Merry Peckham

Cellist Merry Peckham is a dedicated performing artist and longtime educator who has developed a host of accomplished performers.

As a founding member of the Cavani String Quartet (a position she held for more than three deacades), Peckham performed thousands of concerts in the U.S. and abroad. Among the honors she has received are 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. Peckham won the overall string category as well as the cello division of the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition.

Peckham is chair of chamber music at the New England Conservatory of Music, associate director for the Perlman Music Program, and director of the Perlman program’s Chamber Music Workshop. Formerly coordinator of string chamber music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music (2005-17), she also served as the cellist of the Elysian Piano Trio. From 2004 to 2016, she hosted the FM radio show Offbeat.

She received her Bachelor of Music from Indiana University and her Master of Music from the Eastman School of Music. She pursued additional studies at Yale and Ohio State. Peckham’s teachers and mentors include János Starker, Aldo Parisot (Juilliard faculty 1988-2003), Gary Hoffman, Paul Katz, Peter Salaff, and Toby Perlman (BS ’65, violin).