“It’s like sitting on a mine of buried treasure,” said Paul Jacobs, the 30-year-old chairman of the organ department at the Juilliard School. “I want to draw attention to an instrument that is sorely misunderstood and neglected by the mainstream of classical music.”
The organ world, he said, is too insular and urges his colleagues and students to “get out of the loft.” Many organists “are academic musicians and simply lack a healthy flair and virtuosity,” he added. “One frequently gets the sense that they are emotionally detached from the music, which is ultimately the death of art.”
So the cherubically fresh-faced Mr. Jacobs, wearing a black suit and collarless white shirt, spoke with evangelical fervor during a recent interview in Paul Hall at Juilliard about his desire to stimulate interest in the instrument.
He hopes to lure new converts to the organ simply with vibrant, emotive performances and by stressing the importance of education.
“I am proud to be a serious musician, a classical musician,” he said, describing how he was “sickened” by his recent first encounter with “American Idol.” “Ours is a culture that wants everything to be easily digestible, but to fully appreciate a Bach fugue, you have to be able to hear contrapuntally, and this takes work. I’m tired of a culture that devalues music and has no desire to understand it more intimately. And the void has been filled by parasites in the entertainment industry.”
Mr. Jacobs chats with his audiences during recitals, stressing that art music is for everyone and hoping to demystify a complex instrument often hidden from view during performances, although video screens are changing that — a development of which Mr. Jacobs heartily approves. Tomorrow he will give the first of three presentations (part of his being awarded Juilliard’s William Schuman Scholars Chair) describing and demonstrating the mechanics of the organ.
He will also share anecdotes, such as how Nero was an avid player of the hydraulis, an ancestor of the modern organ that was used in gladiatorial combat. “The organ wasn’t staid then, and it need not be now,” Mr. Jacobs said. “It should be played in a manner that stirs the soul.”
Mr. Jacobs’s own soul was first stirred by the instrument at 13, when a priest took him to a concert at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh. He was awestruck by the “enormous palette of colors and the power and sublimity of the sound,” he said. He grew up in a nonmusical family in a small town, Washington, Pa., with sisters who were interested in pop culture. But while his siblings were watching television, he would take long, solitary walks in the woods, something he still enjoys.
After pursuing a double major in organ and harpsichord at the Curtis Institute, in Philadelphia, he did postgraduate work at Yale. Mr. Jacobs first attracted some attention in 2000, when at 23 he played Bach’s complete organ works in an 18-hour marathon in Pittsburgh, a feat he later accomplished with the complete works of Messiaen, the other composer closest to his heart. He has been chairman of the organ department at Juilliard since 2004.
The lack of a pipe organ in New York City’s concert halls is a sore point for Mr. Jacobs, who points out that Avery Fisher is the only home of a major symphony orchestra in the United States without such an instrument. Referring to Philadelphia and Los Angeles, he said, “It’s refreshing to witness the organs at the Kimmel Center and Disney Hall being embraced by the public and viewed as points of civic pride.”
Mr. Jacobs is willing to play electric organs, adding that while an acoustic one is always preferable, the music “ultimately comes from the artist before the instrument.”
His charismatic and sometimes unorthodox interpretations have been praised and criticized. But music is not just about “playing neatly and accurately,” he said. After a recent recital at the Kimmel Center, word got back to him that some organists in the audience “disapproved of the so-called liberties I took in the music, my doing things that weren’t historically accurate,” he said.
“They commented on these silly, irrelevant things,”he continued, “and resisted the bigger picture — which is music.”
He added: “Part of me thinks: ‘Who ordained you? Who are you to question my devotion and my daily walk with music?’ We need musicians who can promote their work with fire and conviction.”
He has his own strong opinions about other organists. About Virgil Fox, he said: “Fox did wonderful things, but I have no desire to duplicate him. He certainly popularized the organ, and that I admire. But I would like to take a more artistic approach. I think toward the end of his life, Fox was known as an entertainer. I don’t object to that at all. Liberace, Virgil Fox, the world is big enough for all types.”
Mr. Jacobs, who has never had a relationship or even a date, calls music his soul mate. “I want to love it as intimately as a person,” he said. “I have befriended solitude to a degree, and it draws me closer to art and beauty. It is in the moments of solitude that we have the greatest revelations.”
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