PAUL JACOBS

The American organist Paul Jacobs made musical history at the age of 23 when, on the 250th anniversary of the death of J.S. Bach in 2000, he performed the composer’s complete organ music in an eighteen-hour marathon. Today he is hailed for his solid musicianship, prodigious technique and vivid interpretative imagination in performances on five continents, including in all fifty of the United States. Since 2004 he has been chairman of the organ department at the Juilliard School, which honoured him in 2007 with the William Schuman Scholar’s Chair. He has performed the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in nine-hour marathons in eight American cities. Paul Jacobs is an alumnus of both the Curtis Institute of Music and Yale University, where he studied organ with John Weaver and Thomas Murray, respectively.