Multi-instrumentalist Malachai Komanoff Bandy is Assistant Professor of Music at Pomona College (founding member of the Claremont Colleges consortium), where he teaches music history courses handling topics related to pre-1750s musical symbolism, esotericism, LGBTQIA+ expression, and rhetoric. He holds a Ph.D. in historical musicology from the USC Thornton School of Music, supported by Provost and Oakley Endowed Fellowships. Previously, Bandy graduated cum laude, with Distinction in Research and Creative Work from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music with double bass and music history degrees. In 2019, he received both the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music’s Irene Alm Memorial Prize and the AMS Pacific Southwest Chapter’s Ingolf Dahl Award in Musicology for his investigations of Dieterich Buxtehude’s mathematical compositional practices in his basso ostinato psalm settings. As a historical string and double-reed player, Bandy has performed with American and European ensembles including The Orpheon Consort, Ars Lyrica Houston, Bach Collegium San Diego, Voices of Music, Musica Angelica, Tesserae, Ciaramella, and as a viola da gamba soloist with the Los Angeles Opera and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. As a TV/Film recording artist, he is also featured on various historical string and wind instruments in the scores to Outlander, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Foundation, The Witcher, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Welcome Home, the Emmy-winning title theme for DaVinci’s Demons, and others. His current scholarly projects concern Christian mysticism, esotericism, and numerology in North-German Baroque repertoires, as well as viola da gamba technique, instrument design, and iconography. Malachai is a founding member and artistic director of the viol ensemble Artifex Consort.