 | biography A native of Marin County, California, Heather began playing the violin at the age of four. She has studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Zaven Melikian and subsequently with Eva Gruesser and with Marylou Speaker Churchill at the New England Conservatory of Music. Heather also participated in the program of the Music Academy of the West where she won a scholarship during the summer of 1998, studying in the studio of Kathleen Winkler. She has played in masterclasses with Josef Gingold, Franco Gulli and Isaac Stern, part of whose class was featured in a documentary produced by NBC’s “Today Show.” |
In 1999, Heather received
the Harvard Musical Association Achievement Award and an ARTS Award from the National
Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.
Her former piano trio “T3” was a prize winner in the same year at
the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition Junior Division, performing
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio. Heather
has also received first prizes in both the 1998 New England String Ensemble
Youth Concerto Competition and the 1998 Gordon Symphony Orchestra Concerto
Competition performing as a soloist with both orchestras. Along with these orchestras, she has
performed as a soloist with the Phillips Exeter Academy Chamber Orchestra, the
Marin Music Conservatory Orchestra and the Marin Symphony Orchestra. In the spring of 1999, Heather released
an album of works for solo violin accompanied by pianist, Joy Cline of Boston.
While
studying at the New England Conservatory of Music,
Heather also enjoyed playing, performing and touring with the Youth
Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of conductor Benjamin Zander. She travelled with the symphony on sponsored tours to Brazil, Mexico
and Cuba in 1997 and 1999, served as co-concertmistress in 1999, and participated in their recordings of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony
and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.
In 2004, Heather received her B.A. Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Social Studies. She currently lives in Sacramento, California and maintains an active teaching studio in Davis. She frequently performs both as the violinist of the Pissarro String Duo and a with several local symphonies. Heather plays on an 1865 J.B. Vuillaume violin.
