Eric Jacobsen (conductor)
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Eric Jacobsen (born July 16, 1982) is an American conductor and cellist. He is currently a member of
The Knights ''The Knights'' ( ''Hippeîs''; Attic: ) was the fourth play written by Aristophanes, who is considered the master of Old Comedy. The play is a satire on the social and political life of classical Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and in thi ...
, and the
Silk Road Project Silkroad, formerly the Silk Road Project, Inc., is a not-for-profit organization, initiated by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998, promoting collaboration among artists and institutions, promoting multicultural artistic exchange, and studying the ebb and ...
, and is the Music Director of the
Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra The Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra is Central Florida's resident professional orchestra, appearing in more than 125 performances each season. Founded in 1993. At over $4 million, the Orlando Philharmonic has the largest endowment of any arts i ...
and
Virginia Symphony Orchestra The Virginia Symphony Orchestra (VSO) is an American orchestra administratively based in Norfolk. The VSO performs concerts in various venues in Virginia, including: * Chrysler Hall, Norfolk * The Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia ...
, Principal Conductor of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, and when was an artistic partner of the Northwest Sinfonietta from 2015-2018


Personal history

Born on
Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...
, New York, Jacobsen is the son of Edmund Jacobsen, a violinist and former member of the
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra The Metropolitan Opera is an American opera company based in New York City, currently resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Referred to colloquially as the Met, the company i ...
, and Ivy Jacobsen, a noted flutist. His brother is violinist Colin Jacobsen, with whom he co-founded Brooklyn Rider and The Knights. The Jacobsen brothers were largely exposed to music through their parents, whose late night chamber music soirees in part influenced the brothers to study music and inspired them to believe in, and later promote, classical music as a party. Jacobsen graduated from the
Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became ...
. In 2016, he married folk singer
Aoife O'Donovan Aoife Maria O'Donovan ( , ; born November 18, 1982) is an American singer and Grammy Award-winning songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer for the string band Crooked Still, as well as one-third of the supergroup folk trio I'm with Her ...
; their daughter Ivy Jo was born in 2017.


Conducting

He often takes up the baton for The Knights, with whom he has recorded an extensive collection of albums and toured in North America and Europe. The Knights are an orchestral collective, flexible in size and repertory, whose mission is to transform the concert experience. With a collaborative rehearsal process and the desire to promote musical discovery, The Knights have been called "one of Brooklyn's sterling cultural products...known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory" by ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
''. The ensemble has worked with some of the most popular names in music, from
Yo-Yo Ma Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is a French-born American Cello, cellist. Born to Chinese people, Chinese parents in Paris, he was regarded as a child prodigy there and began to study the cello with his father at age four. At the age of seven, ...
,
Dawn Upshaw Dawn Upshaw (born July 17, 1960) is an American soprano. She is the recipient of several Grammy Awards and has released a number of Edison Award-winning discs; she performs both opera and art song, and her repertoire spans Baroque to contempo ...
,
Itzhak Perlman Itzhak Perlman (; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the First ina ...
,
Jan Vogler Jan Vogler (born February 18, 1964) is a German-born classical cellist who lives in New York City."About Jan Vogler"< ...
, and
Gil Shaham Gil Shaham (Hebrew: גיל שחם; born February 19, 1971) is an American violinist. His accolades include a Grammy Award in 1999, and he has performed as a soloist with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna P ...
to
Bela Fleck Bela may refer to: Places Asia *Bela Pratapgarh, a town in Pratapgarh District, Uttar Pradesh, India *Bela, a small village near Bhandara, Maharashtra, India *Bela, another name for the biblical city Zoara * Bela, Dang, in Nepal * Bela, Janakpur ...
and
Joshua Redman Joshua Redman (born February 1, 1969) is an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He is the son of jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman (1931–2006). Life and career Joshua Redman was born in Berkeley, California, to jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman a ...
. Members include performers, composers, arrangers, improvisors, and singer-songwriters, and the group has many cultural influences across musical genres. Jacobsen has conducted The Knights for concerts at
Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57t ...
,
Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5  ...
, the
92nd Street Y 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a cultural and community center located in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood of the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, at the corner of East 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Founded in 1874 as the You ...
, for the
Naumburg Orchestral Concerts Naumburg () is a town in (and the administrative capital of) the district Burgenlandkreis, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Central Germany. It has a population of around 33,000. The Naumburg Cathedral became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018. ...
ince 2010in Central Park's
Naumburg Bandshell The Central Park Mall is a pedestrian esplanade in Central Park, in Manhattan, New York City. The mall, leading to Bethesda Fountain, provides the only purely formal feature in the naturalistic original plan of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calv ...
,
(Le) Poisson Rouge (Le) Poisson Rouge (often referred to as LPR) is a music venue and multimedia art cabaret in New York City founded in 2008 by Justin Kantor and David Handler on the former site of the Village Gate at 158 Bleecker Street. The performance space was ...
, the Dresden Musikfestpiele, Cologne Philharmonie, and the National Gallery of Dublin. Jacobsen and The Knights have returned regularly to perform at the
Ravinia Festival Ravinia Festival is a primarily outdoor music venue in Highland Park, Illinois. It hosts a series of outdoor concerts and performances every summer from June to September in a wide variety of musical genres from classical to pop. The first orche ...
in Chicago. Other festival appearances include Caramoor,
Tanglewood Tanglewood is a music venue and Music festival, festival in the towns of Lenox, Massachusetts, Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony ...
, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Jacobsen led several concerts at the 2014
Ojai Music Festival The Ojai Music Festival is an annual classical music festival in the United States. Held in Ojai, California (75 miles northwest of Los Angeles), for four days every June, the festival presents music, symposia, and educational programs emphasizi ...
, where The Knights were in residence, with pianist
Jeremy Denk Jeremy Denk (born May 16, 1970 in Durham, North Carolina) is an American classical pianist and author of the memoir ''Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons'' (2022). Early life Denk did not come from a musical family. After s ...
and singer
Storm Large Storm Large (born Susan Storm Large, June 25, 1969) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and author. She attracted national attention as a contestant on the CBS reality television show '' Rock Star: Supernova''. A resident of Portland, Ore ...
. Jacobsen led the
Camerata Bern Located in Bern, Switzerland, the Camerata Bern was founded in 1963 as a conductorless, flexible chamber orchestra Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionall ...
in the European premiere of Mark O'Connor's ''American Seasons'', the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with pipa virtuoso
Wu Man Wu Man (; born January 2, 1963) is a Chinese pipa player and composer. Trained in Pudong-style pipa performance at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, she is known for playing in a broad range of musical styles and introducing the pip ...
, the Alabama Symphony, the Orlando Philharmonic, and the Baltimore Symphony, and has conducted the Silk Road Ensemble with
Yo-Yo Ma Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is a French-born American Cello, cellist. Born to Chinese people, Chinese parents in Paris, he was regarded as a child prodigy there and began to study the cello with his father at age four. At the age of seven, ...
. The 2014–15 season marked Jacobsen's first as Music Director of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony and Artistic Partner of the Northwest Sinfonietta. Jacobsen was appointed the Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, engaging in a five-year appointment with the symphony orchestra. Jacobsen was appointed the Music Director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra in 2021, making him the 12th Music Director in the VSO's 101-year history.


