Selected Alumni Bios

• Andie Springer
   Andie Springer, M.A., Violin Performance, May, 2008
   
  Andie Spring is a passionate and versatile musician. Originally from Alaska, today she is making herself known in the New York music scene. Her strengths range from the nuanced artistry of the classical tradition to the wildly experimental.
  Ms. Springer earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in violin performance at Carnegie Mellon University under the tutelage of Prof. Andres Cardenes, concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony. While at Carnegie Mellon, Springer was named a Carnegie Scholar and inducted into the Andrew Carnegie Society as well as the Pi Kappa Lambda musical honors fraternity.
  While earning a Master of Art in violin performance at NYU Steinhardt with Prof. Arturo Delmoni, Andie performed at the Blue Note jazz club with the NYU Steinhardt in-residence jazz ensemble, Combo Nuvo.  She also led a conductorless performance of Bartok's Divertimento for String Orchestra, co-founded new music ensembles Redshift and TRANSIT, and worked with musicians and composers such as Bang on a Can, Cort Lippe, Todd Reynolds, Eric Lyon and NYU Steinhardt Jazz faculty and long-time Director of the Saturday Night Live Band, Lenny Pickett.
  Ms. Springer's music has taken her across the globe- from touring Alaska and Canada with the Arctic Chamber Orchestra to performing Sarasate's "Navarra" with the Neue Philharmonie in Westfalen, Germany, to playing with rock stars in Lima, Peru. She has performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra, and her playing has been broadcast on stations WQED FM, KUAC FM, and WBGO FM.
• Greg Heffernan
  Greg Heffernan, B.M., Cello Performance, 2005. Since graduating in 2005, Greg has been very successful in building upon contacts and familiarity with New York City to make music performance his full-time profession in New York City. He is a regular recording studio musician, tours constantly, and teaches while finding time to work on his own exciting creative projects.
  

  
  Recently he made two European tours: one with the legendary Lee Konitz Nonet and one with the Paradox Trio. The tour with the Lee Konitz Nonet included travel to the north of France near Reims, then to Zagrab in Croatia, then Milan, and finally London. Greg will be touring Europe again during the summer of 2007 to play at numerous festivals.
  
  Greg is a member, with Grammy-nominated reed player Matt Darriau (of Klezmatics renown), of The Paradox Trio. A recent tour with that group brought Greg to Berne in Switzerland, as well as Vienne in the South of France.
  
  In 2007, Greg will record his own album and play with the Lee Knoitz Nonet at the JVC Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall.

  Also in 2007, along with fellow NYU Alum Natacha Diels, Greg will be playing in an Off-Broadway production of "Betrothed," an original work produced by the Ripetime Theater group (ripetime.org). This is an especially challenging project for Jeff because it will involve use of live manipulation of electronics as well as live cello playing. Jeff developed a "passion" for this during his studies at NYU. Jeff created a technique through which he plays the cello and controls the concomitant electronics with his feet. That technique came to fruition in 2006 when he demonstrated it for Jazz pianist Vijay Iyer. Iyer subsequently hired Jeff to use his technique in "Betrothed"; Iyer is the Musical Director of the new show.

• Dawn Avery
  Dawn Buckholz Avery (M.A. Cello Performance, 1992) Dawn was cellist and vocalist on the 1998 Grammy-nominated album, Breath of Heaven by Grover Washington and has been touring and recording around the world as a soloist and with her critically acclaimed group, CELLOVISION! Along with master percussionists, major newspapers have written that her “engaging style and incredible talent delights and enchants audiences, drawing beautifully sonorous tones and equally different sound effects from her cello while singing with a powerful and mesmerizing style. Dawn successfully combines elements of world, jazz, folk and classical into in a style all her own.”

   

  Dawn has worked professionally with David Darling, Phillip Glass, Sting, John Cage, John Cale, Ornette Coleman, Reza Derakshani, Luciano Pavarotti, Glen Velez, Baba Olatunji, Sussan Deyhim, Charles Wuorinen, Elliott Sharp, Tania Leon (M.A. 1975 NYU, Music Composition), The N. J. Symphony, The New York City Opera and The Soldier String Quartet. Her work as a composer and performer has been featured all over the world including: Lincoln Center Outdoors Festival, Merkin Hall, Gschwendt Musikwinter Festival, Amsterdam Festival,Musicales Visuales, New Music Across America, Montreux and Helsinki Jazz Festivals, Prague, Saalfelden and Banlieu Bleu Festivals, the Shakespeare Project, Knitting Factory Festivals, SohArts Festival, New Directions Cello Festival, the Bottomline, the Bitterend, and throughout NYC. She has recorded on numerous countless labels, movies and radio programs. Awards include: Meet the Composer Grants, ADF Composer Award at Duke University, New Dramatist Theatre Fellowship, NYU New Music Excellence Award, Mu Phi Epsilon Excellence & Scholarship, The Yard Residency, along with hundreds of commissions.