Marni Loffman (they/them/theirs) is a community-driven composer. vocalist, ritualist and educator. Marni is passionate about using music to hold complexity and contradiction, to cultivate joy, and to make space for emotion. Marni facilitates music, contemplative practice, and deep learning in various synagogue and grassroots communities. They hold an MA in Peacebuilding from Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, where they studied tools such as spiritual leadership, abolitionist and alternative community justice practices, dialogue, mediation, conflict intervention, trauma-informed care and interfaith, international community building. Marni released their debut album, the long short path, in August of 2023. The music weaves together the sounds of a multi-denominational Jewish American religious upbringing, of ashkenazi ancestry, and of cultural influences growing up in the United States. Combining rabbinic and liturgical poetry and prose with original lyrics, the work draws on jewish liturgical nusach as well as American folk and pop genres. The album focuses on experiences of journeying, change and transition, as it is composed from a place of eternal wandering and continual arrival, from the paradox of belief, from desiring “traditional” sounds and also yearning for relevance, familiarity and meaning, from recognizing a kernel of truth everywhere but also knowing that no place contains the full picture.