In Her Own Name: The Complete Works of Clara Schumann (2037–2038) - Event
Overview
In Her Own Name was a twelve-concert residency led by Jacob Keller at Alice Tully Hall during the 2037–2038 performance season. Across the cycle, Jacob and an internationally assembled group of instrumentalists, singers, choral musicians, and orchestral fellows performed Clara Schumann’s complete surviving catalog. The programs included original compositions, arrangements, transcriptions, cadenzas, and editorial work and were recorded as twelve live digital volumes and a limited physical box set.
Background and Context
Jacob’s attachment to Clara Schumann predated his professional career. Her music appeared in his student recitals and later live recordings, and his daughter Clara was named for her. The residency began when Jacob was thirty, two years into fatherhood and shortly after completing his DMA.
He chose New York rather than an international tour because the project required repeated orchestral, chamber, vocal, and solo performances over many months. Keeping the work in one hall gave the recordings acoustic continuity and allowed Jacob to return home after each concert. It also preserved the care, medical, and logistical systems already organized around his epilepsy, chronic migraine, autism, and post-performance recovery.
Jacob wanted to complete the concerts within six months. Elliot Landry opposed turning that preference into a deadline. The final plan occupied the full performance season, with recovery intervals and protected alternate dates built into the venue calendar. Public materials promised the complete cycle without promising that Jacob would finish it by a date his body might not honor.
Development and Collaboration
The Orchestra of St. Luke’s served as the professional orchestral anchor. The remaining performers were assembled through direct invitations and open calls to conservatories around the world. Juilliard, Mannes, and Manhattan School of Music supplied part of the New York cohort, but the cycle was not restricted to American institutions.
The recurring musicians were credited as the cycle ensemble of ‘’In Her Own Name’‘. The phrase described their function rather than establishing a permanent organization. Recurring professional principals created continuity across the season, while students, faculty members, alumni, singers, and specialists joined the programs suited to their repertoire.
Jacob grouped the twelve concerts thematically. The first programs examined Clara’s early virtuoso identity; later concerts centered private and mature piano music, contrapuntal and pedagogical work, chamber music, songs, choral writing, arrangements, transcription, editing, and orchestral repertoire.
Recording and Accessibility Logistics
Each concert was recorded once as a complete public event. The corresponding album volume used only that night’s performance and received light editing and mastering. No alternate concert supplied repair passages. The policy preserved the atmosphere Jacob valued while avoiding the repeated takes and composite perfection of a conventional classical studio project.
Alice Tully Hall maintained a consistent piano setup, seizure-conscious lighting plan, quiet recovery room, controlled arrival and exit routes, and restricted press access. Jacob had no stage-door or reception obligations. Protected alternate dates allowed a concert to be rescheduled rather than performed during a neurologically unsafe period.
The full-season calendar was a care structure rather than a publicity hook. It gave Jacob space to recover between concerts, remain present as Clara’s father, and rehearse with changing forces without compressing the entire project into consecutive weeks. He continued to dislike rescheduling and often experienced it as bodily failure, but the residency did not hide a changed date or force him to perform to avoid one.
Immediate Outcome
Each concert became a rolling digital volume through Tessitura, Fifth Bar Records’ classical imprint, after Jacob approved the master. Following the final volume, the full cycle appeared in archival and artist’s CD editions.
Reviews treated the cycle as a landmark and gave renewed attention to portions of Clara’s catalog rarely programmed in major halls. The thematic programs influenced later surveys of composers whose arranging, editing, and performance work had been historically separated from their original compositions.
The residency also triggered predictable coverage of Jacob himself. Writers revived the “prodigy” label associated with his performance of Beethoven’s Op. 111 at eighteen and treated the thirty-year-old DMA graduate’s age as part of the story. Some coverage reduced the full-season design to a narrative about overcoming epilepsy and migraine. Jacob objected to both frames because they displaced Clara Schumann from a project deliberately built around her authorship.
Long-Term Consequences
The residency established ‘’In Her Own Name’’ as one of Jacob’s major career achievements. A twenty-fifth-anniversary vinyl edition appeared in 2062 while he was alive, followed by a memorial repress after his death in 2083. The original performances remained intact across both editions.
The project’s broader effects included increased programming of Clara’s songs, contrapuntal works, arrangements, and editorial labor and wider interest in live recording policies that disclosed production choices rather than disguising them.
Related Entries
Related Entries: Jacob Keller – Biography; Jacob Keller – Career and Legacy; Clara Keller; Elliot Landry; Tessitura; Fifth Bar Records; Alice Tully Hall; Lincoln Center; Juilliard School; In Her Own Name: The Complete Works of Clara Schumann