Jacob is the Artistic Director of the “categorically imaginative and radical” (New Yorker) Heartbeat Opera, which is fast becoming one of the most influential companies making opera today and which he helped found in 2014. Previously, Jacob spent ten years as the “impressive Artistic Director” (New York Times) the baroque and modern “crack ensemble” (New Yorker) Cantata Profana, which he founded in 2013 while at the Yale School of Music.
Jacob performs equally as a conductor, on modern violin, and on baroque violin, mixing chamber music performances with concertmastering orchestras, and music directing operas throughout the US and abroad. With Cantata Profana, he established a legacy as a curator, earning the 2016 CMA/ASCAP National Award for Adventurous Programming for his vision for crafting rarely-heard masterpieces into theatrical, genre-bending chamber music shows.
As a music director, he has conducted premieres of multiple new operas by Daniel Schlosberg, Susan Kander, and Francisco Ladron de Guevara, along with a host of classic operas he has adapted and music directed with Heartbeat, where he pioneered a unique practice of leading operas from the violin, "doing powerful work from the music stand” (Opernwelt). On period instruments, he is the “superb concertmaster” (Washington Post) of Opera Lafayette, and has performed with Mark Morris Dance Group, American Bach Soloists, TENET, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Helicon Ensemble, Juilliard415, Yale Baroque Ensemble, New York Baroque Inc., The Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia, and at the Smithsonian Institution. Jacob has been an artist at the Staunton Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, New Haven Festival of Arts and Ideas, Wellesley Composer’s Conference, France’s Festival Daniou, Lake George Music Festival, and Music Mountain. In contemporary music, he has premiered works with New York New Music Ensemble, Princeton Sound Kitchen, MATA Festival, Locrian Chamber Players, The Stone, NOVUS NY, The Cecilia Series of Kansas City, and at the Museo National de Arte in Mexico City.
Jacob has been called a “lithe and nimble” (NYTimes) baroque violinist, an “exacting and sensitive” (Boston Globe) new music player, and a “richly detailed” (NYTimes) conductor. His 2015 fully staged performance of György Kurtag’s Kafka-Fragments, an hour-long tour-de-force for violin and voice, was hailed as a “flat-out triumph” by Opera News. His album, “Hermestänze,” on MSR Records, features cycles for solo violin by Susan Kander, played “expressively and knowingly throughout” (Gramophone).
Jacob earned his masters and doctorate from the Yale School of Music under renowned violinist Ani Kavafian and studied baroque violin with Robert Mealy as a member of the Yale Baroque Ensemble. Previous degrees include a Performer Diploma from Indiana University and a Bachelor’s from Manhattan School of Music. He has been a guest lecturer or faculty at University of Maryland Baltimore County, Kansas university, Hunter College, and Hofstra University.
