Cheryl Everill began her own cello studies at age 9 (after 4 years of piano instruction at Settlement Music School) with Douglas Graves. When he went on to teach at Marquette University, she continued at the New School of Music with Metta Watts and Orlando Cole. She graduated cum laude from the Philadelphia Musical Academy which she attended as a scholarship student in the studio of Elsa Hilger. She also went to the summer Charles Castleman String Quartet Program on scholarship. Her chamber music coaches have included Charlie Castleman, Heidi Castleman, Jani Szanto, Karen Tuttle, and masterclasses with Joseph Gingold.
Cheryl Everill has been giving cello lessons in the South Jersey area for many years, teaching students from Pennsville to Burlington, the Philadelphia area and Delaware. She taught for many years at both Settlement Music School and at Wilmington Music School before devoting her time to teaching at her home studio. Many of her students have gone on to include music in their careers, as cello performers or music teachers themselves. They have played as soloists with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Delaware Symphony, the Philadelphia Doctor's Orchestra, and as ensemble members with numerous area symphony orchestras, pit orchestras and as backup for pops artists. Her students have attended such well-known summer programs as Tanglewood, The Castleman Quartet Program, Lucerne Music Festival, etc. As students, they consistently place well in their school orchestras, regional orchestras and extracurricular musical activities.
Mrs. Everill performs regularly as a contracted member of the Delaware Symphony orchestra, with which she has performed at Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, and on the Latin-Grammy nominated recording, "Interludes". She has played principal cello in Haddonfield Symphony (now Symphony in C) and as a guest principal with Allentown , Newark and Delaware County Symphonies. She has performed as a soloist with both the Newark and Delaware County Symphonies, performing the Brahms Double Concerto and the Beethoven Triple Concerto. She has performed solos at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and in Rome, Italy as a guest of the USIS with the group "The Visual Music Ensemble". Her cello playing can be heard on artist Colleen McFarland’s CD “Three Miles from Odessa” and in the independent film by Richard Hoffmann, “Invisible Mountains”. She has had the privilege to play with some of the pops greats such as Benny Goodman (playing an introductory duo with him to "Begin the Beguine" - great fun!!), Debbie Reynolds, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, as well as the classical scene's soloists, such as Itzakh Perlman, Isaac Stern, Mtsislav Rostropovitch, Lynn Harrell, Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, Pincas Zuckerman, Sharon Robinson, etc. She has conducted master classes in chamber music and cello at Appel Farm, Settlement Music School Summer Camps and for the Institute for Arts and Humanities in Education at Rowan College. Her quartet, Vivace, has been heard in concert in many venues around the Philadelphia area. In 2013 Mrs. Everill had the great honor of being nominated and inducted as a member of the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, the oldest continuing musical organization in the country devoted to promoting musical performance in the region. Mrs. Everill feels that her love of playing the cello and her involvement as a performer is an integral part of her role as a teacher of the instrument.
