Rachel Beetz
Flute
Rachel Beetz is a Los Angeles based flutist whose playing is both “soulfully elegant” (Washington Post) and evokes the “roar of prehistoric animals” (San Diego Union Tribune). Rachel is passionate about contemporary music and creating supportive and collaborative environments for her community to make music. She is Executive Director of the wasteLAnd concert series and also half of both Plus/Minus with percussionist Dustin Donahue and of Autoduplicity, a project with cellist Jennifer Bewerse.
Rachel has been invited to play with ensembles who share her mission such as Callithumpian Consort, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Noise, Southland Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion, and has been featured on the Jacaranda and Monday Evening Concerts series. Rachel has appeared at festivals all over the globe such as the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico, Vértice in Mexico City, the Dog Star Orchestra in Los Angeles, Prisms New Music Festival in Tempe, American Music Festival at the National Gallery of Art, the New Music Gathering, soundON Festival of Contemporary Music, XI Festival Internacional de Música Nueva in Monterrey, Mexico, Internationales Institut Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Atlantic Music Festival, WithOut Walls Festival at the La Jolla Playhouse, unSUNG Music Festival in Los Angeles, and the Ojai Music Festival.
Rachel frequently works with composers in the creation of new solo and chamber pieces. Composers Nicholas Deyoe, Edward Hamel, Kurt Isaacson, Brian Griffeath-Loeb, Celeste Oram, Michael Pisaro, Roger Reynolds, Scott Worthington, and Yiheng Yvonne Wu have written pieces for Beetz. You can hear her performances on Blue Griffin, iikki, Neuma, and Populist record labels.
As a composer, Rachel makes sound pieces involving acute realizations of graphic materials. In collaboration with visual artist, Nichole Speciale, they created the project, Script-Rescript, a translation project between Nichole’s mixed media drawings and Rachel’s sonic realizations. In the winter of 2015-16, Rachel received the Listhus Skammdegi Air Award, a three-month artist residency in Ólafsfjörður, Iceland. There she created the 30-hour work, The Winter Stars, based on sonic realizations of long exposure photographs of the night sky. Her work has been exhibited at Watt Space Gallery in Newcastle, Australia, the Natural History Museum in Ólafsfjörður, Island, Salur Myndlistarfélagsins in Akureyri, Iceland, Rabindranath Tagore Centre in Kolkata, India, and at Emergent Artspace’s ongoing online exhibition “Translations.”
As an educator, Dr. Beetz lectures on contemporary flute playing, collaboration, and the creative process of creating and realizing graphic scores. She has given guest lectures at Arizona State University, California Institute of the Arts, Iceland Academy of the Arts, and Santa Clara University. She holds degrees from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (Bachelor of Music) and UC San Diego (Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Arts). Currently, Rachel instructs contemporary chamber music at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP) at New England Conservatory and is Adjunct Instructor at Moorpark College.