Paul Jacobs, organist - in Recital April 17, 2009

Paul Jacobs, widely acknowledged for reinvigorating the U.S. organ scene with a fresh performance style and “an unbridled joy of musicmaking” (Baltimore Sun) will perform at Holy Rosary Cathedral on Friday, April 17, at 8 p.m. A highlight of his program of works by Felix Mendelssohn, Louis Vierne, Leo Sowerby, and Franz Liszt, is the Canadian premiere of an unpublished Prelude and Fugue by Samuel Barber. Before Mr. Jacobs reintroduced the Barber work in Philadelphia this past fall, it had been performed just once—in 1928—by organist Carl Weinrich. The work was recovered by music historian Barbara B. Heyman at the Library of Congress in 1984 as part of the research for her award-winning biography Samuel Barber: The Composer and his Music.
Mr. Jacobs, the 32-year-old chairman of the organ department of New York’s Juilliard School since 2004, is considered among today’s finest organists and has been compared to Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs for his musical charisma and for combining the soul of an entertainer with the chops of a rock-solid musician. In its year-end wrap-up, New York magazine named Mr. Jacobs the best organist of 2007, and his recent concert in our nation’s capital was just named one of the best performances of 2008 by the Washington Post.

Mr. Jacobs made music history at the age of 23 when, on the 250th anniversary of the death of J. S. Bach in 2000, he played the composer’s complete organ music in an 18-hour marathon in Pittsburgh. He possesses a vast repertoire spanning from the 16th century through contemporary times and has also performed the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in a series of nine-hour marathon concerts in eight U.S. cities. This season he is recording Messiaen’s Livre du Saint Sacrement for Naxos.

Paul Jacobs began studying the piano at the age of six and the organ at age 13. At 15 he was appointed head organist of a parish of 3,500 families in his hometown of Washington, Pennsylvania. Mr. Jacobs studied at The Curtis Institute of Music and later, at Yale University. He has been heard on American Public Media’s Pipedreams, Performance Today, and Saint Paul Sunday; NPR’s Morning Edition; and was recently seen on Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power from the Crystal Cathedral.

Official Website: http://hrc.rcav.org/Concert_Series/index.htm