Organist Paul Jacobs to Give Solo Recital at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, October 20, 2019

This recital—presented by the San Francisco Symphony as part of their Organ Recital Series—features works by Bach, Mozart, Ives, and Vierne.

Grammy-award winning American organist Paul Jacobs will return to San Francisco Symphony’s Davies Symphony Hall (201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102) to open the organization’s Organ Recital Series, Sunday afternoon, October 20, 2019, at 3 pm. His program will include an array of organ showpieces, from the intricate beauty of J.S. Bach’s Passacaglia, Mozart’s delightful Fantasia for clockwork organ, to Vierne’s grandly scaled Organ Symphony.

Mr. Jacobs most recently completed a recital series in New York City focusing on the virtuosity of French music, and highlighting the Vierne Organ Symphony. Of his playing in this series, Jay Nordlinger of The New Criterion remarked:

“[About] Jacobs’s playing? It was superb. From the first page or two, you knew that this was a man who knew what he was doing. Jacobs is no-nonsense. He does not fuss over music or cute it up. He just plays it, straightforwardly and rightly. His judgment is well-nigh unerring. He has fabulous fingers (and feet). If you were releasing a recording of Tuesday night’s recital, you would not have to doctor it at all…

If George Szell, the great conductor, had been an organist, he would have played like Paul Jacobs. I cannot render higher praise than that…

I left the church with a feeling of elation. Rarely do you get a musical experience—or any, I would think—so thrilling.” —September 24, 2019

Full program available below:

J. S. Bach: Passacaglia in C Minor
J. S. Bach: Organ Sonata No. 6 in G Major
Mozart: Fantasia in F Minor
Ives: Variations on America
Vierne: Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 59

Tickets from $30 to $40 are available for purchase by phone at (415) 864-6000 and online at https://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2019-20/Organ-Series-10-20.aspx.

Heralded as “one of the major musicians of our time” by Alex Ross of The New Yorker and as “America’s leading organ performer” by The Economist, the internationally celebrated organist Paul Jacobs combines a probing intellect and extraordinary technical mastery with an unusually large repertoire, both old and new. An eloquent champion of his instrument, Mr. Jacobs is known for his imaginative interpretations and charismatic stage presence. He has performed to great critical acclaim on five continents and in each of the fifty United States and is the only organist ever to have won a Grammy Award—in 2011 for Messiaen’s towering “Livre du Saint-Sacrément.”

No other organist is so frequently re-invited as soloist to perform with prestigious orchestras, thus making him a pioneer in the movement for the revival of symphonic music featuring the organ. Mr. Jacobs regularly appears with the Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Nashville Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Toledo Symphony, and Utah Symphony, among others.

Mr. Jacobs has transfixed audiences, colleagues, and critics alike with landmark performances of the complete works for solo organ by J.S. Bach and Messiaen, as well as works by a vast array of other composers. Mr. Jacobs made musical history at the age of 23 when he played Bach’s complete organ works in an 18-hour marathon performance on the 250^th anniversary of the composer’s death. A fierce advocate of new music, Mr. Jacobs has premiered works by Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Bernd Richard Deutsch, John Harbison, Wayne Oquin, Stephen Paulus, Christopher Theofanidis, and Christopher Rouse, among others. As a teacher he has also been a vocal proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical music.

His recital engagements have included performances under the aegis of the American Guild of Organists, Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center White Light Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Spivey Hall in Atlanta, and the St. Louis Cathedral-Basilica.

He has given the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Organ Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra—co-commissioned by the National Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic—and, with the Toledo Symphony, has performed Michael Daugherty’s Once Upon a Castle, a work he recorded in 2015 with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra which was released by Naxos in September 2016, and awarded three Grammys, including Best Classical Compendium.

To launch his 2019-2020 season, Mr. Jacobs highlighted the organ on the New York concert scene, performing in a three-recital series for solo organ in September 2019 to critical acclaim. OThe series will give New Yorkers the rare opportunity to hear this master organist on three important New York instruments: on the Holtkamp organ in the Juilliard School’s Paul Recital Hall, September 10; the 1933 Aeolian-Skinner “Opus 891” at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin September 17; and St. Ignatius Loyola’s 1993 Mander Organ, September 24. Of his September 17^th performance of Widor’s Toccata, Jay Nordlinger of The New Criterion wrote: “What was it like? Like you, perhaps, I have heard this piece 568 times. Never quite like this. It was bracing, inexorable, heart-stopping (and heart-swelling at the same time). It was a divine delirium. Your bones rattled—literally. (I am talking about physical sensations.) Never have I been more aware of the poverty of a recording, any recording. Paul Jacobs played the Toccata with the stringency, the tenderness, and the élan that the piece requires. (I am taking the technique for granted, which one should not.) Afterward, audience members kept asking one another, “What was that? What was that piece?” Widor, I believe, would have been tickled.” (September 19, 2019).

