Salome Rebello is a choral conductor, educator, pianist, singer, and arranger.
High-quality performance combined with the desire to make a positive impact on the world around her, are at the heart of her practice.
Born and raised in Mumbai (India), Salome spent more than a decade in Jerusalem (Israel) where she studied and worked.
She currently resides in Germany where she has recently been appointed as the conductor and musical director of the renowned Ulmer Spatzen Chor, and head of the vocal department at Musikschule Ulm.
She holds a Bachelors of Music in Piano (class of Revital Hachamoff) & Masters of Music in Choir Conducting (class of Prof. Stanley Sperber) from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Israel.
CHOIR CONDUCTING : In the last 15 years, Salome has served as the conductor and musical director of numerous choirs including The Jerusalem Oratorio Choir (Israel’s largest choral organization), the Jerusalem Music Academy’s Recreational Choir, Bel Canto Jerusalem, and the Women's Choir of the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation Mumbai. The children’s choirs she has directed are The Singing Tree, the Cantilena Children’s Chorus and the Jerusalem International School Glee Club. Her repertoire spans music across genres from western classical to jazz, pop and world music. She has conducted and prepared large scale choral-orchestral pieces for concert projects in collaboration with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Ashdod Symphony Orchestra, and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. She also has gathered experience leading large crowd-singing events with up to 2000 people participating.
ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT & PERFORMANCE WORK : As a conductor, Salome has furthered her practice by participating in renowned workshops/masterclasses, as well as by learning from more non-traditional choral techniques. The Norfolk Choir Conducting Workshop at the Yale School of Music, Conducting 21C in Stockholm, Anuna Summer School in Dublin and the DIY Messiah in Chicago have left an important impact on her work process. Salome’s most recent interest lies in inter-disciplinary collaboration and innovative creations. Through her latest collaboration with experimental theatre director/choreographer Sujay Saple, she created and conducted Lullaby, Stranger, a hit immersive-choral performance.
EDUCATION WORK : With a passion for teaching, she has been involved in music education for the last 18 years. Her areas of expertise range extensively from individual lessons in piano, singing & music theory to classroom music and teacher-training. She is in demand as a practicing choral-clinician and often runs choir workshops, including in the past for the Israeli Ministry of Education. She was a faculty member for 3 years at the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation, Mumbai - a non-profit organization founded by Maestro Zubin Mehta –where she still continues to be remotely involved with planning and development. In the past Salome taught music for 4 years at the Anglican International School Jerusalem and briefly at the American School Bombay.
SOCIAL OUTREACH AND CO-EXISTENCE WORK : Salome has been very active in using choral singing as a tool for cross community co-existence work and social outreach. This led her to projects in Israel with the Jerusalem Youth Chorus (an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue-based choir), the Women Wage Peace movement, the Jerusalem Street Orchestra and the Manofim Contemporary Arts Festival. In India, she founded the Pali-Chimbai Municipal School Choirs for children from lower socio-economic backgrounds (through the Mehli Mehta Foundation and Aseema), and ran a conductor’s workshop for the Songbound choir initiative. In Germany she has worked with the elderly at the Anna-Haag Mehrgenerationenhaus Suttgart through a community-involvement program of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra.
OTHER : In the past, Salome was employed as a professional choral singer in the Jerusalem Academy Chamber Choir with which she performed for years in Israel and abroad, including with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra, and under the baton of conductors such as Zubin Metha, Krzysztof Penderecki, Kent Nagano, Andrew Parrott and John Nelson.
She received her own initial musical training in piano from Mrs. Blanche Viegas and in choir singing from Mrs. Celeste Cordo (Mumbai).
Salome also holds a B.A. in Sociology from Mumbai University. She speaks English, Hebrew, Hindi, German and basic French.