ABOUT
Canadian/American soprano Jardena Gertler-Jaffe has been praised for her genuine and intelligent performance, and her creativity on and off the stage.
Photo by Micah Gleason
Jardena enjoys contributing to the classical music landscape in many ways, through workshopping and premiering contemporary music, researching and writing (ethno)musicological scholarship, championing artistic agency, and curating, producing, and singing imaginative performances.
Jardena's recent work includes singing the roles of Krystyna Zywulska in Jake Heggie’s opera Two Remain, Marzelline in Beethoven’s Fidelio, a recital inspired by the life of Alma Mahler with mentor/collaborator Erika Switzer, and workshopping the role of Thea in Danika Loren’s Hedda. Highlights of her career so far have included performing the Canadian premiere of Alex Weiser’s Pulitzer-nominated set and all the days were purple, and making the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Five Songs from Anna Berkowitz, works that also align with her love of and interest in Yiddish language and culture.
Jardena studies with mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens. She holds music degrees from the Bard College Conservatory (MM) and the University of Toronto (BMus). Jardena is an alumna of Bard Summerscape and Sarasota Opera’s Apprenticeships, the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, and the Association for Opera in Canada Emerging Artist Fellowship.
A performer/scholar, Jardena is a PhD student in Music Performance and Composition at New York University, and also earned her M.A. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto. Jardena has been on the staff of art song champion organization Sparks & Wiry Cries since 2020. Jardena is creator and curator of Our Singing Bodies, an ongoing artistic project that treats the singer’s body as the site for the negotiation of power and identity.