Robert (Chip) Everts

1978 -

Chip Everts, violinist and violist, is director of the string programs at Forest Lake Educational Center and Forest Lake Academy in Florida, positions he has held since 2000. He is an active performer in Orlando area orchestras and regularly travels to Seventh-day Adventist music festivals as an orchestra and string clinician. He traveled to Ireland with the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park as an orchestra member in 2006.

Chip was born in Douglasville, Georgia, and raised in Richmond, Virginia, and Spartanburg, South Carolina. When he was five years old, he told his parents he wanted to learn to play the violin. They enrolled him in a Suzuki string program and his mother, an amateur pianist, became the model Suzuki parent, attending his lessons and closely monitoring his practice.

As he continued his lessons, Chip benefited from several excellent teachers, including Hong-Gang Lee, a member of the Shanghai String Quartet. He was principal second violin in the Paul M. Dorman public high school, a large school with an excellent symphony orchestra that toured internationally. In his sophomore year he switched to viola, becoming principal player in that section.

While still in high school, Everts also played in the Spartanburg Philharmonic and Converse College Sinfonietta and frequently participated in recitals and competitions. He was accepted into and participated in the summer programs at the highly regarded South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and the Brevard Music Center in Brevard.

At the end of his senior year, following trips to England and France and a personal invitation from Orlo Gilbert, orchestra director at Southern Adventist College, now University, Evert decided to pursue a music career. He entered SAC in the fall of 1996, where he majored in viola performance, studying with Charles Griffin, formerly of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and graduated in 2000.

In December 2000, he married Wendy Yawn, a soprano/voice and nursing graduate of SAU who had been accepted into The Juilliard School of Music. They have two children, Jakob and Madelyn.

ds/2009

Source: Information provided by Robert Chip Everts, 25 January 2009.