About Paul Jacobs -
SOME RECENT PRESS RELEASES:
"CLASSICAL MUSIC'S KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR: It's
not often you see a classical organist being asked for autographs, at
least not since the glory days of E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox, but
there was Paul Jacobs signing programs for a long line of fans after his
recital...Phenomenal keyboard technique...a spectacular rendition...a
sublime sense of restraint...It felt like a masterpiece in Jacob's
playing." (St. Petersburg Times, FL)
VIRGIL FOX REINCARNATED? "Good news! The spirit of the legendary American
organ virtuoso Virgil Fox has returned in the person of the impressively
talented and impossibly young Paul Jacobs....His performance--quirky,
headstrong, and immensely musical--brought to life the heritage of Fox,
who convinced several generations of Americans that nothing is more
exciting than organ literature played with technical command and
artistic flair....The encore, a favorite of Fox's audiences, was Bach's
Fugue in D Major, played with all the reckless abandon and lavish
sonorities of the master, who would have been both pleased and envious."
(Herald Tribune, Sarasota FL)
VIRGIL FOX AND E. POWER BIGGS REINCARNATED?: "There must be
thousands of organs in the United
States. But be honest: Can you name any organists? One young player,
28-year-old Paul Jacobs, is working to bring the instrument out of the
choir loft and into the mainstream. He's made a meteoric rise on the
concert scene over the past five years and is already head of the organ
department at The Juilliard School...Jacobs does have a couple of
important 20th-century forebears in proselytizing the joys of organ
music. E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox were larger-than-life personalities
who played with flair and showmanship. Their legacies live on through
recordings and fan clubs. But no one has come close to matching them in
terms of rank - until Jacobs." (Times Union, Albany NY)
Paul Jacobs was appointed to the faculty of the Juilliard School in
New York in 2003 at the age of 26 - one of the youngest ever to join
that faculty - after completion of graduate studies at Yale University,
He is also a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Paul Jacobs came to national attention as a concert organist in 2000
when he twice performed the complete organ works of J.S. Bach in
14 consecutive evenings, in New York
City and Philadelphia. Later in the year he trumped that
achievement by performing the complete works again in a
spectacular 18-hour non-stop marathon in Pittsburgh. In 2002 he
performed the complete organ works of Messiaen in a series of one-
day marathons in six American cities: Chicago, Washington DC,
Atlanta, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Seattle, and in 2004 he
repeated the one-day Messiaen Marathon in New York City. In 2000
he was a featured performer for the national convention of the
American Guild of Organists in Seattle, and he was the featured
artist for the national AGO convention in Los Angeles in 2004. He
has performed throughout North America as well as in South
America, Australia, and in Europe.
He has won a number of national
organ performance competitions and is the first organist ever to be
honored with the Harvard Musical Association's prestigious Arthur
W. Foote Memorial Award. At Yale University , he was awarded the
School of Music's Horatio Parker Memorial Award, the Philip Francis
Nelson Prize, the Dean's Prize, and the Faculty Prize of the Institute
of Sacred Music. Paul Jacobs has been hailed by the Chicago
Tribune as "one of the most supremely gifted young organists of his
generation," as "the next great American organist" by the South
Florida Sun-Sentinel, and as a "phenomenally gifted and intelligent young
artist" by The Diapason.
Paul Jacobs began studying the piano at age 6 and the organ at age 13.
By age 15 he was appointed head organist of a parish of 3,500 families
in his hometown of Washington, PA, continuing his organ studies with
George Rau and his piano studies with Susan Woodard. He received a
full scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia, with John Weaver (organ) and Lionel Party (harpsichord),
and subsequently earned the Master of Music and Artist Diploma from
Yale University, studying organ there with Thomas Murray, who,
concidentally, played here in Jackson in March at the First Baptist
Church, providing us a teacher-pupil recital series this spring!
Paul Jacobs is managed by Philip Truckenbrod Concert Artists