About

Jacob Cooper's bold compositions and multimedia works have garnered recognition throughout the continent, with performances by the JACK Quartet, the Calder Quartet, the NOW Ensemble, and the Minnesota Orchestra. His work has appeared at the Wordless Music concert series at the Miller Theater (New York), the International Festival of Arts and Ideas (New Haven), the Harold Golen Gallery (Miami), the NewTown Arts Pop-up Films Festival (Pasadena), and on the popular videoblog Rocketboom.

Jacob has earned a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Morton Gould Award from ASCAP, a CAP grant from the American Music Center, and most recently was announced as winner of the 2011 Carlsbad Music Festival competition. He has attended the Bang on a Can Summer Institute and the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, and he has held residences at the Banff Centre, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and twice at the Atlantic Center for the Arts--first as a composer and then as a sound/video artist. Jacob is also one of the six "talented guys" who comprise the composers' collective Sleeping Giant (The New Yorker).

Timberbrit, Jacob’s "gutsy opera" (Time Out NY) about a fictional reunion between Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in The Believer's annual music issue. The opera ran last November at the Incubator Arts Project (formerly the Ontological-Hysteric Theater). Jacob has also recently experimented with visual media, and his video Commencer Une Autre Mort was shortlisted for the YouTube / Guggenheim Biennial. Upcoming projects include commissions for Ensemble ACJW (to premiere in Carnegie Hall, February 2012), the Deviant Septet, and cellist Jacques Lee Wood.

A faculty member in the music department at Amherst College, Jacob is also dedicated to teaching and scholarship. He writes program notes for subscription series concerts at Carnegie Hall and is a doctoral candidate in composition at the Yale School of Music.