Jacob E. Goodman: Music for the Soul

Jacob E. Goodman – a mathematician and geometer at the City College of New York – passed away last October at the age of 87 in San Rafael, California, working and creating music till the last minute of his life.

January 2021. The pandemic locked us in our home. There were no vaccines available and the only medical prescription recommended in the US at that time was: stay at home. My wife is a pianist. She used to play at the 2-3 annual concerts organized by NACUSA, the National Association of Composers USA (San Francisco branch). When the pandemic broke out in March 2020, everyone thought that in a few months, life will return to normal. So NACUSA began postponing the live concerts month after month, until it finally sank in that we are for a long ride with this virus.

NACUSA decided then to move to virtual concerts on-line at the beginning of 2021: every performer had to take care of all the prosaic elements associated with the performance. This is how I became the technical producer for all the pianistic endeavors of my wife. I became an “expert” in high-quality microphones, webcams, music recordings and video recordings.

The first virtual on-line NACUSA concert was held in February 2021. My wife played Jacob Goodman’s “Variations on a Theme of Beethoven”. The second virtual on-line NACUSA concert was held in April 2021. The photo you see at the beginning of this article is from the video/audio recording I made for NACUSA’s April 2021 concert. My wife played at that concert a 17-minute piece by Jacob Goodman, titled “15 Variations on fragments of a Schubert theme”. You can listen and see my wife playing this piece at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xj01hVP28lNp50c3Gk4pXReqXXQZIXkj/view?usp=sharing

Enjoy the music and have a Happy 2022 New Year!