Recently, I met the organist Paul Jacobs at a restaurant in Lincoln Center, where he ate a salad and a bowl of cold soup. Jacobs is known in the U.S. as the only organist to have ever won a Grammy; he has an active recital career and collaborates regularly with major American orchestras, such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, performing concertos and premiering new works. He also serves as chair of the organ department at the Juilliard School. In fact, you could say that Jacobs’s career has more in common with successful violinists and pianists than with other concert organists. I sought to find out how and why.
Sacred Spaces
An Interview with Paul Jacobs
