Misha Vayman is a professional violinist, educator, and dog lover. He has performed in a wide variety of contexts, from opening for Dorian Electra to soloing with various orchestras in the United States, Mexico, Russia, and China. In 2023, he joined the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. 

With his genre hopping band Astral Mixtape, Misha has been featured at a variety of venues across Los Angeles and at multiple international music festivals, most recently in residence at the BANFF Centre for the Arts. Mixtape’s most recent releases are an hour long music video titled “Astral Plains” (audio now available on all streaming platforms), a phantasmagoric and smoky journey through different planes of consciousness, and a “Live at Banff” EP video, featuring all new music performed live in July 2022. In 2023, Astral Mixtape won the Astral Artists National Competition and joined the Astral Artists roster. 

Misha is a part of Delirium Musicum, an award winning, dynamic chamber orchestra known to bend time and space to their will, with no regard for anyone’s safety. He is prominently featured in many rehearsal outtakes, “keeping it light”. The orchestra released an album in April 2023 on the Warner Classics label. 

He has twice won the Grand Prize in the international ENKOR Competition, once in the Solo division, and once in the Chamber Music division with the Benefic Piano Trio. In June of 2022, the trio released an album of works by composer Daniel Carr on the MSR Classics label.  

As a recording artist, he has appeared on tracks by Plini, String Theory, Jamie Drake, Ryan Dilmore and Porter Robinson, among others.

In teaching, Misha loves seeing his students improve, as well as regularly and mercilessly roasting them. Be it as faculty at numerous summer workshops throughout the US, or as a guest artist giving masterclasses at universities, the roasting truly never stops. Despite, or perhaps because of the constant violinistic rigor that Misha imposes, Misha’s students have been admitted to collegiate programs, such as the UK Guildhall School of Music, have won competitions, been in internationally recognized leadership programs, and have appeared in a variety of commercials and music videos.

Misha is a graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music. Previously he attended the Colburn Conservatory, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. A lot of practice was done at all three, and now he’s good, and doesn’t need to practice at all.