The music of STEPHEN JAFFE (b. 30th December, 1954, in Washington, D.C.) has been widely performed in the U.S., Europe and Asia by such organizations as the R.A.I. of Rome, the San Francisco and New Jersey Symphonies, the New York New Music Ensemble and Spectrum Concerts Berlin. Featured at the Tanglewood, Monadnock and Music Now! Prague Festivals, Jaffe's music has also been recorded on Bridge, Neuma, CRI, and Albany labels.
Stephen Jaffe received his training in composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George Crumb, George Rochberg, and Richard Wernick, and at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to a PremiPre Medaille from that institution, he has been the recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Prize; fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Tanglewood, and the Guggenheim Foundation; and commissions from the Fromm and Naumberg Foundations, the New Hampshire Symphony, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Citing his "eloquent and original voice", in 1989 Brandeis University awarded him its Creative Arts Citation and in 1991, Jaffe received a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award for his 32 minute First Quartet, written for the Ciompi Quartet.
In a period marked by extremes in musical expression, Jaffe's music is direct and involving without ever being simplistic; emotionally complex but not convoluted. Writing about the composer's Double Sonata in the New York Times, Will Crutchfield remarked that the composer's harmonies were "rich with consonant intervals, although I would not call them neo-Romantic, and they certainly do not sound like any particular music of the past."
Some of the composer's most recent projects include Songs of Turning for soloists, chorus and orchestra for the 1996 Oregon Bach Festival, a Chamber Concerto ("Singing Figures") for oboe and ensemble, and three song cycles involving the poetry of Robert Francis: Four Songs with Ensemble (1989), Fort Juniper Songs (1990) and Pedal Point (1994). In March, 2000, the Greensboro Symphony (North Carolina) under Stuart Malina performed the premiere of the Concerto for Violin, which was written for soloist Nicholas Kitchen.
Jaffe lives in Durham, North Carolina, where he teaches at Duke University and directs the series Encounters: With the Music of Our Time. Also active as a performing musician, Stephen Jaffe's recent repertoire as pianist and conductor has included, (in addition to performances of his own music), Ligeti's Chamber Concerto, Night Thoughts, Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland, Yehudi Wyner's On This Most Voluptuous Night, and Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat.