TRANSMISSION ART ARCHIVE

Henry Jacobs

Henry Sandy Jacobs (1924-2015) was a “sound artist, humorist, recordist, and radio DJ…. In the 1950s, Jacobs hosted the seminal radio program ‘Music and Folklore’ on WILL in Illinois and KPFA in California. Blending ethnomusicology, satire, folklore, and a host of music recordings from Folkways Records, Jacobs’ creativity and notoriety led to the release of Radio Programme, No. 1: Henry Jacobs’ ‘Music and Folklore’ on Folkways Records in 1955. A track from Radio Programme No. 1, ‘Sonata for Loudspeakers,’ also appears on the 1957 album Sounds of New Music alongside tracks from John Cage, Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, and others. Jacobs co-created the internationally acclaimed Vortex performances, which debuted at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium in 1957 and are widely cited as inspiring the technological innovation of surround sound. In 1959, Folkways Records released excerpts from these performances on the album Highlights of Vortex: Electronic Experiments and Music.”