• Greg Hesselink cello

    Greg Hesselink, cello


    Cellist Greg Hesselink received his training at the Eastman School of Music and SUNY Stony Brook after spending his high school years at the Interlochen Arts Academy. His primary teachers were Steven Doane, Timothy Eddy and Crispin Campbell, as well as spending summers working with Janos Starker, Aldo Parisot, Orlando Cole and others. An early interest in chamber music led to studies with members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Alban Berg, Tokyo, Prague, Bartok and Orion String Quartets, the Beaux Arts and New Arts Trios, Gil Kalish, Julius Levine and Jan DeGaetani. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence, Princeton, Ithaca College as a sabbatical replacement (2019-20) and is currently also on the faculty at Mannes prep.

    More than 25 years in NYC has led Hesselink to an eclectic musical life. He won the Naumburg Chamber Music Award with the New Millennium Ensemble, and is a member of the Locrian Chamber Players, The League of Composers Orchestra, and is principal cello of the Riverside Symphony. He is also a former member of the Manhattan Sinfonietta, Argento, New York Philomusica, the Bang on a Can Orchestra and Newband (former caretakers of the Harry Partch instrument collection), as well as performing with many of New York's established ensembles including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Talea, Da Capo, Speculum Musicae, New York New Music Ensemble, the Flux Quartet, and with the dance companies of Cedar Lake, Mark Morris, Merce Cunningham and Nai Ni Chen. He has performed at venues including the Lincoln Center Chamber Society, the halls at Carnegie, the Library of Congress, the National Cathedral, Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Spoleto (Italy), Klasik Keyifler (Turkey), Salihara (Indonesia) and others throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

    Hesselink has an extensive background with contemporary music. He has premiered more than 150 works including concertos by James Tenney (on the tenor violin), David Lang, Ross Bauer and Daniel Weymouth, as well as being heard on more than 30 CDs/recordings. Consider if interested in contemporary music, would like help with extended techniques, rhythmic challenges or approaching music that is in an unfamiliar language. Well versed in different tuning systems including equal temperament, various microtonal approaches and ratio based tuning.

    Hesselink also has a history of working with amateurs at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, as well as with the Manhattan String Quartet during one-day seminars in NYC and at Kent music in the summer.