One of NPR Alt.Latino’s four 2018 picks for New Spring Music, Eleanor Dubinsky is “a multilingual musician who can capture the emotions and soul of a community in a song.” (NPR Weekend Edition).  A vocalist, guitarist and cellist, Eleanor Dubinsky's music lives at the tender edge where jazz, world and pop sensibilities meet emotionally forthright songwriting. Hailing from St. Louis, MO and based in NYC, her sound reflects and celebrates both her mid-western roots and the formative time she has spent in South America, Western and Central Europe, Portugal and Cape Verde. Singing in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, Eleanor and her multi-faceted band bring linguistic and cultural fluency to dynamic compositions that explore the fragile links between human emotions and responsibility. In the words of journalist Tom Pryor, expect "a joyous, uplifting and deeply generous performance...this is music as medicine for your soul." 

Eleanor has made many festival appearances including Lincoln Center's Boro Linc: La Casita, Philadelphia International Festival For The Arts at the Kimmel Center, Levitt At The Falls (Sioux Falls, SD), 4 + 4 Days In Motion Festival in Prague and the Puerto Morelos Music Festival (Mexico), and has performed at nationally recognized venues including Joe’s Pub, World Cafe Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Barnes Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum. She has also performed in Costa Rica, Portugal, France, Guatemala, Cape Verde, Greece, the Czech Republic, Uruguay and Senegal, collaborating with notable artists including Les Freres Guisse (Senegal), Dino D’Santiago (Portugal/Cape Verde) and El David Aguilar (MX). Eleanor’s music has been featured on MTV, Lifetime and Animal Planet, ads for American Express and on NPR. 

Eleanor's creative roots are in classical cello, which she began studying at the age of three. Eleanor graduated from Brown University in 1998 with a BA in Educational Studies, focusing on art as a catalyst for social change. She also completed a semester program on the same subject with the School For International Training in Prague, Czech Republic, and an ICAT (Institute For Community Action Training) intensive with Gibney Dance in NYC focusing on domestic violence prevention and awareness. 

At the center of Eleanor’s artistic mission is using music as a means for empowerment and generating dialogue. As such, she partners with non-profit organizations Feel The Music!, through which she teaches songwriting and performs for pediatric oncology patients at NY Presbyterian Hospital, and ArteAmor, through which she facilitates songwriting workshops with adolescent survivors of abuse and trafficking in Costa Rica. 

In 2020-21 Eleanor will partner with Montefiore Medical Center’s Terra Firma program, a nationally-recognized medical-legal partnership in the Bronx that provides medical care, mental health, advocacy and legal services to Unaccompanied Immigrant Children (UIC) with the mission of empowering them to develop resilience, attain stability and reach their full potential. As part of Terra Firma’s enrichment programming, Eleanor will lead ten adolescent participants in Our Voices, Our Songs, a songwriting and recording initiative in which students compose, co-produce and record a new album of original songs born from stories of their life experiences. Our Voices, Our Songs is supported by the Gibney Dance Moving Toward Justice Cohort, a ten-month program that selects six artists annually to develop high potential projects that use art as a tool for activism and social impact. 

Eleanor has released three CDs to date: Touch The Sky (2011), Listen To The Music (2012) and Soft Spot of My Heart (2018). In spring 2020, Eleanor, Frank and Sally Ponzio will release their new song, Remember Me, a tribute to a mother recovering from losing her son to opioid addiction. Remember Me’s mission is to provide comfort for those directly affected by this crisis and to aid like-minded organizations in spreading their message of addiction awareness and prevention.

Read the press release for Eleanor's album Soft Spot of My Heart here.