In the remainder of the 2019-2020 season Mr. Jacobs will perform the Daugherty work with the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Donald Runnicles and with the Kansas City Symphony and conductor Jason Seber. In November 2019, Mr. Jacobs will join the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero for performances of Horatio Parker’s Organ Concerto in E-flat minor, Op. 55; this work will be recorded live for the Naxos label. Mr. Jacobs will collaborate with Maestro Guerrero twice more this season in Europe: they will perform Stephen Paulus’s Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra with the Bamberg Symphony, broadcast on Bayerischer Rundfunk Radio in April 2020; then they travel to Wroclaw, Poland for a program with NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra in May 2020. With the Utah Symphony and conductor Thierry Fischer, Mr. Jacobs will perform Barber’s Toccata Festiva and Handel’s Organ Concerto No. 13 in F Major, “Cuckoo & the Nightingale,” in April 2020.

In May 2020, Mr. Jacobs will inaugurate the newly restored Hazel Wright organ at the Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, as part of the opening festivities under the aegis of the American Guild of Organists Orange County Chapter and the Catholic Diocese of Orange County. Additional recitals during the 2019-20 season include appearances under the auspices of the San Francisco Symphony, Chelsea Opera, Furman State University, SUNY Potsdam, Clayton State University, Joyce at Aiken, Dallas’s Highland Park United Methodist Church, and Bethlehem Music Series. Mr. Jacobs continues as was appointed Director of the asjdfk Director of the Oregon Bach Festival Organ Institute, a position he assumed in the summer of 2014. Soon to be released will be Barber’s Toccata Festiva with the Lucerne Symphony and conductor James Gaffigan on the Harmonia Mundi label. Mr. Jacobs will close out his 2019-2020 season on June 17, 2020, with a Paris recital at the Maison de la Radio, presented by Radio France and the Orchestre National de France, to be broadcast live from the station’s headquarters. The program will include a world premiere of a new work written for Mr. Jacobs by the French composer Jean-Baptiste Robin.

Marking an important milestone for the development of organ playing in Asia, Mr. Jacobs participated in the 2017 launch of China’s first International Organ Competition—in Shanghai—when he was appointed to serve as president of the competition’s jury. After another successful guest engagement with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall performing both Oquin’s Resilience, for organ and orchestra, and James MacMillan’s A Scotch Bestiary, Mr. Jacobs was invited by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin to tour three major European cities with the Philadelphia Orchestra in May 2018. He played the Oquin work in Brussels, Luxembourg, and in Hamburg’s recently inaugurated Elbphilharmonie.

Mr. Jacobs’ performance in Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival with soprano Christine Brewer received a glowing review from Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim of The New York Times:

Seated at the console was the organist Paul Jacobs, a virtuoso of dazzling technical acumen, who
anchored this recital of devotional music as part of the Lincoln Center White Light Festival. […]
Mr. Jacobs showed off his mastery in a handful of solo selections by Bach, Reger, Charles-Marie Widor and Nadia Boulanger, Lili’s sister. In Reger’s Toccata and Fugue, he built up a wonderfully organic crescendo in which the music expanded in all dimensions — brightness, clarity and volume — until it filled the room with a pulsating, radiant cloud of sound. — November 3, 2015, The New York Times

Mr. Jacobs and Ms. Brewer recorded a CD for Naxos entitled Divine Redeemer, featuring works by Bach, Handel, Franck, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Puccini, Gounod, and Reger.

Prodigiously talented from his earliest years, at 15 young Jacobs was appointed head organist of a parish of 3,500 in his hometown, Washington, Pennsylvania. He has performed the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in marathon performances throughout North America. In addition to his highly esteemed recordings of Messiaen and Daugherty on Naxos, Mr. Jacobs has recorded organ concertos by Lou Harrison and Aaron Copland with the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas on the orchestra’s own label, SFS Media.

Mr. Jacobs studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, double-majoring with John Weaver for organ and Lionel Party for harpsichord, and at Yale University with Thomas Murray. He joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 2003, and was named chairman of the organ department in 2004, one of the youngest faculty appointees in the school’s history. He received Juilliard’s prestigious William Schuman Scholar’s Chair in 2007. In addition to his concert and teaching appearances, Mr. Jacobs is a frequent performer at festivals across the world, and has appeared on American Public Media’s Performance Today, Pipedreams, and Saint Paul Sunday, as well as NPR’s Morning Edition, ABC-TV’s World News Tonight, and BBC Radio 3. In 2017 he received an honorary doctorate from Washington and Jefferson College.

For more information, please contact Hemsing Associates at (212) 772 1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com. 

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