Buffi Jacobs

Buffi Jacobs is a professional cellist, arranger, composer, and music contractor based in NYC.  Currently, she serves as the cellist on the Hamilton National Tour (Philip Tour, LLC).  Buffi has also been a long-standing performing, touring, and recording member of The Polyphonic Spree. Since 2002, she has recorded with indie rock notables such as Elle King, Daniel Hart, Dark Rooms, Nicole Atkins, Sarah Jaffe, Bill Callahan, John Grant, Maggie Koerner, The Baptist Generals, Anna Calvi, The Swans, and Explosions in the Sky to name a few. Jacobs has also contributed cello tracks to recent film and televisions scores “The Old Man and The Gun,” “Ghost Story,” “The Exorcist” (2016), and “Visioneers.” Most recently, her string arrangements, cello performance, and contracting skills were featured on Elle King’s album “Shake The Spirit” and The Night Owls’s “We are the Night Owls.”

Jacobs began the cello at the age of 11 in Columbia, South Carolina, and she’s had the privilege of studying with notable professors Dr. Robert Jesselson, Martha Gerschefski, Walter Gray, Tony Cooke, Roger Lebow, Debbie Brooks, and Eugene Osadchy. She earned her BM in Cello Performance from The University of South Carolina and her MM in Cello Performance from The University of North Texas. During her undergraduate study, she began jazz and improvisation work with Bert Ligon, which led to her interest in studying and performing in all styles of music. Since then, Jacobs has become a genre-defying artist aptly equipped to achieve the ever changing expectations and demands of a string musician.

Her journey to arranging and composing came later after years of requests to compose string arrangements for recording sessions and performances. Arranging turned to composition when Jacobs was asked to compose for a few short films, one full length feature, and several commercials. She fell in love with composition and began a contemporary rock orchestra “Anaphase” that would perform works of local composers along with visual accompaniment from dancers, projection mapping, and film. Buffi started studying composition with Rob Frank of Southern Methodist University and recently has been pursuing a film scoring certificate at Berklee College of Music, which is scheduled to be completed in June of 2020. Most Recently, she was accepted into the 2020 ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop at Columbia University where she will continue her studies in composition, orchestration, and film scoring.