Xander Abbe

Originally from McLean, Virginia, Xander Abbe has been a violinist since the age of five, and graduated with a B.A. in music from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.   His principal teachers included Sally Thomas, Jody Gatwood, and Gerald Fischbach. He is also a member of the first violin section in the Monterey Symphony and the Santa Cruz Symphony.  Previously, he served as concertmaster of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, with which he performed the violin solo in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” and he toured nine cities in China with New York’s Park Avenue Chamber Symphony. He is an avid player of string quartets, having participated in chamber music workshops in Budapest, Salzburg, Paris, and Bennington, Vermont. He lives in San Jose with his husband Murray and their four cats.

Favorite composer

Franz Schubert. His string quartets are epic.