Long bio

Jacob Schnitzer is a conductor, composer, and curator based in Boston, MA and Austin, TX. Committed to breaking barriers between art forms, Jacob works with artists from a wide array of disciplines to incorporate music into public programs, performance and visual art exhibitions, silent film screenings, theater productions, and improvised dance. Through his work as co-Artistic Director and Conductor of Density512, Jacob curates, performs, and produces live events featuring world premieres and works by living composers in Austin’s breweries, art galleries, restaurants, universities, theaters, and community spaces. As a capstone to Density512’s 2019/2020 season, Jacob will conduct the world premiere of the Thomas Yee’s opera Eva and the Angel of Death and coordinate a series of public programs at the Austin Central Library. Jacob curated The Difference Engine, a program on the origins of computing featuring collaborations between Density512, Fast Forward Austin, HUB New Music, One Ounce Opera, Graham Reynolds, and Kenneth Froehlich that was nominated for an Austin Critics Table Award.

In February, Jacob will serve as curator, producer, and conductor of a lecture and concert series focused on the music of Olivier Messiaen in collaboration with renowned Messiaen scholar Andrew Shenton.Jacob is a frequent a guest conductor of the Boston University Symphony and Chamber Orchestras and Time’s Arrow New Music Ensemble. He has additionally served as co-Director and Conductor of The University of Texas Lab Orchestra, Director of The University of Texas Engineering Chamber Orchestra and as a guest and rehearsal conductor for the MIT Symphony, Saratoga (WA), St. Edwards University, Balcones Community, and Central Texas Medical Orchestras. Jacob is an Artistic Advisor for the film score production company Silent Films Out Loud. Jacob is the former Artistic Director of Con Moto, an experimental brass ensemble that explored the synthesis of music and movement with choreographer Sam Olayiwola.

Jacob remains an active composer of large ensemble, chamber, and solo works. In March 2020, Jacob will return to Carnegie Hall with students from Booker T. Washington HSPVA in Dallas, TX to conduct his new work Patriots on Parade in Boston Common (wearing red socks). Other notable performances of his works include the premiere of Firebird Cycles for chamber orchestra at the Blanton Museum of Art, Day of Sounding | יוםתרוה for solo horn and resonating surface by hornist Zach Morgan, Fanfare for the Youth at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Granada (Spain), and Fanfare for Brass at the Bay View Music Festival and Mountain Light Music Festival. 

Jacob studies conducting with Bramwell Tovey and Joshua Gersen at Boston University where he is pursing a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting. He holds a BM in Music Studies from The University of Texas at Austin where he studied composition with Yevginey Sharlat, Dan Welcher, and Donald Grantham and horn with Patrick Hughes.