Merry Peckham
CELLO
Chamber Music Workshop, Director and Coach
Summer Music School, Associate Director
Winter Residency in Sarasota, Director of Chamber Music
Israel Residency, Director of Chamber Music
Cellist Merry Peckham is a dedicated performing artist and a longtime educator who has developed a host of accomplished performers. Currently she is Assistant Dean and Director of Chamber Music at the Juilliard School of Music as well as Director of the Chamber Music Workshop and Associate Director at the Perlman Music Program.
As a founding member of the Cavani String Quartet (a position she held for 32 years) Peckham was honored with a Naumburg Chamber Music Award, Musical America’s Young Artists of the Year Award, and the ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. With the quartet, she has performed thousands of concerts in the United States and abroad, was awarded the State of Ohio Governor’s Prize, and twice won the Guarneri String Quartet Residency Award. Peckham won the overall string category as well as the cello division of the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition.
A devoted teacher and deeply committed to arts education, Peckham has given masterclasses and lecture-demonstrations at music festivals, universities, and public and private schools in communities all over the world. As part of a cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program and music training institutions abroad, Peckham has taught and given special classes at the Shanghai Conservatory, the Jerusalem Music Center, and the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv. She can be heard on recordings issued by Azica, Pantheon, New World, Albany, Gasparo, DFA, and Carlton Classics record labels. From 2004–2016 she hosted "Offbeat," an insightful, sometimes irreverent radio program on WCLV 104.9, Cleveland’s classical music station.
Prior to joining the faculty at Juilliard, Peckham held long-term positions at the New England Conservatory of Music (Chair of Chamber Music and faculty), the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Coordinator and Teacher of Chamber Music), as well as being an Artist-in-Residence and faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music. From 2005–2017 she was the cellist of the Elysian Piano Trio, ensemble-in-residence at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. She is an Artist Advocate for the National String Project Consortium and is former artist-in-residence at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale.
Peckham earned a bachelor of music degree from Indiana University and a master of music from the Eastman School of Music. She pursued additional studies at Yale University and Ohio State University. Her teachers and mentors have included Janos Starker, Aldo Parisot, Gary Hoffman, Paul Katz, Peter Salaff, and Toby Perlman. Peckham resides in New York city and drives a red Honda.