Rebecca Stewart is an (ethno)musicologist and singer, retired head of the early vocal department of the Brabants/Fontys Conservatorium and co-founder/ex ‘maestro di cappella’of the Cappella Pratensis. She received her PhD in ethnomusicology in 1974 after having worked for many years in Hindusthani classical music. Since moving to The Netherlands in that same year she has concentrated mostly on early western music. After having taught for seventeen years in the Royal Conservatory of The Hague (as co-founder of the Baroque singing department and as a teacher of theory), she was invited to begin a new early music department in Brabant in which singers (and later instrumentalists) received a vocally-oriented practical and theoretical education which extended from the earliest chant traditions of Western Europe to the end of the Renaissance. She has published several articles concerning the relationship between singing and modal music. Primarily in her function as leader of the Cappella Pratensis she has made many CDs. After her retirement she formed and is leader of the Ensemble and Center Cantus Modalis. She continues to give concerts, workshops and lecture demonstrations.