, and Bernstein: A Study of Influence (University of Rochester Press/Boydell & Brewer) explores how Kurt Weill’s formal innovations laid the groundwork for the music theater works of Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein. She is a faculty member at Webster Vienna Private University and has lectured at the University of Performing Arts Vienna, Institute of European Studies, University of Torino, Great American Songbook Foundation, Bauhaus Archiv and Donau-Universität Krems.

Rebecca has served on the media juries of the Hilde Zadek Voice Competition, International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition and the conference Classical:NEXT. Moderation and program notes for such organizations as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera and Salzburg Festival. Reviews and features have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Opernwelt, das Orchester, Gramophone, Berliner Morgenpost and many other publications.

Born in Paris and raised with an equal footing in American and European culture, Rebecca holds a PhD in musicology and media studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin; a B.A. in music and comparative literature from Brown University; and an M.A. in arts journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications of Syracuse University. She was further educated at the University of Vienna and the Free University Berlin, with grants from the Austrian-American Fulbright Association and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Her work has also been supported by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, American Musicological Society and Wirtschaftsagentur Wien.