|
|
Home
Discography
Current
Projects
News
About
The Music
Repertoire
Order
CDs and Scores
Press
Clippings
Press
1
Press
2
Press
3
Interview
Detailed
bio
Click here for a brief bio
Sonia Jacobsen
Sonia Jacobsen was born in 1967 in Australia. She spent the first 8 years of her life in the Blue Mountains, where a local piano teacher discovered her musical talent when she was 6 years old and gave her free piano lessons. She had learned to read music all by herself, and she could play her self-taught pieces with much pathos before her very first music lesson. When the family moved to Denmark she continued her piano studies and became involved in all sorts of musical activities such as the school's choir, different pop bands, the local marching band a samba orchestra. In high school she first was exposed to jazz by playing piano in the school's big band. When a teacher put a tenor saxophone in her hands, she was hooked immediately. Turning her attention from classical music to jazz she at the same time switched instrument from piano to first the tenor and later the soprano saxophone which until today is her primary instrument.
|
|
When Sonia was 18 she decided to go to France to study musicology in Grenoble and later Lyon. At the same time she studied jazz at Chambery Conservatory where she received a Gold Medal in jazz. In the Rhône-Alpes region of France there was a strong tradition of crossover jazz and classical music, mainly thanks to the presence of bassist Barre Phillips whose workshops were attended by many of the local musicians. The success of the group of clarinetist Louis Sclavis - who incorporated many crossover elements in his music - also made a strong impact on the local scene. Sonia frequently got together with improvising classically trained musicians and simply improvised chamber music in the aesthetics of Bartok, Shostakovich and others within a vague jazz context. Mainstream jazz based on the be bop tradition was not dominating her musical world.
|
But in an attempt to solidify her jazz foundations, Sonia moved to New York in 1992 and studied at the New School/Mannes Jazz Department at the New School of Social Research, from where she graduated, and where she is currently faculty member. The stylistic open-mindedness of the school, and the encounter with teachers like Reggie Workman, Richie Beirach, Kenny Werner and others profoundly influenced her. So did the close contact with the very diverse New York scene: one evening jamming with an afro/funk band in a club, the next evening playing jazz standards in a restaurant, later in the week performing at the Knitting Factory with her own funk/world music sextet or her more avant-garde groove oriented quartet, and in between rehearsing and playing sessions with a multitude of different musicians. New York is the place to do musical encounters and experiment. The city is a magnet for jazz musicians and musicians in general, who are willing to take risks. Music and musicians from all over the world exposed to the energy and vibe of this melting pot - this fertile environment led to Sonia's first CD release "Avalanche".
Then she started experimenting with strings. She combined some of the New York's best improvising string players, musicians with a foot in both the jazz and the new music/classical world, and created the string quartet "No Strings Attached" (which consists of two violins, cello and bass and which includes Gregor Huebner on violin). Writing for string quartet led to writing for string orchestra (her Chamber Concerto for Strings), which led to writing for larger and larger orchestral settings.
Meanwhile her work was beginning to get recognition: she won several composition contests for jazz orchestra - the French National Jazz Orchestra (ONJ) in 1996, where she won the votes of both the audience and the jury, and the ASCAP/IAJE Benny Carter Award in 1998. In 1997 she also received a commissioning grant from the American Composers Forum to write a Symphony for Jazz Orchestra, Strings and Percussion. Encouraged by this success in writing for big band - a genre she had not yet given much attention to, she co-founded in 1996 in collaboration with Tomas Granet the Mosaic Orchestra - a 15 piece world music and funk inspired big band which was performing steadily in a New York club. She is also the recipient of the American Music Center's Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Award (1998) for "Chamber Concerto For Strings" and grant recipient from the Danish Foreign Ministry/Cultural Affairs for the composition of "String Quartet N° 1" (1995). In 1997 she was recognized by the American Scandinavian Society for her artistic achievements.
Sonia's musical interests have constantly been going back and forth between the contemporary classical and the jazz world, but she was not satisfied with the synthesis of these influences until she combined them with her genuine interest in world music and contemporary rhythms. A key element in all her music is rhythm. Odd meters, poly-rhythms, cross rhythms, changing meters and metric modulations are elements she often uses. But rhythmical complexity as a mathematical puzzle is not what it is all about. It has to be fun to play for the musicians.
And having fun leads us to the role of improvisation in Sonia's music. Sonia believes it is about time to reintegrate improvisation into a classical context. She has successfully done just that with her Chamber Concerto N° One, which was premiered by Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and recorded by Philharmonia Virtuosi (available on the Mediaphone - Madacy label). She is currently working on a Saxophone Concerto for jazz saxophone and strings, also to be premiered by Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. Winning the IAJE/ASCAP award in 1998 led to the successful premiere in January 1999 of an extended form composition for jazz orchestra and strings. Integrating strings into a jazz context without falling into outdated aesthetics, and incorperating improvisation as well as a rhythmic language into a classical context, are some of the elements which are at the nucleus of Sonia's compositions.
