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Jacob Sacks

Jacob Sacks is one of the most creative pianists on the NYC jazz scene today. His strong individual voice has been heard in a variety of settings ranging from the mainstream jazz traditions of the Mingus Big Band and Orchestra to the open approach of the Paul Motian Septet to the vamp based fusion of David Binney’s Balance.

Originally from Michigan, Jacob was a 1995 Presidential Scholar In The Arts before he moved to New York City to study with Garry Dial at the Manhattan School Of Music. After graduation in 1998, Jacob was a finalist in the 1999 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition.

In the last 12 years, Jacob has been a member of many different ensembles, recorded several albums, and has toured the United States, Europe, and Canada several times. He has performed with musicians such as Clark Terry, Joe Maneri, Terumasa Hino, Charles Gayle, Eddie Henderson, Christian McBride, Brian Blade, Tony Malaby, Jacob Garchik, Ben Gerstein, Ohad Talmor, Chris Potter, Mark Turner, Ben Monder, Adam Rogers, Kenny Wollesen, Gene Jackson, and Matt Wilson.

Current projects include a longstanding duo with vocalist Yoon Sun Choi, with whom Jacob recently released a critically acclaimed album of Joe Raposo’s music; the quartet “Two Miles A Day” co-led with bassist Eivind Opsvik, featuring violist Mat Maneri and drummer Paul Motian; and a trio with drummer Dan Weiss and bassist Thomas Morgan.

Jacob currently resides in Brooklyn where he is working on several recording projects and teaching 15 or so students in his private practice.

Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity

Read "Synchronicity" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
May 1, 2025

Bassist Jeong Lim Yang is a member of the Brooklyn jazz scene who has worked with many different musicians such as Jason Palmer, Oscar Noreiga, and Kenny Wollesen. On her third album as a leader, she uses a quartet combining motion and atmosphere with melodic beauty elements. The quartet has Mat Maneri on viola, Jacob Sacks on piano, Randy Peterson on drums and Yang on bass. The overall group sound is fluid with the rhythm section shifting through ...

Album Review

Don Peretz/Jacob Sacks: Numerals

Read "Numerals" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 25, 2024

The integer most integral to Numerals is the number two. A duo date highlighting the communicative and experimental bents bonding drummer-composer Don Peretz with pianist Jacob Sacks, it was recorded in two parts, in two states, with two different modi operandi in play. The first session, at Kaleidoscope Sound in Union City, New Jersey, was entirely open-minded and open-ended, with free-composed creations forming a chassis, and Peretz, in electro-acoustic maverick mode, building around that body with post-production design elements and ...

Album Review

Mike McGinnis + 9: Outing

Read "Outing" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
April 29, 2024

Il nuovo album di Mike McGinnis si riallaccia a un'incisione del 2013 (Roadtrip, RKM) realizzata con un tentet d'identica strumentazione e un solo mutamento d'organico: Caroline Davis al sax contralto prende il posto di Matt Blostein. Dopo il successo del suo trio del 2017/18 con Steve Swallow e Paul Bley (ricordiamo i due album Sunnyside Recurring Dream e Singular Awakening) il clarinettista torna a evidenziare le sue doti di autore e arrangiatore in un medio organico che ...

Album Review

Dan Weiss Trio: Dedication

Read "Dedication" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
November 1, 2022

Approaching any Dan Weiss album requires a willingness to be challenged. From head-scratching time signatures to fascinating shifts in mood and texture, Weiss gives intrepid listeners a number of pathways into his music, and his releases always justify repeated encounters. Dedication, his latest with his regular trio partners pianist Jacob Sacks and bassist Thomas Morgan, is no exception, although what is most remarkable about this album is Weiss' lyrical sensitivity, a quality which is sometimes overshadowed on his other recordings ...

Album Review

Chet Doxas: Rich in Symbols II

Read "Rich in Symbols II" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
October 3, 2022

One of Chet Doxas' more distinctive projects, Rich in Symbols (Ropeadope, 2017), involved the saxophonist/clarinetist engaging the 1980s art movement of New York's Lower East Side, composing pieces that reflected his deep interactions with some of those iconic paintings. Now he has done the same with artists from his native Canada: specifically, the Group of Seven, a movement of landscape artists who were active from the early 1910s through the first years of the 1930s. By selecting several of their ...

Album Review

Jacob Garchik: Assembly

Read "Assembly" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
July 17, 2022

Trombonist and composer Jacob Garchik is versatile and restlessly inventive. His past work has ranged from a brass-only orchestra to a guitar-heavy ensemble as well as a unique take on gospel music. His sixth release, the provocative Assembly, evokes film soundtracks with a touch of fantasy. The nine originals make a cohesive whole with a creative momentum which does not slack. The opening track “Collage" has two distinct layers; in the background Garchik and soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome ...

Album Review

Jacob Garchik: Assembly

Read "Assembly" reviewed by John Chacona

by John Chacona
June 7, 2022

Trombonist Jacob Garchik has an interest in musical subtraction. His 2012 release The Heavens: The Atheist Gospel Trombone Album (Yestereve Records) presented religious music stripped of religion. Clear Line (Yestereve Records) from 2020 featured a 13-piece big band with no rhythm section. Now comes Assembly, an inquiry into what a jazz quintet sounds like when added to itself. Garchik declares both method and intent in his song titles; the first three cuts are “Collage," “Pastiche" and “Bricolage." The ...

