Organist Paul Jacobs To Premiere Liebermann's ORGAN CONCERTO With Jacksonville Symphony in September

GRAMMY Award-winning American organist Paul Jacobs will open the Jacksonville Symphony season with a world premiere of distinguished American composer Lowell Liebermann' s Organ Concerto under the baton of music director Courtney Lewis. The concert will take place Friday evening, September 29, 7:30 pm at the Jacoby Symphony Hall at the Jacksonville Center for the Performing Arts (300 Water St, Jacksonville, FL 32202). The program will be repeated the next day, Saturday evening, September 30, 7:30 pm, The full program follows:

Ludwig van Beethoven Overture "Leonore" No. 2 in C major, Op. 72a

Lowell Liebermann Organ Concerto - world premiere

Robert Schumann Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61

General admission from $29 to $84 is available on Jacksonville Symphony's website. For more information, please visit the event page, Paul Jacobs' website, and Lowell Liebermann' s site.

During this 2023-2024 season alone Mr. Jacobs will not only be premiering the Liebermann Organ Concerto, but also playing Samuel Barber's Toccata Festiva with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; performing What Do We Make of Bach? by John Harbison with the New England Philharmonic; appearing as soloist with the Toledo Symphony in the Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra by Stephen Paulus; and premiering a new version of Michael Daugherty's Once Upon a Castle for Organ and Orchestra with the Las Vegas Philharmonic. Additionally, Mr. Jacobs has been invited by the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg to give a recital of Messiaen's towering Livre du Saint Sacrément, and he will be presented by the Nashville Symphony in an all-Bach solo recital. One would be hard pressed to find any other musician performing five modern or contemporary concertos in one year.

The Organ Concerto was co-commissioned by the Jacksonville Symphony and the Oregon Bach Festival. In these two concerts, Mr. Jacobs will play the Bryan Concert Organ. Originally known as the Casavant Opus 553, the organ was first built in 1914 for the First Baptist Church of Syracuse in New York. The pipe organ was transported and restored in Jacksonville's Jacoby Symphony Hall in 2005.

Heralded as "one of the major musicians of our time" by Alex Ross of The New Yorker, as "America's leading organ performer" by The Economist, and as "a grand New York institution" by James R. Oestreich of The New York Times, the internationally celebrated organist Paul Jacobs combines a probing intellect and extraordinary technical mastery with an unusually large repertoire, both old and new. No other organist is so frequently re-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.

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-Sacrément. 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 the age of 23 when he played Bach's complete organ works in an 18-hour marathon performance 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 also been a vocal proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical music.

Past recital engagements have included performances under the aegis of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center White Light Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, Spivey Hall in Atlanta, the St. Louis Cathedral-Basilica, Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, as well as at the American Guild of Organists.

He has given the world premiere of Christopher Rouse's Organ Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra-co-commissioned by the National Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic-and, with the Toledo Symphony, has performed Michael Daugherty's Once Upon a Castle, a work he recorded in 2015 with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero which was released by Naxos in September 2016, and awarded three GRAMMYs, including Best Classical Compendium.

Mr. Jacobs celebrated the bicentennial of eminent 19th century French composer César Franck's birth with two solo organ recitals in New York City at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, under the auspices of the American Guild of Organists.

In the fall of 2019, Mr. Jacobs highlighted the organ on the New York concert scene, performing in a three-recital series for solo organ to critical acclaim. The series, entitled "The Great French Organ Tradition," gave New Yorkers the rare opportunity to hear this master organist on three important New York instruments: on the Holtkamp organ in the Juilliard School' s Paul Recital Hall; the 1933 Aeolian-Skinner "Opus 891" at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin; and St. Ignatius Loyola' s 1993 Mander Organ.

Marking an important milestone for the development of organ playing in Asia, Mr. Jacobs participated in the 2017 launch of China' s first International Organ Competition-in Shanghai-when he was appointed to serve as president of the competition' s jury. After another successful guest engagement with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Philadelphia's Verizon Hall performing both Oquin's Resilience, for organ and orchestra, and James MacMillan's A Scotch Bestiary, Mr. Jacobs was invited by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin to tour three major European cities with the Philadelphia Orchestra in May 2018. He played the Oquin work in Brussels, Luxembourg, and in Hamburg's recently inaugurated Elbphilharmonie.

Prodigiously talented from his earliest years, at 15, young Jacobs was appointed head organist of a parish of 3,500 in his hometown, Washington, Pennsylvania. He has performed the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in marathon performances throughout North America. In addition to his highly esteemed recordings of Messiaen and Daugherty on Naxos, Mr. Jacobs has recorded organ concertos by Lou Harrison and Aaron Copland with the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas on the orchestra' s own label, SFS Media.

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 chairman of the organ department in 2004, one of the youngest faculty appointees in the school's history. He was awarded Juilliard's prestigious William Schuman Scholar's Chair in 2007. In addition to his concert and teaching engagements, Mr. Jacobs 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 2021 he received the International Performer of the Year Award from the American Guild of Organists, and in 2017 Washington and Jefferson College bestowed him with an honorary doctorate. Mr. Jacobs has written several well-received articles for the Wall Street Journal.

