|
Jacob was born May 9, 1965 in Madras (Chennai), in India. He grew-up there as part of a multicultural family; attended parochial school and traveled extensively from a very young age. His earliest years in music were spent singing in choirs and being engaged in informal learning of a wide array of diverse hybrid musics and various instruments. In his teens, and later while studying Economics and Finance at Christ College in Bangalore, he started playing guitar and drum-set. In 1985, he decided to focus on the bass guitar and soon began playing concerts and festivals all over India with many forward looking elder musicians with a particularly deep interest in Jazz. In 1991, he moved to the U.S. after receiving a scholarship to study music and has since been living in the Boston area.
|
As an electric or acoustic bass player Jacob has played concerts/recorded with:
Abraham K. Adzenyah, Louiz Banks, Ranjit Barot, Anthony Braxton, Maynard Ferguson, Enrique Haneine, Amit Heri, Joe Hunt, Jay Hoggard, Jim Hobbs, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Charlie Mariano, Gustavo Ovalles, Vardan Ovsepian, Len 'Boogsie' Sharpe, Omar Sosa, T. Viswanathan, among many others. He was founding member of the group J.E.R.M. with which, between 1998 and 2003 he recorded and toured in the US and Europe. He has appeared in numerous festivals, Indian National Television and Radio DRS (Zurich). And, he has contributed to records released on labels such as Intuition and Warner Bros.
Jacob has composed for variety of instrumental, vocal and electronic forces and for groups ranging from Jazz combos, Theater and New Music Ensembles including, Memories/Ruminations a ninety-minute piece for eighteen assorted instrumentalists. Also, interested in exploring the intersections of computer aided real-time interactive improvisation and composition, he is currently researching programming / programmable environments.
In 2001, Jacob received a Master of Arts in music from Wesleyan University, where, his studies focused on experimental composition under the guidance of Anthony Braxton, Neely Bruce, and Alvin Lucier. As part of the department of world-music at Wesleyan he also studied South-Indian vocal music with T. Viswanathan and percussion music with Ramanad Raghavan and David Nelson. During 1998-1999 he attended the New England Conservatory of Music and studied in the department of contemporary improvisation under Ran Blake and studied the Bass under Cecil McBee and John Lockwood. From Berklee College of music he earned a Bachelor of music degree in 1997, after studying Composition and Arranging while concentrating on jazz performance. During this time he also participated in Kenny Werner and Bob Brookmeyer master classes in composition and improvisation. And, he privately studied jazz improvisation with John Laporta, Hal Crook and Charlie Banacos.
Aside from his activities as Bass player/improvisor/composer, he is also involved with SETC and MIT joint initiative Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 learn As part of this effort he is introducing music composition to children and youth using open-ended software tools in collaboration with scientists and educators who are designing, developing, and deploying new and emergent technologies to significantly impact broad ranging learning processes.
Jacob also teaches at Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater, MA.
|
