Rachel Smith

With equal passions for early and new music, Rachel Smith is a freelance musician, a substitute teacher at Chicago Public Schools, and an arts administrator based in Chicago and New York. She appears regularly as a violist with the Camerata Chicago orchestra and is a co-director of her own early music band Ensemble Meliora, based in NYC. She holds a BM in viola performance and a Certificate of Achievement in Performance Practice from the Eastman School of Music, where she was a member of Eastman’s Musica Nova ensemble and worked with conductors Georgia Mills, Luke Poeppel, and Brad Lubman. She is also a member of the 2024 Bang on a Can Summer Festival fellowship cohort. If she’s not practicing in a classroom somewhere in Chicago or in a chamber music rehearsal with colleagues, you’ll find Rachel training for marathons, writing poetry, attending concerts, and having long talks with dear friends.