EMILY YAFFE

Director

Emily Yaffe, a native of West Hartford, CT, USA, 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. From 2005-2008, Emily studied Baroque viola with David Plantier at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. She completed the Fortbildungsstudium there with an Abschlusskonzert in June 2008.

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 appeared in a variety of orchestra and chamber music concerts.

Between the years of 2002 and 2005, Emily 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. She was also the viola teacher at the Hartwick College Summer Music Festival and Institute in the summer of 2005 and the viola teacher for the inaugural season of the David Einfeldt Chamber Music Seminar at the Hartt School in August 2008. Emily completed teacher training courses with Teri Einfeldt, Linda Fiore, Stephanie Sandven, and Roberta Guaspari. Emily has been a viola instructor at the New York Summer Music Festival and a clinician at the Hartt Suzuki Institute since 2006. Emily was a viola instructor at the New York Summer Music Festival and the Hartt Suzuki Institute from 2006-2011.

Emily maintains a violin and viola studio at the International Community Music School in Basel, Switzerland, which she founded in 2011. Since 2007, she has been a member of the Barockorchester Capriccio, which performs regularly in the Basel region and throughout Switzerland.