NANCY RUMBEL is a professional composer, recording artist,performer and teacher. Her primary instruments are oboe, English horn, double wooden ocarinas, clay ocarinas and keyboards. She is well known for her work for the past 25 years with the GRAMMY award-winning duo Tingstad & Rumbel. She has also recorded on several releases with Susan Osborn whose recordings are popular in Japan. She is recently involved with a newly formed trio RIVER,a collaboration with composer/performers Lydia McCauley and Jami Sieber. In the late 70s/early 80s she toured and recorded extensively with the Paul Winter Consort.
NANCY'S imaginative sound palettes and willingness to delve into uncharted solo performance and recording opportunities with musicians, film makers, dancers, writers, photographers, painters, bird watchers and even psychologists have provided her with a very interesting life. “People are often unfamiliar with the instruments I play and are curious and motivated to use them. Due to their uniqueness, I am as much of an educator as I am a performer, consequently, at times I can feel like a curiosity, an endangered species and a pioneer all rolled into one. I have been challenged and rewarded by finding ways to make my musical timbres “fit in”!
HER gifts, perseverance, sense of adventure, humor and good fortune have allowed her to share her music with thousands of people in hundreds of unique venues including: Carnegie Hall, the Ho-Am Award Ceremony in Seoul Korea, Buddhist temples in Japan, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks, the grey whale calfing grounds in Mexico, rural and urban America, the Missouri Botanic Garden, Bloedel Reserve and the Cibolo Nature Center to name a few. She has orchestrated several compositions as well as arranged and composed a concert of choral music.
SHE has created a very unusual and entertaining informance entitled SURPRISE & WONDER for elementary school classrooms. This imaginative and colorful event draws the children into the world of music, art, diversity, textiles, design, and science. It is a celebration of the unknown world of rare and obscure instruments that nourishes and supports the imagination and creativity in children. She believes if that passion for learning and celebration of the new and unusual is maintained, children's lives will be greatly enriched.
SHE is a pro-active volunteer with MusiCares and organized a PNW MusiCares committee to support the mission of the organization as well as educate and create community within the PNW around MusiCares. She is serving her second term at a Trustee for The Recording Academy. She is a founding Board member and currently the Vice President of BirdNote.org, a wonderful two minute radio program about the intriguing stories, sounds and lives of birds for which she composed the theme song. Nancy lives in Issaquah, WA with her husband Ron Rabin and is the mother of two wonderful children Aaron and Elana.