Eric Jacobsen (conductor)

Eric Jacobsen (born July 16, 1982 in Long Island, New York) is an American conductor and cellist. He is currently a member of Brooklyn Rider, The Knights, and the Silk Road Project, and is the Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, and an artistic partner of the Northwest Sinfonietta.

Jacobsen is the son of Edmund Jacobsen, a violinist and former member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and Ivy Jacobsen, a noted flutist. His brother is violinist Colin Jacobsen, with whom he co-founded Brooklyn Rider and The Knights. The Jacobsen brothers were largely exposed to music through their parents, whose late night chamber music soirees in part influenced the brothers to study music and inspired them to believe in, and later promote, classical music as a party. Jacobsen graduated from The Juilliard School.

He often takes up the baton for The Knights, with whom he has recorded an extensive collection of albums and toured in North America and Europe. The Knights are an orchestral collective, flexible in size and repertory, whose mission is to transform the concert experience. With a collaborative rehearsal process and the desire to promote musical discovery, The Knights have been called “one of Brooklyn’s sterling cultural products...known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory” by the New Yorker. The ensemble has worked with some of the most popular names in music, from Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Itzhak Perlman, Jan Vogler, and Gil Shaham to Bela Fleck and Joshua Redman. Members include performers, composers, arrangers, improvisors, and singer-songwriters, and the group has many cultural influences across musical genres.

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