“It latched on to me”: Rebecca Hall describes unique connection with music
Rebecca Hall may be recognizable through one of her many roles in eastern North Carolina: as music director for Airy Grove Christian Church, a quaint church in the country, north of Kinston, or as founder of Wilmington Realty, or as a member of Greenville’s Celtic band, Twisted Knot. But the life stories that shaped her destiny and almost obsessive love of music may be less familiar. It began with her first encounter with a piano at age 5.
“My mother and I were visiting someone and in a front room they had an old, upright antique piano,” she remembers. “I walked in there and saw the keys across it, and I just wanted to see what they sounded like. I was just amazed. I mean it just drew me in and I remember my mother saying, ‘Don’t mess with her piano.’ I just wanted to touch the keys and hear those sounds and oh my gosh, I can’t explain it, but it just latched onto me.”
That was the beginning, but her next musical memory was in the second grade, visiting a friend’s house and discovering a toy organ: “She had a Christmas book that had ‘Silent Night’ and I could not stop playing it. That’s all I wanted to do and she just wanted me to play with her and her other toys.”
And so began her personal campaign to take piano lessons at about age 8. She pleaded with her parents, who didn’t believe she was serious. After all, they didn’t own a piano. How could she take lessons? Hall remembers crying and saying, “Please let me do this.”
“My mother, being a saintly woman, prayed about it,” Hall remembers. “And this lady named Miss Maggie had an upright Cable-Nelson piano and my mother had a hundred dollars that she could pay her for this piano. And so she prayed to God and said if it was His will, let Miss Maggie agree to the hundred dollars, which was pretty unheard of…a hundred dollars even then would have not been very much money for a Cable-Nelson, fairly nice piano. She said yes. And so there was my first piano.”
Lessons followed, first from a talented cousin, who was the local high school music, art, and drama teacher with a music degree from UNC Chapel Hill. He couldn’t believe she’d never taken lessons before when she would have a piece completely memorized by her next lesson. That was likely her first clue that she “had an ear” for music.
Hall, who was raised in the Angier area, went to 5th Sunday singing services at an Erwin church, including choirs and a lot of special singing. That’s where she met her next piano teacher, Sylvia Ward: “I just loved hearing her play because she had that back and forth chorded thing going with the left hand and the melody in the right hand, and I loved it.”
Hall started taking lessons from her, and when she went on to attend the North Carolina State Bible school music Institute in Charlotte in the summer, Ward was also teaching there.
“It just opened up the world to me,” Hall says. “I had the chord thing going with my left hand and could play anything because I knew I could play the melody with the right hand. I could sense how the two of them went together,”
Her senior year of high school, an extraordinary opportunity allowed Hall to put her natural ear for music to good use. Ira David Wood III, creator of the musical comedy adaption of “A Christmas Carol” in Raleigh, wrote a musical called “It’s Magic Cinderella” that was performed at Raleigh’s Theater in the Park. Her school’s drama group was granted permission to perform the play. But there was no written music.
“I had a session with him [Wood] and got the chords and the way it went and was able to pull that whole thing off,” Hall says. “I don’t know how I did it to this day, but it was really cool music. Our drama club actually won first place that year in the competition judged by Campbell College professors and I was given a trophy for ‘Best Actress of 1976’ for my role as Annie Sullivan in ‘The Miracle Worker.’”
Hall attended East Carolina University before moving to Wilmington and working, ultimately opening a successful real estate business, now in its 40th year.
The story of Hall’s lifelong relationship with music is punctuated with a number of high points that are deserving of their own episodes, if her life was a Netflix series. Like praying that she would master the skill of singing while playing the piano–and that prayer being answered. Like the feeling she had when she bought her Grand piano, which she described as “Christmas multiplied”–like living a fantasy. She was so transfixed by playing that magnificent instrument that she and her husband, J.K., hosted an in-house concert for her closest friends, complete with the black formal dress and roses on the piano. Years later when she bought a Yamaha Clavinova, with all the bells and whistles for making the sounds of other instruments and recording tracks, she’d wear headphones and get lost in another world. That is also what fed her interest in sound engineering, an acquired skill she uses at church and in the Twisted Knot band.
Twisted Knot, L to R front Catherine Walker, Mamie Dixon; back Sylvia Bjorkman,, Donna Davis, Jim Joseph & Rebecca Hall.
Hall met the leader of Twisted Knot, Mamie Dixon, by happenstance in Wilmington, when Dixon was inquiring about an AirB&B and a discussion about Italy led to talk about music. Before long Dixon invited Hall to sit in with the group. And the rest is history. Hall says, “It feels right” playing in the band, and she has always felt like it was “another blessing.” Hall is lead vocalist and plays Irish percussion.
Hall’s story would not be complete without mentioning the CDs she has recorded and the numerous beautiful original songs she has composed. She and her husband live in a restored historic home on a working farm near Hookerton that is a 5th generation homeplace in her husband’s family.
Reflecting back, Hall said, “I’ve spent my whole life studying music, singing, playing in the band or doing music in some form or another. I have never had a year that I didn’t play better or perform better than I did the previous year. You’re always developing, always growing.”
And as a memorial to her first piano, Hall has a hundred dollar bill hidden in her grand piano.
Hall will be playing St. Patrick’s Day favorites with Twisted Knot band locally on March 14 at R.A. General Store at 7:30 pm , and at the Buccaneer, 2120 E. Firetower Rd, Greenville on March 15, 4-6pm.
originally published in the Daily Reflector February 29, 2025
