Herine Coetzee Koschak
Herine Coetzee Koschak, Principal Cello, Community Outreach Coordinator
Cellist Herine Coetzee Koschak is on a lifelong quest to engage in meaningful and personal exchanges through music. Herine was the cellist of the acclaimed Fifth House Ensemble (5HE), co-founding the group in 2005 and performing for its duration until 2022. With 5HE, she performed on local and national concert series including the Grand Teton Music Festival, Crested Butte Music Festival, the Ravinia Festival, and the Eastman School of Music, as well as on the Cedille, Naxos, Tzadik and Materia Collective record labels.
“It is a passion and a privilege to guide students as they learn to express themselves through this amazing instrument, the cello. My own journey began at age five, and I feel so fortunate to have had teachers who deeply respected my musical voice and pushed me to work hard. Above all, they taught me to become my own teacher — to think analytically and solve problems creatively, in service of communicating some of the most beautiful music ever written to a world that desperately needs to be reminded of and healed by that beauty.
I embraced the Suzuki approach not as a student but as a teacher, and it now forms the backbone of my work with beginning students. What I love most about teaching students of all ages is getting to know the individual – seeing where a person is in life and in cello, and figuring out how to inspire them. Studying the cello cultivates a life rich in sensitivity, abstract thought, imagination, problem solving, and the appreciation of beauty and nuance. These are things our society craves and it’s an honor to think about them for a living and to participate in the process of developing them.”