About Avery

Performing with Drifting East

A graduate of the Juilliard School and Oberlin Conservatory, cellist Avery Waite is an active performer, teacher and international music education advocate based in Portland, Oregon. He is a recipient of a 2016-2017 Fulbright-Nehru Research Grant to study and perform Hindustani music in India. Avery is involved in a wide range of education programs, social justice initiatives, and cultural diplomacy projects and has taught and consulted overseas at music programs in the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, Central America and the Caribbean.

Teaching in El Salvador

In his current role as project leader for MusAid, a music education non-profit organization, he works to support music programs in countries emerging from poverty and conflict by coordinating volunteer teaching workshops and instrument donations. Avery is also on faculty with American Voices, a US state department sponsored organization at the forefront of cultural diplomacy and cross-cultural engagement. As a teacher with American Voices, Avery has led classical chamber music and orchestral workshops in Turkmenistan, Lebanon and Iraq. From 2012-2013, he was based in Kabul Afghanistan, teaching at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and was a co-director of the widely acclaimed Afghan Youth Orchestra’s tour to the USA.

Performing with YES Academy Lebanon

As a concert cellist, chamber musician and orchestral player, Avery has appeared at Avery Fisher Hall, The Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall and has performed solo in concert halls around the world. Avery is also an active composer and arranger. Inspired and moved by his experiences teaching and performing abroad, he has done extensive arranging of Indo-Afghan, Central Asian and Kurdish folk music. Avery performs this music with his ensemble Drifting East and the group recently released its debut album entitled "Songs and Melodies of Afghanistan."