Jacob Richman is a mixed-media composer whose work explorers the relationship between sound and image in live performance. His pieces mix live-processed moving images (film and video), music, and sound to create interactive, multimedia settings in which live performers can interact.

Jacob was born in Chicago in 1981, and grew up there and in Sacramento, California. He has played jazz bass and classical trombone since his youth, and graduated with a joint BA in
music composition and film/video from Harvard University. He later received his MA in
Media Arts from the University of Michigan. His pieces have been performed in NYC, Boston, and around the country. He was recently a Lecturer in Video at the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan, and has been awed by the opportunity he has had to learn from his many talented students. He is currently a doctoral student in Media Arts in the MEME Department at Brown University.

Jacob’s use of mixed-media is always in an attempt to express a certain subject or experience to which he is deeply drawn. The particular relationships between sound and image, such as movement, tempo, subject matter, as well as the media and performers he chooses to work with depend on these subjects. At this point they have included such disparate things as a favorite poem, an old lullaby, Sardinian folk singing, and a herd of elk.

He is fascinated by what he sees in his subjects as the interconnectedness of things: people with places, sounds with textures, humans with animals, plants and the natural world.
He feels that exploring the relationships between sounds and images in performance is an effective way to both investigate and convey these greater inherent connections that surround us.