Since winning first place at the First International Clarinet Competition in Cracow, Poland in 1994, Rebecca Rischin has established an international reputation as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, teacher, and scholar. As a recitalist and concerto soloist, she has performed with orchestras and at international clarinet festivals in England, France, Poland, and the United States; and as a chamber musician, with the Lark and Ludwig Quartets. Recently she presented recitals at the International Clarinet Association's Clarinetfest 2002 in Stockholm, Sweden, and at the University of Oklahoma's twenty-seventh annual Clarinet Symposium. A finalist for the position of principal clarinetist of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London (England) and the Konzertverein St. Gallen (Switzerland), Rischin is currently second clarinetist of the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus. She also performs frequently with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and has commissioned and premiered several new works, including Mark Phillips' My Aunt Gives Me a Clarinet Lesson, a humorous piece for clarinet, percussion and narrator/dancer. Her biography appears in the twenty-first edition of the Marquis Who's Who of American Women and the International Biographical Centre's 2000 Oustanding Musicians of the Century.

Rischin is currently Associate Professor of Clarinet at Ohio University, where she received the 2002 College of Fine Arts Outstanding Teacher Award. Her students come from all over the United States and Asia and have won awards both here and abroad. She has given master classes and coaching sessions at universities and music schools nationwide, including Arizona State University, the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music, the Interlochen Arts Academy, the University of Kentucky-Lexington, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the Longy School of Music; and has lectured in both English and French on her award-winning research on Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. Among her many publications in The Clarinet journal include her article on Wings in collaboration with the composer Joan Tower for the renowned "Master Class" series (March 1999). Her book, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet has been published by Cornell University Press to critical acclaim. It will soon be out in paperback and is currently being translated into French.

A native of San Francisco, at the age of seventeen, Rischin was selected by the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman to be the featured soloist at the 1985 San Francisco Mayor's Command Performance for the former mayor and current United States Senator of California, Diane Feinstein. Rischin holds the Bachelor of Arts, cum laude and Master of Music degrees from Yale University, the Doctor of Music degree from Florida State University, and the performance Diplôme from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where she studied under the auspices of a Harriet Hale Woolley grant, awarded in 1993 to only two other visual and performing artists in the United States. Her teachers include David Shifrin, Guy Deplus, Frank Kowalsky, Pascal Moragues, Gregory Smith, Joaquin Valdepeñas, and David Weber.