Jacob is a musician and raconteur based out of New York City. As a writer, he operates an online arts and culture blog with the goal of providing momentum for community-based arts projects in NYC. As an oboist, Jacob has performed internationally with orchestras from Vienna to Seoul. Born and raised in the lake-ridden, gopher empire of Minnesota, Jacob received a dual-degree in Music Performance and Marketing from Augsburg College in Minneapolis. His blog can be found here.
Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, joined by cellist Gautier Capuçon, presented modern, post-war masterworks in their first of two nights in Stern Auditorium.
A performance of John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary good enough to convert even the most conservative listener to the Church of New Music.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performed new(ish) music straight from its own bloodline (René Staar) under the direction of Maestro Franz Welser-Möst alongside works by Schubert, R. Strauss, and, inevitably, Strauss II in their first concert of 2017 at Carnegie Hall.
Joining Maestro Christoph Eschenbach and the musicians of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra for a tour across the United States, Chen headlined a pops concert of Austro-German music, complete with a riveting interpretation of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and an sufficient performance of Mahler’s Fifth.
Steve Reich turned 80 last month, and New Yorkers finally pencilled him, between the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the daunting presidential election, for big birthday bash at Carnegie Hall.
Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and the musicians of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra are undoubtedly the most prominent ambassadors for Venezuelan orchestral music today, and they hit the stage on Friday for their second night at Carnegie Hall’s opening weekend.
Inhibited by a cold and unable to give a full 100%, Andreas Scholl pulled off a solid 99 in a recital of early English music with harpsichordist Tamar Halperin.
Marin Alsop led the musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday evening in the New York première of Kevin Puts and James Bartolomeo’s The City and a valiantly led execution of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.
The conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and violinist Pinchas Zuckerman, however, presented an evening of music loosely connected across several centuries, effectively pressing shuffle on the classical music jukebox.
As part of the New York Philharmonic’s CONTACT new music series at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, Esa-Pekka Salonen drew connections among Olivier Messiaen, two of his students (Pierre Boulez and George Benjamin) and one outlier (Oliver Knussen).
Valery Gergiev led an athletic pilgrimage through composer-pianist Sergei Prokofiev’s five Piano Concerti, in numerical order, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In a posthumous premiere of his opera-novel Quicksand at The Kitchen in New York City, Ashley’s ingenuity was awakened by a troupe of artists who understand his work on a spiritual level.
Marina Abramović revealed her new technique for listening to music in a concert at the Park Avenue Armory featuring a majestic performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations by pianist Igor Levit.
If you are going to hear any performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the next decade, it should be from Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker.