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Performance / Tour

Jacob Sacks, Eivind Opsvik, Paul Motian, Mat Maneri Live at Cornelia Street Cafe, NYC

Source: Michael Ricci
May 27, 2010

Friday June 11th and Saturday June 12th Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia Street 9:00PM & 10:30PM TWO MILES A DAY Jacob Sacks, piano; Eivind Opsvik, bass; Mat Manieri, viola, violin; Paul Motian, drums

Back in 2005 Jacob Sacks and Eivind Opsvik wrote five songs each and invited Paul Motian and Mat Maneri with them to record 'Two Miles A Day'. ...
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151

Performance / Tour

Choi/Sacks Duo to Celebrate New CD at NYC's Hunter College Thursday October 23rd

Source: Improvised Communications
October 20, 2008

On Thursday, October 23rd, vocalist Yoon Sun Choi and pianist Jacob Sacks will celebrate the release of Imagination: The Music of Joe Raposo (Yeah Yeah Records), their second and most recent recording together, with a free performance at the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall at Manhattan's Hunter College. This innovative release finds the eight year-old jazz duo reinventing both the familiar and the more obscure music of the prolific theater, film and television composer, Joe Raposo (1937-1989). Nearly 30 years ...
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Performance / Tour

Choi/Sacks Duo to Celebrate New CD at NYC's Hunter College in October

Source: Improvised Communications
September 15, 2008

On Thursday, October 23rd, vocalist Yoon Sun Choi and pianist Jacob Sacks will celebrate the release of Imagination: The Music of Joe Raposo (Yeah Yeah Records), their second and most recent recording together, with a free performance (featuring special guests, bassist David Ambrosio and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza) at the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall at Manhattan's Hunter College. This innovative release finds the eight year-old jazz duo reinventing both the familiar and the more obscure music of the prolific theater, ...
read more

194

Recording

Jazz Duo Reinvents the Music of Joe Raposo on Its New CD, "Imagination"

Source: Improvised Communications
July 1, 2008

Brooklyn's Yeah Yeah Records is proud to announce the July 1st release of Imagination (YY0005), an innovative tribute to the music of composer Joe Raposo conceived and performed by the longstanding duo of vocalist Yoon Sun Choi and pianist Jacob Sacks.

This recording reinvents compositions written by the beloved, if somewhat unknown by name, composer of such oft-heard classics as “Bein' Green" and “Sing", as well as thousands of other lesser-known pieces.

Critics have called Imagination “one of the best ...
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...they take consistently personal, at times revisionist and occasionally radical, approaches to each track. Choi has a wonderful and at times startling voice, mixing grunts, yips and other extreme effects with more conventional and, indeed, beautiful singing. I like and even admire this CD a lot, for its adventurous spirit and fearless integrity.
—Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen

Choi and Sacks work so well together in their own charming, but somewhat weird, way that they turn this tribute to composer Joe Raposo into much more than a celebration of his music...these songs, many of which suckled the children of the ‘70s, are explored in ways previously unimagined. Choi has magnificent vocal command of a variety of styles and within this intimate context she scats, sings the blues and postures as a faux Broadway diva. She jousts with and complements Sacks as he serves as both accompanist and timekeeper, changing tempo midstream and improvising off Choi’s intriguing phrasing. Choi and Sacks clearly have fun mutating rhythms and playing with the phrasing but the songs’ serious sides are also expanded upon and revealed...[they] have dressed these children’s classics in adult clothes and the fit is near perfect.
—Elliott Simon, All About Jazz

The most striking track on the album is “Bein’ Green” which, in its original incarnation, was Kermit’s protest ballad about green pigmentation that makes frogs “blend in with so many ordinary things”. Choi’s deadpan delivery of the whimsical lyric is underpinned by a dense carpet of chromatic harmony, and the tune inhabits unexpectedly disturbing dimensions as the dislocation between voice and piano symbolises a profound sense of isolation.
—Philip Clark, The Wire

What Choi and Sacks give to his music is a challenging edge that harkens back to both the bop tradition and the exploratory nature of modern creative expressionism. Choi's pretty voice is as flexible an instrument as you might hear in contemporary jazz...easily able to scat, contort phrases, or offer witty repartee. Sacks is a different kind of piano accompanist, part Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and Misha Mengelberg. This is certainly an intriguing project, not conventional as Raposo's music might be categorized, and a wondrous collection transmuting his songs in a way the composer might have not imagined, but definitely would approve.
—Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide

Yoon Sun Choi and pianist Jacob Sacks give tribute to composer Joe Raposo on Imagination, a sophisticated reworking of the memorable melodies and lyrics that many of us first heard on children’s shows like The Electric Company and Sesame Street. The duo stays in only long enough for us to recognize the tune before taking it out to the extremities of their musical imaginations, leaving us with grown-up versions of the songs that inspired our childhood dreams. Not the Ernie and Bert you thought you knew.
—Suzanne Lorge, All About Jazz

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