Geoffrey Loff
Coach/Accompanist Geoffrey Loff had an ear for music from an early age,excelling on both violin and piano. At 13, he was taken under tutelage of renowned pedagogue and musicologist Professor Frank Cooper. In 2006, at age 16, Mr. Loff was awarded the Bertha Foster Scholarship at the University of Miami (UM) Frost School of Music, where he graduated with his Master’s Degree in Collaborative Piano and held the teaching assistantship as the staff pianist under Prof. Alan Johnson for the Frost Opera Theatre Company. In Summer 2008, Geoffrey was invited to the International Miami Piano Festival in Lecce, Italy, where he was hailed by Italian newspaper La Repubblica as “[one of the] Two American Stars of the Miami Festival.” He was later commissioned by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation to compose and perform a piano trio at the 70th anniversary memorial of Kristallnacht at the Miami Beach Holocaust Museum. During UM’s Wall-to-Wall Opera Festival, his playing was hailed as having “[…] splendid articulation and nuanced subtlety.”
In January 2011, Geoffrey continued his studies with the opera department; he performed an all Libby Larsen concert, featuring his arrangement of her opera Frankenstein for two pianos, where Libby Larsen personally lauded him “the man with the flying fingers.” Shortly thereafter he was sent to the Center for Contemporary Opera to perform Frankenstein, followed by a concert at the Bonnet House Museum and Gardens in Miami, encompassing various works by Godowsky and Britten. In May 2011, Mr. Loff played two recitals for the Chopin Foundation’s Free Artist Series, featuring the seldom-heard Sergei Rachmaninoff transcription of Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from his Midsummer Night’s Dream and Franz Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Ouverture. In March 2012, he performed his master’s recital, which included the Liszt transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, to overwhelming enthusiasm and praise. He is a recurring performer at the Mainly Mozart Festival, having had his sixth appearance in the festival in April 2012. The following June he took part in a month-long workshop at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, which culminated in Geoffrey’s accompanying a full recital of Rachmaninoff songs in addition to his work as the chorusmaster for the opera Aleko.
In October 2012, Mr. Loff began his tenure as music director and performance pianist for the Atlanta Opera’s community outreach opera. In 2013 he participated in the South Florida Friends of Classical Music Series, performing a Mozart piano concerto as arranged by Geoff for string quartet and piano. In May 2013, he was a staff artist for the John Duffy Institute of Modern Opera in Norfolk, Virginia. The following July, Mr. Loff was a young artist at Opera North in New Hampshire, where he cover-conducted Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Geoffrey worked as a coach and accompanist with Minnesota Opera during the 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 seasons. Most recently, Mr. Loff’s summer entailed staff positions at the John Duffy Modern Opera Institute and the Janiec Opera Company as part of the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina.
