Wild Iris Rebecca Scout Nelson

• 1 Eternal Source of Light Divine 02:52
• 2 Wild Iris I 02:27
• 3 Shine 03:45
• 4 Home 03:46
• 5 Soft as the Moon 04:04
• 6 Sonata à 3 03:57
• 7 Wild Iris II 01:22
• 8 Christabel 05:44
• 9 Darkness 00:58
• 10 Sweet Persephone 02:41
• 11 Fantasy 01:56
• 12 Look at Miss Ohio 02:57
• 13 Rooster 01:55
• 14 Wild Iris III 03:46
• Total Runtime 42:10

Info for Wild Iris

Rebecca Scout Nelson release "Wild Iris", which expands her distinctive musical world, building on the folk-Baroque sound of her acclaimed debut, Do Not Lament, with a seamless combination of Baroque and contemporary indie folk. The result is a perfectly natural and harmonious whole that spans several centuries of inspiration and instrumental technique, including a dash of bluegrass and radio hits from Nelson’s childhood (Nov 6). Most of the material on the album was written and/or arranged by Nelson herself, the exception being two songs written by album cellist and vocalist Cullen Coty O’Neil, who also has two arranger credits; one lyric adapted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge; a cover of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’s classic Americana song “Look at Miss Ohio”; and works by Handel and Telemann in Nelson’s arrangements.

Nelson’s debut album, 2023’s Do Not Lament, told a powerfully personal story of love, loss, and grief following the tragic death of her younger sister. Interspersing original songs and instrumentals with her own arrangements of music by Purcell and others, the album embraced a range of musical styles to trace a narrative arc following grief’s slow trajectory from despair to hope. The subject of Wild Iris might be seen as taking up the story where Do Not Lament left off. Nelson comments:

“There was a magical moment when I was working on the album when I realized the theme that tied it all together. I had been working on a cantata called Eurydice and during that project I meditated a lot on the afterlife. Meanwhile, I’d also really come to love this poem called ‘The Wild Iris’ by Louise Glück. In general, the idea of thresholds or doors that we need to step through to enter new phases of the unknown was something I was trying to grapple with and develop more of a bravery for. Compared to my first album that really allows pain and joy to intersect, I feel that this album is really a celebration of death, and it probably all comes back to the loss of my sister. This is the permission I’ve given myself to write her afterlife story as one of the most epic and beautiful tales yet to be told, because all we want to feel at the end of the day is that the people we’ve lost are OK or even better than OK – they are somewhere so amazing that we cannot even understand. Do Not Lament was for the living – those of us who stayed behind. Wild Iris is what the dead wish we knew.”

Rebecca Scout Nelson, vocals, violin
Rafa Prendergast, violin
Nelli Jabotinsky, violin
Manami Mizumoto, violin, viola
Matt Zucker, viola da gamba
Philip Nelson, double bass
Nico Abondolo, double bass
Cameron Welke, guitar, baroque guitar, lute, theorbo, electric guitar
Nicola Canzano, organ
Cullen Coty O’Neil, cello, vocals
Richie Hawley, vocals, 2nd organ, percussion

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 48kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

Rebecca Scout Nelson
is a songwriter and violinist from Gera, Germany. Born into a family of classical musicians, she began playing violin at age four and grew up on a healthy diet of Bach, Phil Collins, and Gillian Welch. After earning her Bachelor’s degree at Rice University and a Master’s at the University of Oklahoma, Rebecca diverged from her classical violin training and dove headfirst into the world of Historical Performance.

It was through this new love of Baroque music—and her longstanding love of folk and bluegrass—that Rebecca began to find her voice as a songwriter and composer. Since graduating from The Juilliard School’s Historical Performance program, she has performed with and helped found adventurous new ensembles including Nuova Pratica and Relic.

Her debut album, Do Not Lament, released in 2023, introduced a musical language that drew freely from the worlds that had shaped her. Her forthcoming album, Wild Iris, expands that distinctive sound, weaving the intimacy of American folk with the colors, instruments, and expressive language of Baroque and early music. Building on the folk-Baroque world of Do Not Lament, Rebecca brings together her evocative voice, deeply personal songwriting, and an ensemble of historical and modern instruments to create music that feels at once ancient and strikingly contemporary.

Atmospheric and resistant to easy categorization, Wild Iris is rooted in tradition without being constrained by it, moving naturally between early music, Americana, and contemporary indie folk. The album will be released in Fall 2026.

Booklet for Wild Iris