EMILY YAFFE
Viola

Juilliard School, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis

Violist Emily Yaffe, a native of West Hartford, Connecticut, began her music studies as a Suzuki violin student of Teri Einfeldt in the Hartt School Community Division at the age of seven.

When she was 14, she began viola study and continued her education under the direction of Victoria Chiang, Mitchell Stern and Katherine Murdock at Hartt. Emily earned the Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School in May 2002, where she was a student of Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Hsin-Yun Huang.

In 1998, Emily was selected to be one of the first recipients of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s New Horizons Fellowship. She spent three summers there as a member of the Aspen Festival Orchestra. During the summers of 2003 and 2004, Emily was a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, where she performed in a variety of orchestra and chamber music concerts.

In August 2005, Emily performed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a member of the World Youth Orchestra, an orchestra of musicians from around the world which was created by NHK (the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation) to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings.

Emily has also performed with the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique on their tour of France and Belgium in November 2005, and with l’Académie Mozart Européenne at the Opéra Théâtre de Besançon.

Between the years of 2002 and 2005, she was on the viola and violin faculties of the Hartt School Community Division, the Opus 118-Harlem School of Music, and the Lucy Moses School. Emily was also the viola teacher at the Hartwick College Summer Music Festival and Institute in the summer of 2005.

Emily is currently studying Baroque viola with David Plantier at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. She performs with orchestras in the Basel region including the Cantus Firmus Barockorchester, the Stadttheater Sursee Orchester, and the Barockorchester Capriccio Basel.