Jacob Greenberg, piano
D.M.A., Northwestern University
M.M., Northwestern University
B.M./B.A., Oberlin College |
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Jacob Greenberg began studying piano at
the young age of four. "My parents got me a toy piano
and I just started playing, mostly by ear—they decided to
buy me a real instrument the next year." Born in Princeton,
New Jersey, Jacob has lived in Ohio, Chicago, and Buffalo,
New York but is excited to now be living closer to his family
in New York City where he is also a frequent performer.
Jacob teaches students age 6 through adult. He believes
that a productive, two-way dialogue is important to the teacher-student
relationship whether the student is a child or adult, and
he encourages all his students to develop their own love
of music. "I think students, especially young ones,
should find a piece or composer to which they really respond. We
should all enjoy the music that we play-it's that simple!"
With his youngest students, Jacob introduces basic finger
exercises "but I like to get to real music as soon as possible. There
should always be a musical motivation for playing even the
easiest pieces, and there is lots of great music out there
for beginners to devour." Comfortable with adults of all
levels, "with older students I feel it is especially important
to talk about the life of the composer whose piece a student
is playing, and I believe this helps students to develop
a more personal relationship with a piece."
Schumann, Messiaen, Stravinsky, and Ives are all composers
Jacob love but Bach "will always be my favorite composer.
I also listen to a lot of classical African music and eighties
British rock." Jacob plays much contemporary
music and enjoys working on new and recently composed pieces
with his ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble
(ICE). "But I also like to design programs that mix
old and new music in ways that allow one to inform the other.
Jacob performs in many genres from soloist to orchestral pianist,
and was the principal keyboardist of the Civic Orchestra of
Chicago for many years. He counts the jazz singer Betty
Carter as one of his major musical influences. "She
was an extremely individual performer who made her art into
something unclassifiable and incredibly modern. She
moves me more than almost any other musician I've ever heard." Jacob's
hobbies are as varied as his musical and teaching life. In
his free time he exercises, reads underground comics, and enjoys
watching 1950s Technicolor melodramas. |
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