Lowell Liebermann is one of America's most frequently performed and recorded living composers. He has written over one hundred forty works in all genres, several of which have gone on to become standard repertoire. His Sonata for Flute and Piano and his Gargoyles for piano are among the most popular contemporary works for their instruments, regularly included in recital and competition programs. Each of them has been recorded on compact disc more than twenty-five times to date.

Other upcoming world premieres this season include Mr. Liebermann's Flute Concerto No.2, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for principal flutist Stefan Ragnar Hoskuldsson, and a piano work commissioned by the Gilmore Foundation for Gilmore Young Artist Maxim Lando. Other recent commissions include Cello Sonata No.5, commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and University of Reno for cellist Dmitri Atapine and pianist Hyeyeon Park; String Quartet No.6 for the Dover Quartet, commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music; a song cycle for soprano Brenda Rae, jointly commissioned by Vocal Arts DC and London's Wigmore Hall and Romance, Etude and Chorale for piano duet, his second commission from Steinway & Sons.

Mr. Liebermann has written two full-length operas, both enthusiastically received at their premieres: The Picture of Dorian Gray, the first American opera commissioned and premiered by Monte Carlo Opera; and Miss Lonelyhearts, commissioned by the Juilliard School to celebrate its 100th anniversary. His full-length ballet based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was co-commissioned by the Royal Ballet in London and San Francisco Ballet and is available on Blu-Ray and DVD. The CD recording of the complete score is available on Reference Recordings with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra conducted by Martin West.

Mr. Liebermann has enjoyed a long-standing and creative partnership with flautist Sir James Galway, who commissioned three works from him: Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra, and Trio No. 1 for Flute, Cello and Piano. Sir James premiered the Flute Concerto with the St. Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin and subsequently performed it with James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Galway recorded three of Liebermann's concertos for RCA Red Seal with the composer conducting the London Mozart Players.

Mr. Liebermann has composed four symphonies, a Concerto for Orchestra, three piano concertos and concertos for many other instruments. His Symphony No. 2 was commissioned for the centennial of the Dallas Symphony and premiered by them in February 2000 under the direction of Andrew Litton. This concert was the ground-breaking first webcast ever of an orchestral concert. Liebermann's Piano Concerto No. 2 was commissioned by Steinway & Sons and premiered by Stephen Hough with the National Symphony under the direction of Msistislav Rostropovich. Stephen Wigler of the Baltimore Sun found the concerto to be "perhaps the best piece in the genre since Samuel Barber's concerto" and John Ardoin of the Dallas Morning News described the work as "more than a knockout; it is among the best works of its kind in this century." The Hyperion recording of the concerto - conducted by the composer - received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The New York Philharmonic with Kurt Masur and principal trumpet Philip Smith presented the premiere of Mr. Liebermann's Trumpet Concerto, which the Wall Street Journal described as "balancing bravura and a wealth of attractive musical ideas to create a score that invites repeated listening. [Liebermann] is a masterful orchestrator, and just from this standpoint the opening of the new concerto is immediately arresting," also noting that the "rousing conclusion brought down the house."

Mr. Liebermann has written a wealth of music for solo piano and is active himself as a pianist, collaborating frequently with distinguished instrumentalists and vocalists. He has performed the world premiere of works by Ned Rorem, William Bolcom and other composers, and made his Berlin debut performing his own Piano Quintet with members of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 2021, the Steinway label released Liebermann's debut album as piano soloist to critical acclaim: "Personal Demons", a compendium of music that has shaped Liebermann's musical thought, including works by Schubert, Liszt, Kabeláĉ, Busoni's monumental "Fantasia Contrappuntistica," and works by Liebermann himself. The following year, the Steinway & Sons label released a second solo piano album by Mr. Liebermann, "The Devil's Lyre", featuring music of British composer David Hackbridge Johnson. He can also be heard as pianist on the Arabesque, GPR and MSR Classics labels. Mr. Liebermann is a Steinway Artist.

His compositions are widely available on CD and download, with over one hundred fifty releases on labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Virgin Classics, Hungaroton, New World Records, Albany, RCA Red Seal and many others. His works are published by Theodore Presser Company, Schott, and Faber Music.

In 2012, Mr. Liebermann joined the composition faculty of Mannes College at the New School and the following year was appointed to a five-year term as Chair of its Composition Department. He was also the founding conductor and Artistic Director of MACE - the Mannes American Composers Ensemble - a large ensemble devoted to the works of living American composers.

Mr. Liebermann is the recipient of many awards and distinctions, among them the CAG Virtuoso Award given by Concert Artists Guild for lifetime achievement, and Grand Prize from the inaugural American Composers Invitational awarded by the Van Cliburn Competition. He has been honored multiple times by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, most recently becoming the first recipient of the Virgil Thompson Vocal Award for his body of vocal music. In 2016 he was awarded the Barto Prize for his Eighth Nocturne for solo piano. Mr. Liebermann has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan; the Saratoga Performing Arts Center; and many other organizations.

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