Grammy Award-Winning Organist Paul Jacobs & Nashville Symphony to Release Organ Concertos On Naxos

Organ concertos are too infrequently recorded, so the announcement of a new release entitled "Organ Concertos," (Naxos Catalog Number 559936) featuring GRAMMY Award-winning organist Paul Jacobs as soloist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero, is cause for celebration. The album, part of the Naxos "American Classics" series, will be officially released August 23, 2024. It is the latest in Mr. Jacobs' many ongoing efforts to expand the symphonic literature featuring the organ.

Two of the works, the 2016 "Resilience" by Wayne Oquin, and Christopher Rouse's 2014 Organ Concerto, were dedicated to and premiered by Mr. Jacobs. They were recorded live with the Nashville Symphony on the Schoenstein Organ in February 2023 at Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The Organ Concerto by noted American composer Horatio Parker, premiered in 1902 by the Boston Symphony, is Mr. Parker's largest orchestral work and "a neglected dazzling jewel," according to Mr. Jacobs. The program ends with Ives' Variations on "America," a piece for solo organ composed for the Fourth of July celebrations in 1892.

The full program follows:

Horatio Parker Organ Concerto, Op. 55 (1902)

Wayne Oquin Resilience for organ and orchestra (2016)

Christopher Rouse Organ Concerto (2014)

Charles Ives Variations on "America" (1891)

In November 2016, Mr. Jacobs premiered Rouse's Organ Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the National Symphony, the Rouse work is notable for its contrasting dark and light sonorities both in instrumentation and harmonic color. George Loomis, reviewing for the Financial Times, wrote: "It has a serious side, reflected in a hefty supply of dissonance within Rouse's typically expansive harmonic palette, as well as pregnant, chromatically inflected themes in the slow movement...the bracing third movement in compound metre, which started with a jagged fugue-like subject in quick notes and, abetted by Jacobs's wizardry, gathered fury to become a fiendish, manic gigue."

Wayne Oquin's Resilience received its world premiere performance February 2016 with Mr. Jacobs and the Pacific Symphony led by Carl St. Clair; later, in October 2017, Mr. Jacobs gave the East Coast premiere of this work with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin; and, in May 2018, Mr. Jacobs and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Mr. Nézet-Séguin, gave the European premiere of Resilience at Belgium's Palais des Beaux-Arts. "Resilience" reflects the human capacity for tenacity and perseverance; the composer describes is as "a 13-minute exploration of two seemingly limitless spheres."

The recording will be available to stream on Apple Music and Spotify and will be available for pre-order through Naxos. For more information on the composers please visit the following sites: Horatio Parker, Wayne Oquin, Christopher Rouse, and Charles Ives; and to learn about the performers, please visit the websites of organist Paul Jacobs, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and Naxos.

The internationally celebrated organist Paul Jacobs combines a probing intellect and extraordinary technical mastery with an unusually large repertoire, both old and new. Mr. Jacobs has been heralded as "one of the finest organists and teachers of our day," by Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times, "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. No other organist is so frequently re-invited as soloist to perform with prestigious orchestras, thus making him a leading pioneer in the movement for the revival of symphonic music featuring the organ.

During the 2023-2024 season Mr. Jacobs gave the world premiere of Lowell Liebermann's Organ Concerto co-commissioned by the Jacksonville Symphony and the Oregon Bach Festival and was invited to perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel as part of the gala celebrating the 20th anniversary of Walt Disney Hall. The LA concert will be broadcast on PBS's Great Performances early next year. He was also invited back to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a performance of Lou Harrison's Organ Concerto with Esa-Pekka Salonen. Mr. Jacobs played Samuel Barber's Toccata Festiva with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; What Do We Make of Bach? by John Harbison with the New England Philharmonic; appeared as soloist with the Toledo Symphony in the Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra by Stephen Paulus; and premiered a new version of Michael Daugherty's Once Upon a Castle for Organ and Orchestra with the Las Vegas Philharmonic. One would be hard pressed to find any other musician performing six modern or contemporary concertos in one year.

In recital, Mr. Jacobs presented an all-Bach program under the aegis of the Nashville Symphony. He was invited to perform Messiaen's towering Livre du Saint Sacrament in Hamburg; the 2000 audience members at the prestigious Elbphilharmonie were spellbound.

An eloquent champion of his instrument, Mr. Jacobs is known for his imaginative interpretations and charismatic stage presence. Mr. Jacobs is the only organist ever to have won a GRAMMY Award-in 2011 for Messiaen's Livre du Saint-Sacrament. Having performed to great critical acclaim on five continents and in each of the fifty United States, 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 is also Founding Director of the Oregon Bach Festival Organ Institute, a position he assumed ten seasons ago.

Mr. Jacobs has moved 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. He made musical history at age 23 when he gave an 18-hour marathon performance of Bach's complete organ works on the 250th 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 been a vocal proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical music.

No other organist is repeatedly 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 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 chair 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.

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