Gabbi Coenen is an Australian vocalist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. She is known for her “expansive and electrifying” songwriting and her versatile vocal abilities, which have seen her professional career span a range of genres, from modern jazz to indie pop, early to contemporary classical music, and nearly everything in between.
Based in New York City since 2011 and Los Angeles since 2020, she has released four EPs and an album as RVBY MY DEAR. Her debut album Waiting (Villainy Records, 2019) was produced by Andrew Lappin and garnered high praise from indie tastemakers such as The Line of Best Fit and The Deli Magazine, as well as landing on Trip-Hop Nation’s Best of 2019 list. The single “Try” was also a semi-finalist in the Unpublished category of the 2019 International Songwriting Competition. Her follow-up self-titled EP (Spirit House Records, 2022) was featured on Bandcamp’s New & Notable and received airplay on Triple J’s Home & Hosed.
She has premiered works by world-renowned composers such as Andrew Smith (Norway) and Graham Lack (Germany), and performed at world-class American venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theater, the 55 Bar, Rockwood Music Hall, The Bitter End, and The Hotel Café, as well as prestigious Australian venues such as the Ellington Jazz Club, the Quarry Amphitheatre and the Perth Concert Hall.
While in New York she was a soprano with internationally-renowned vocal ensemble Khorikos, with whom she toured to Serbia and Montenegro in 2019, winning the 54th Days of Mokranjac Festival competition.
An in-demand session vocalist and topliner, she has collaborated on tracks for various producers, composers and music libraries such as Audiosocket and The Lodge, and her music as RVBY MY DEAR is represented for sync by Sweets & Pop. Her song “Going For A Drive (ImaGeddit)” (co-written with Bede Kennedy of Castlecomer and Jess Edo) was recently synced in a digital ad for Facebook x Raybans Stories sunglasses. She has also contributed vocals to several projects by NY-based doom metal artist Witnesses, as featured in Decibel Magazine and Metal Sucks.
Gabbi is currently a soprano with new music collective C3LA and the All Saints Beverly Hills Choir, with whom she performed as the soloist for Mozart’s Vespers (featuring the famous “Laudate Dominum” solo) and Coronation Mass in May 2022.
When not writing, recording or performing, Gabbi is a freelance music supervisor for independent films, and also teaches private voice and piano lessons to students of all ages and skill levels. She is certified in Somatic Voicework Levels 1-3, and holds a BFA in Jazz Voice from The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music (Salutatorian) and a Bachelor of Music from the West Australian Academy of Performance Arts.
Gabbi’s music supervisor and consultant credits include The Otherkind (2023), Bonding (2023) and “Crone” from the feminist horror anthology film Give Me An A (2022).
Photographer: Luis Ruiz