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Musical Beginning
Rebecca Enkin launched her singing career at Chicago's on Toronto's Queen Street in 1989. Since then, she has sung at the DuMaurier Limited Downtown Toronto Jazz Festival, Celebrate Toronto Street Festival, the Glenn Gould Studio, restaurants, parties, corporate events and benefits. In 1991 she produced and starred in the one-woman show "Where Would Jazz Be Without Women" for ArtsWeek Toronto. |
In 1994 she sang on a CD of Barry Little's songs, "Rebecca Sings Barry J.'s Standards" (Fanfare Records). In 1998 Rebecca sang with the eighteen-piece GTA Swing Band. Often accompanied on piano by husband Marc Enkin, Rebecca has been likened to Blossom Dearie and Rosemary Clooney. Influences include Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Niemack. |
Motivations & Inspirations
Rebecca took part in the usual piano lessons, choirs and school musicals. Her first hit role was as Fagin in "Oliver". She also acted in Shakespearean plays and seemed interested in an acting career, "so when I was 18 and asked my parents for singing lessons so I could sing like Frank Sinatra, it came as a bit of a shock." But why should anyone be surprised since Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald were what she heard around the house while she was growing up? |
Influences
Enkin credits much of her development as a singer of jazz standards to her father, Tom, for playing big band and jazz music around the house when she was a girl. Enkin's father Tom Adamowski, a retired English professor/expert on Sinatra, was a prominent interviewee on all Canada-wide CBC radio shows and CKLN when Sinatra died. |
