Chautauqua Organist To Present Free Recital at Allegheny College

Jared Jacobsen
Jared Jacobsen

MEADVILLE, Pa. – Feb. 12, 2011 – Jared Jacobsen will perform a free organ recital at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 5, in Ford Chapel at Allegheny College.

Jacobsen began his musical studies at the age of five at the Chautauqua Institution, where he has returned every summer since and where he now serves as organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music.

When not at Chautauqua, he serves as director of music for First Lutheran Church in downtown San Diego and is a member of the performing arts faculty of the Bishop’s School, an independent college preparatory middle and high school.

The program on March 5 will include Fanfare and Gothic March, by Guy Weitz; Passacaglia in C, by Johann Sebastian Bach; and Fantasie sur le choral “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam,” by Franz Liszt. Also on the program are selections that Jacobsen describes as “Three Pieces to Engage the Imagination”: Rondo on Argentine Children’s Folk-Tunes, by Alberto Ginastera, transcribed for organ by Jared Jacobsen; Naïades (Pièces de fantaisie, Suite II), by Louis Vierne; and Berceuse et Final (L’Oiseau de feu), by Igor Stravinsky, transcribed for organ by Maurice Besly.

Jacobsen earned a bachelor of music degree at Westminster College and a master of music degree from the University of Arizona at Tucson. He pursued doctoral studies as a Haldeman Fellow in keyboard and choral studies.

Jacobsen served as fifth civic organist of the City of San Diego from 1978 through 1984. In 1987 he was the organist for the papal mass in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park for a resident congregation of 70,000 and a viewing audience of 70 million. The following year he was invited by Pope John Paul II to the Vatican, as a delegate to its historic First World Conference on Church Music.

Jacobsen’s concert at Allegheny College is supported by the Chapel Organ Recitals Fund established by Dr. Edward S. Hodgson Jr., Allegheny Class of 1947.

Contact Rebecca Borthwick-Aiken at 814-587-3998 for more information.