Arnold Jacobs 1915-1998: A Brief Biographical Sketch

Jacobs was born in Philadelphia, June 11, 1915, but grew up in Santa Monica, CA.

His mother was a pianist for Hollywood movie back lots, and silent movie theaters. He began music by playing trumpet. He imitated his mother. “How to play” was not discussed, only “How to sound”.

Jacobs was called into “service” of the tuba early in high school. At age 15 he was awarded the tuba scholarship at the Curtis Institute. He also studied voice at Curtis, and gigged around town on bass, too.

Jacobs was hired as the Chicago Symphony tubist in 1944. Soon after, he began his life-long study of human biology and psychology.

During the early-1950s he began conducting experiments at the Univ. of Chicago Medical School, and Mayo Clinic. Among his many experiments were measuring intra-oral air pressures, and airflow rates.

During the late-1940s and early-1950s, Jacobs began teaching from a position of neuralplasticity, even though neuroscientists at that time taught the exact opposite.

During the 1990s, with the advent of MRI, fMRI, and CT scan brain diagnostic capabilities, brain science caught up to Jacobs, and now we see neuralplasticity as an accepted fact, being discussed and written about often.

It was in this neuralplasticity milieu that Jacobs’s popularity as a teacher of all instruments, voice types, and, in some cases, string players, took off. He achieved results with his students that became legendary.

He often worked with the student’s mind. He knew that to have lasting change in the player, the instrument in the mind was the most important area on which to focus, not the instrument in the hands.

Jacobs would often say “The instrument in the hands should be a mirror image of the instrument in the mind.”

Because Jacobs taught based on bio/physio/psycho fact, lessons went from being “Do as I say because this is what works for me” (anecdotal), to (with Jacobs) “Do as I say because this is what works for humans” (empirical).

During his teaching career, Jacobs was regarded as the most effective teacher of music alive. Musicians came from all over the globe in order to have their problems solved by him. He did this for six decades.

Jacobs retired from the CSO in 1988, but continued teaching for the remainder of his life.

On the morning of October 7, 1998, Arnold Jacobs died while napping at home. There was a student from Europe waiting for a lesson at his studio.

In December 1998 there was a memorial for Jacobs at Orchestra Hall which was organized by Gene Pokorny. It was sold out. Over 2500 people attended.