Regina Harris Baiocchi
*Regina Harris Baiocchi was born on July 16, 1956. She is a Black music educator, composer, and writer of short stories and poetry.
Regina A. Harris was the third of eight children born in Chicago to Elgie Harris Jr. and Lanzie Mozelle (Belmont) Harris. She was exposed to the arts early, took guitar lessons at age nine, and began composing at ten.
She married Gregory Baiocchi on July 12, 1975, and worked as a composer, writer, poet, and high school teacher. She studied music in high school and church music programs and graduated from Roosevelt University with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1978. She studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Northwest University. Baiocchi graduated from New York University with a certificate in public relations in 1991 and from De Paul University with a Master of Music degree in 1995.
From 1986 to 1989, she worked as an audio quality control analyst for Telaction Corporation and from 1989 to 1994 as a public relations director for Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Regional Artists Program grant and is a recipient of the Chicago Music Association award in 1995.
Her writings on music of nonwhite artists and women include Oxford University, which publishes spirituals, jazz, folk, blues, hip-hop, and poetry. They are in the Center for Black Music Research Journal at Columbia College Chicago, among other noteworthy publications. Since 2000, she has lectured at East-West University.
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