Rachel Gough has been Principal Bassoon of the LSO since 1999. (For eight years prior to joining the LSO she was Co-Principal with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a professor at the Royal Academy of Music.) As a student she read anthropology and music at King’s College, Cambridge, before gaining Countess of Munster, Martin Musical, Ian Fleming and German government scholarships for postgraduate study at the Royal Academy of Music and the Hannover Hochschule für Musik with Klaus Thunemann. During this time she was principal bassoon of the European Community Youth Orchestra and won the Gold Medal at the Royal Overseas League.
Rachel has appeared as a soloist with Sir Colin Davis, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Sir Neville Marriner, Gianandrea Noseda and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. (Alongside these conductors, she has as worked as an orchestral musician with Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Chailly, Mariss Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Sir Antonio Pappano, Andre Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Georg Solti, Yuri Temirkanov and Gunter Wand, amongst many others.) (She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.)