James Jaffe, cello

Cellist James Jaffe lives in San Francisco. He has performed solos with the Stockton Symphony, CityMusic Cleveland, and the National Repertory Orchestra. James has played chamber music in Switzerland and France on concert tours, at the Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar in Manhattan, at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, at a dive bar in Canada, on top of a mountain in Aspen, and once for stranded traffic during a January mudslide on Highway 299. He serves as director of Festival Rolland, a summer chamber music festival in Burgundy, France. He has also served on the faculty of the Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute and the Crowden School’s Chamber Music Workshop.

Fascinated with the necessities and opportunities of live performance under quarantine, James presented a series of eight solo cello livestreams in April 2020 pairing Bach Cello Suites with modern works, such as Khse Buon by Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung, and Peregrinations for Solo Cello by San Francisco composer Kyle Randall. He also played in One Found Sound’s composite video performance of Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together. James’s performances have been broadcast by Cleveland’s WCLV 104.9, Virginia’s WVTF 89.1, San Francisco’s KDFC 90.3, and streamed live from the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.