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Rachel performs professionally on viola da gamba throughout the New England area and beyond as a soloist, continuo player and with various small ensembles including Cascata, Long & Away, Music for a while and Heliotrope Ensemble. She can also be heard performing on Baroque cello and as a professional choral singer. In demand as a teacher, Rachel has taught viola da gamba at workshops in New England, Toronto, at the Amherst Early Music Festival and at Brandeis University. She was a 2006 winner of a Young Artist Grant-in-Aid from the Viola da Gamba Society of America (VdGSA).

Trained as a cellist and musicologist, Rachel discovered the viola da gamba through study with Sarah Mead at Brandeis University where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in Musicology. She recently finished studies in early music at the Longy School of Music where she studied viola da gamba with Jane Hershey and Baroque cello with Phoebe Carrai. Rachel is active in promoting the viola da gamba through her “Introduction to the Viola da Gamba” workshops and by organizing the first ever Gamba Gamut, a Fringe concert event of the Boston Early Music Festival, sponsored by the VdGSA.

As a writer, Rachel has had articles about various aspects of early music performance published in VdGSA News. She also writes program note for several Boston-area ensembles. In Fall 2008, Rachel will begin a Doctor of Musical Arts in Early Music Performance at Case Western Reserve University where she hopes to pursue interests in the performance and research of 17th century repertoire for viola da gamba.


Instruments
Treble Viol by Kazuya Sato, Japan, 1981. English consort model.
6-string Bass Viol by Peter Tourin, Vermont, 1983. Division viol after Henry Jaye.
7-string Bass Viol by Wang Zhi Ming, Beijing, 2006. After Nicolas Bertrand.
Baroque Cello by John Friedrich, Germany, 1914. Set-up by Warren Ellison, Vermont

 

 

 

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