Rachel Atkinson

Rachel Atkinson is one of Australia’s most talented cellists. After studying with Georg Pedersen at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, she won an Associated Board Scholarship and a Butland Music Foundation Grant to study with David Strange at the Royal Academy of Music, London. At the Academy she received the Frederic Moore Memorial Prize and the Frank Reizenstein Prize as cellist of the Sarastro Trio. She has performed in masterclasses with Lynn Harrell, Ofra Harnoy and Zara Nelsova.

In 1992 a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant supported further study with William Pleeth. She has toured Canada and New Zealand as a soloist with the Auckland Youth Orchestra and recorded for Radio New Zealand. She has given premieres of many contemporary works and appeared as a solo recitalist in New Zealand, Britain, Turkey, Germany, Holland, Malaysia and Israel.

In 2012 she was Music Director of The Play of Daniel for Victorian Opera’s youth program. From 2008 to 2013 she was Artistic Director of Nefes Ensemble, presenting classical music from the Ottoman court and Sufi ritual at the Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals and on tours of Victorian schools. She teaches cello and chamber music at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School.

From 2017 to 2019 the Fidelio Quartet presented the complete Beethoven cycle at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Rachel has played with the Melbourne Symphony for more than twenty years, touring internationally and joining partnerships with artists as diverse as Sting, the Three Tenors and Ray Charles. She has taken part in numerous Melbourne Symphony outreach programs, working with prisoners and their families, theatre companies, and schools in remote areas.

‘Rachel’s interpretation is full of vitality and extreme sensitivity. She displays maturity in depth of expression and technical ability. With ease she shows highly rhythmic passages and lyrical lines.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)