Rachel’s career has been divided between performing wet ink manuscripts on modern instruments, interpreting faded manuscripts on period instruments, and creating entirely new manuscripts for both kinds of instruments. She is a long-standing member of the Bach Players and the Revolutionary Drawing Room, lively spontaneous ensembles which eschew the hazards of a sedentary lifestyle by performing on two feet. She also performs music from 18th – 21st centuries with Incantati, (recorder, viola d’amore and viola da gamba,) and early 19th century repertoire with Trio Notturno (flute, viola, guitar).

Rachel’s compositions include four string quartets, song cycles to poems by Thomas Campion and Stevie Smith, and an opera for children, The Cuckoo Tree, based on the novel by Joan Aiken. Less conventional works include a tone poem, Odysseus in Ogygia, for six viola d’amore, Dark Arts in a Stony Place, an evocation of occult practices in a 16th century convent, for four trumpet marines, and Several World, a fugal piece for a hundred gleaming saxophones.

Aside from writing and performing music, Rachel enjoys walking, reading, baking and acquiring new skills. She has studied Ancient Greek in an adult education class and learned to pluck a goose in Western Canada.