Cellist Rachel Scott is spreading the gospel of classical music far and wide. She works with underserved communities as Education Director of the Australian Children’s Music Foundation and runs her own popular concert series, Bach in the Dark. Her second self-released album Dreaming with Daisy emerges from a close-knit collaboration with cellist David Pereira, who she has been performing with for six years. According to Scott, their work “is as much a celebration of their friendship as their artistry”.

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Dreaming with Daisy has the feel of a celebration, of untempered, free and loose-limbed music-making, where lines are shaped with boldness, and questions of style seem beside the point. The recorded sound, with its in-your-face rawness, is apt for music-making of immediacy and intimacy, but does reveal frequent, jarring intonation issues, as well as some rough-and-ready sounds from both cellists.

Depending on your perspective, the programme is a delightful potpourri or a mismatched patchwork. Full-throated Bach rubs up against Pereira’s own jazzy fantasy on Daisy, Daisy (with its bicycle fittingly “built for two”), and Dotzauer’s indulgent Mozart variations run into some gravelly heavy metal from Elena Kats-Chernin. A conscious decision appears to have been made to prize spontaneity over refinement.

Scott raised more than $4000 in a crowdfunding campaign to complete the album and Dreaming with Daisy is a labour of love, a thing to applaud.

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