Rachel C. Walker writes poetic, timbre-sensitive works drawing from her ongoing immersion in and research on Chinese folk music, musical time, and language. She engages in long-term collaborations with living writers, exploring the philosophical connections between transcription and translation within abstract musical syntaxes.

Her music has been heard at performances during Festival Mujeres en la Música Nueva, PASIC, Hangzhou Contemporary Music Festival (杭州现代音乐节), Kuandu Arts Festival, Svensk Musikvår, Kalv Festivalen, Sound of Stockholm, Warsaw Autumn, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Festival de Royaumont, Beethovenfest Bonn, KLANGZEIT Münster, NOW! Festival Essen, Weimarer Frühjahrstage, Unerhörte Musik, SONIC MATTER, Sommer in Stuttgart and Tage Neuer Musik Regensburg. Radio broadcasts of various works have also been featured on Deutschlandfunk (Atelier Neuer Musik), NDR, SWR2 and Radio France (Création Mondiale).

In season 2025-2026, Rachel is the Cooperating Partner of choreographer Mounir Saeed in the frame of the Pina Bausch Fellowship, conducting six months of research on the implications of chaos theory in music and dance. In season 2027-2028, a new opera written in collaboration with librettists Andreas Karl and Nadeem Al-Aloosi will premiere at the Staatsoper Hamburg.

Recent commissions and collaborations include pieces for L’Instant Donné/Radio France, Trio Abstrakt, airborne extended, catinblack ensemble, Departure Duo, Ensemble Adapter, Ictus, Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, Ensemble Temporum, Ensemble Mosaik, Trio recherche, Ensemble Ascolta, and the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra (天津交响乐团). Extended solo works have been composed for Sylvia Hinz, recorder, percussionists Allen Otte, Bernardo Cruz and Shiau-Shiuan Hung, and pipa player Xia Yuyan (夏雨言). She has ongoing projects with the poets Autumn Tsai, Ruan Xuefang, Zheng Xiaoqiong and Nadeem Al-Aloosi.

As the recipient of multiple grants to China and Taiwan, Rachel has studied and written about traditional and contemporary music, while simultaneously composing dynamic new works for Chinese and Western instruments. Her writings have been published by Palgrave Macmillan, NewMusicBox, Southwest China Normal University Press and the journal Music, Multimedia and Culture of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (Bulgaria), as well as presented at invited guest lectures at the Korea Electro-Acoustic Music Society Annual Conference, Harvard University, Kunstuniversität Graz, Australian National University, McGill University, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden Hybrid Music Lab, Tsinghua University, Shandong University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen, the Central Conservatory of Music, the China Conservatory, et al.

Rachel studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (B.M.) with Allen Otte and Joel Hoffman, and at the China Conservatory of Music (中国音乐学院), where she was a Visiting Scholar advised by Gao Weijie (高为杰). She was a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing (M.S.), and completed her M.M. with Ming Tsao at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. Scholarships from Neustart Kultur, Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender Hannover and the University of Cincinnati Research Council Undergraduate Research Fellowship have helped to support her work. 

Rachel has held residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, Fondation Royaumont (Académie Voix Nouvelles), Britten-Pears Arts, Lisboa Incomum (Culture Moves Europe) and the Elektronmusik Studion Stockholm. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Akademie Schloss Solitude (aural/physical, 2022), the Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen (Max Uhlig Reisestipendium, 2023) and Künstlerhof Schreyahn (2024, 2025). Rachel is composer in residence at the Fondation Singer-Polignac for seasons 2025-2028.

January 2026
Photo by Anton Avdieiev