Cello performance

Jacobsen plays as a cellist in a number of ensembles. Jacobsen and brother Colin founded string quartet Brooklyn Rider in 2004 along with violinist Johnny Gandelsman and violist Nicholas Cords. The quartet has been called “one of the wonders of contemporary music” by the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' and the ''
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving Greater Pittsburgh, metropolitan Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the fi ...
'' described the group as playing "with the energy of young rock stars jamming on their guitars, a Beethoven-goes-indie foray into making classical music accessible but also celebrating why it was good in the first place". The quartet has recorded extensively and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center,
South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...
, and the
San Francisco Jazz Festival San Francisco Jazz Festival is an annual three-week music festival produced by SFJAZZ, a non-profit organization dedicated to jazz and jazz education. Notable performers 1995 Jack DeJohnette, Keith Jarrett, Christian McBride, Charles McPherso ...
, among many other prestigious venues and festivals. A long-time member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, Jacobsen performs as both cellist and conductor with the group. He has traveled around Asia, Europe, and North America with the ensemble, promoting cultural partnerships and educational opportunities with musicians from around the world. Jacobsen's primary teachers included Harvey Shapiro and Joseph Elworthy. Discography * The Knights: ''The Knights before Christmas'' (2021, Bright Shiny Things) * Greater Bridgeport Symphony, Kayhan Kalhor, Sandeep Das, Karen Ouzounian, New York Gypsy All Stars: ''Blue as the Turquoise Night'' (2021, Bright Shiny Things) * The Knights, Gil Shaham: ''Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos'' (2021, Canary Classics) * The Knights, Yo-Yo Ma: ''Azul'' (2017, Warner Classics) * The Knights, Gil Shaham, Stephane Deneve: ''1930s Violin Concertos, Vol. 2'' (2016, Canary Classics) * The Knights: ''the ground beneath our feet'' (2015, Warner Classics) * Brooklyn Rider: ''The Brooklyn Rider Almanac'' (2014, Mercury Classics) * The Knights: ''Beethoven'' (2013, Sony Classical) * Brooklyn Rider and Béla Fleck: ''The Impostor'' (2013, Decca) * Brooklyn Rider: ''A Walking Fire'' (2013, Mercury Classics) * The Knights: ''A Second of Silence'' (2012, Ancalagon Records) * Brooklyn Rider: ''Seven Steps'' (2012, In A Circle Records) * The Knights: ''New Worlds'' (2010, Sony Classics) * Lisa Bielawa and The Knights: ''Chance Encounter'' (2010) * The Knights with Scott and Lara St. John: ''Mozart'' (2010, Ancalagon Records) * Brooklyn Rider: ''Dominant Curve'' (2010, In A Circle Records) * Brooklyn Rider: ''Passport'' (2010, In A Circle Records) * Silk Road Ensemble: ''Off the Map'' (2009, World Village) * The Knights and Jan Vogler: ''Experience – Live From New York'' (2009, Sony) * Brooklyn Rider and Kayhan Kalhor: ''Silent City'' (2008, World Village) * Silk Road Ensemble: ''New Impossibilities'' (2007, Sony Classics) Videography * ''Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma: Tanglewood'' (2014, PBS) * ''We Are The Knights'' (2011, PBS) * ''The Knights: Beethoven – Pastorale'' (2009, In A Circle)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacobsen, Eric 1982 births American classical cellists American male conductors (music) Living people 21st-century American conductors (music) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American cellists People from Long Island Musicians from New York (state)