Organist Paul Jacobs Appears on Pipedreams

Spring Tour, 11-12 Dates Announced

Grammy Award-winning organist Paul Jacobs performed Bach's magisterial Clavier-Übung III in November 2010 as part of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival. The performance, which celebrated the reinstallation of the 1974 Kuhn pipe organ at Alice Tully Hall, can be heard during the current week on American Public Media's Pipedreams. Pipedreams is a weekly national program hosted by Michael Barone and broadcast by more than 150 radio stations with listeners numbering around 250,000 and more over its website. The program can also be heard in full here. The show includes the pre-concert discussion with Ara Guzelimian, in which Jacobs talks about his love of Bach, the historical context of the work, and what he thinks about Alice Tully Hall's newly refurbished organ.

Jacobs' recording of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint Sacrement was released by Naxos in September 2010 and received a Grammy Award in the category of Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without an orchestra). This marks the first time in the history of the award that an organist has won this award. This newsworthy Grammy win comes on the heels of the release of Jacobs's third album, a recording of Copland's Organ Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony. The disc, which was released February 8, 2011 also includes Ives' A Concord Symphony. San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas said of this rarely heard repertoire, "The Organ Symphony was the first time Aaron Copland heard his own orchestration for big orchestra. Its power surprised him, and power is the essence of this piece. There are quiet, brooding mysterious sections. But it also packs a real punch, both in the kind of jazzy jaggedness that it has and also in the sheer massiveness of sound. We knew that as a companion to the mighty Concord Symphony we had to have something that would measure up. The Organ Symphony certainly does that. And Paul Jacobs delivers an astonishing performance."

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