Rachel Beckett

Rachel Beckett (flute and recorder) studied modern flute with William Bennett and recorder with Philip Pickett at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has worked with all leading ensembles including the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestre Revolutionnaire and Romantique, The English Concert, The Academy of Ancient Music and The Sixteen. Her recordings include the Brandenburg Concertos with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and The English Concert, Handel recorder sonatas with Convivium, and Vivaldi chamber concertos and Telemann Chamber Music with the Chandos Baroque Players, all for Hyperion.

Her television work has included the highly acclaimed Jonathon Miller, Paul Goodwin production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion for BB2 and a series with Welsh mezzo-soprano Eirian James for S45. She plays recorders for Paul McCartney's 'Pipes of Peace'. In 2000 as Principal Flute and Recorder of the English Baroque Soloists she was a central figure in Sir John Eliot Gardiner's extraordinary project to perform all of Bach's church cantatas in churches throughout Europe in the space of one year. Rachel teaches early flutes at the Birmingham Conservatoire.