VITAL ORGANIST: PAUL JACOBS CAN SHAKE THE RAFTERS--AND YOUR SOUL

Paul Jacobs, a cherubic virtuoso [who] claims to be 30 but must surely still get asked for I.D. at bars, does not at first appear capable of making this ecstatic noise. He talks in slightly formal circumlocutions. He dresses like a reverend of his own private order, in a solid-color collarless shirt (imperial purple when we last met), pants from a black suit, and shiny black shoes, which he changes to soft-soled shoes for work. But he has zeal, technique, and fathomless stamina. No sooner did he graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music than he performed an eighteen hour marathon of Bach's complete organ works. From memory. Then, a few years later, he did the same for the measly nine hours Messiaen wrote for the instrument. Jacobs undertakes these iron-man feats partly to overcome the instrument's reputation for sanctimonious fustiness....Jacobs is fond of pointing out that until the industrial revolution, the pipe organ was humanity's loudest and most intricate invention. Even that claim, though, makes it seem like a relic of a more primitive age. It's nothing of the kind, not when it's played the way he does. Jacobs's playing amplified the [Messiaen] score's expressive range...the magnificently unhinged 'Alleluia,' a teeming upward rush of notes spilling into a great, thick chord that Jacobs struck with the force of a pile driver, beating again and again until it broke onto one last column rattling low tone." (New York Magazine, 22 October 2007)