Lysander Jaffe

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Lysander Jaffe is a violinist, violist, vocalist, and composer based in Cambridge, MA. Since graduating Williams College in 2014, he has enjoyed an eclectic freelance career, equally at home in classical music, traditional music, cross-genre projects, and teaching positions. He has performed in venues such as the Kennedy Center, Queen’s College Chapel (Cambridge), and the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, and on national television in Kosovo and Georgia.

Lysander is a violist and Co-Artistic Director of Palaver Strings, a chamber orchestra and nonprofit based in Portland, ME. He is also a founding member of Culomba, a genre-defying vocal quintet based in Boston. A devoted student of traditional music, he has studied with master musicians in Bulgaria, Kosovo, Greece, Corsica, and Georgia. In 2017, he appeared as a soloist with Revels Inc’s Venetian Christmas Celebration at the Sanders Theatre. In 2018, he was awarded an Apprenticeship Grant in Traditional Arts from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to support his studies of the unique violin tradition of Epirus, Greece. In 2020, he completed his Masters in Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory, where he studied styles ranging from free improvisation to Hindustani music with Warren Senders, Joe Morris, and many others.

As a teacher, Lysander is passionate about broadening the cultural horizons of students of all backgrounds. He has been on faculty for Village Harmony since 2013, where he teaches polyphonic singing styles from the Balkans and Mediterranean, and he has toured internationally with its affiliate ensemble Northern Harmony. Lysander is a Co-Director of SingPositive, an intergenerational community choir in Jamaica Plain, MA, and he teaches weekly singing workshops on Balkan, Georgian, and Corsican music.