Background & Offerings

A native of Philadelphia, violinist Gabriel Schaff hails from a musical family. His mother was the acclaimed composer and musicologist Claire Polin, and an earlier musical ancestor was the 19th century Russian composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein. Mr. Schaff studied violin at Philadelphia's New School of Music before moving to New York City as a scholarship student of Erick Friedman at the Manhattan School of Music, later serving as his teaching assistant.

Mr. Schaff has performed with many professional ensembles in the New York area and is a recognized teacher and lecturer on the secondary and college levels. He is co-director of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic’s Music Mentoring Program which provides intensive coachings, lessons, and artistic guidance to the most talented high school students in the region. As artistic director of the non-profit Englewood Chamber Players, he devises and performs interactive and historical concerts for diverse communities. Current programs include a retrospective of European and American women composers in celebration of the centennial of the 19th Amendment, and lectures and recitals on the music of Beethoven commemorating his 250th anniversary year. An evolving branch of the Englewood Chamber Players is focused on instrument loans to emerging artists. To date, several artists have concertized and released commercial recordings using instruments from the collection.

Mr. Schaff is an internationally recognized author of books and articles pertaining to the history of the violin family and the music written for it, most notably “The Essential Guide to Bows of the Violin Family” and “Rediscovering Haydn’s Three Original Violin Sonatas”. He has presented lectures on these and other topics at Oberlin College, the Shanghai Conservatory, and Rutgers University. He is a lecturer in the Humanities division at Essex County College, specializing in a course entitled “Music in Society”.