Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner Ted Jacobs
Brings the Celtic World Alive on the
Hilltown Family Variety Show this Weekend

The Hilltown Families Variety Show presents Guest DJ Ted Jacobs this weekend! On Saturday, November 19th from 9-10am, Jacobs will share songs from his albums, “A Child’s Garden of Songs” and “Back to the Garden” (musical adaptations of selections from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses), as well as his love of all things Celtic, with listeners. Jacobs’ music features traditional Celtic instruments such as fiddles, bag pipes, and pennywhistles, and the show will feature a kid-friendly discussion of the history of Celtic culture and the Gaelic language. Also, accompanying his poetry-inspired work, Jacobs will explain how he works to pair music to verses! Tune in to WXOJ 103.3FM (Northampton, MA) on Sat., 11/19 from 9-10am (encore will air on Sun. 11/20 from 7-8am) or anytime to the Hilltown Family Variety Show podcast. Listen in to learn more about music composing, song writing and a fascinating culture!

Award-winning, Los Angeles-based musician/composer Ted Jacobs is dedicated to presenting exquisite acoustic musical settings of the world’s most beloved poetry.  Ted will bring his love for all things Celtic to Hilltown Family Variety Show as the program’s “Guest DJ”  on Saturday, November 19 at 9:00 a.m. and Sunday, November 20 at 7:00 a.m.  Hilltown Family Variety Show is broadcast every Saturday and Sunday on Northampton radio station 103.3FM WXOJ-LP (Valley Free Radio) and may also be heard online on the Hilltown Family Variety Show podcast immediately following the airing on Saturday.

Ted Jacobs will regale his listeners with Celtic poetry, music, and narrative.   He’ll discuss such Celtic instruments as fiddles, bag pipes, uilleann pipes, accordion, pennywhistles, bodhran, bones, and spoons, and will delve into Celtic origins, covering the various Celtic tribes  (Scottish, Irish, French, Spanish) and providing an overview of the Gaelic language.   A section on the gifts the Celts brought with them to America (music, dance, and food) will include American songs of Celtic origin, such as  “Shenandoah.”  In the food department, Ted will expound upon the delights of haggis!

Possessing a special expertise in the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson, Ted Jacobs will share fascinating details of Stevenson’s life and will outline his process for matching poems to songs, demonstrating with spoken and sung versions of Stevenson’s  “My Ship and I,” “The Swing,” “My Shadow,” “Farewell to the Farm,”  and “The Moon.” Other music on this program will include selections by  Altan, Old Blind Dogs, and The Chieftains, as well as a trio of songs of longing:  Paul McCartney’s “Mull of Kintyre,” Andy Irvine’s “My Heart’s Tonight in Ireland, and Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.”

ABOUT TED JACOBS

Ted Jacobs’ first two albums, A Child’s Garden Of Songs (1999, with songs based on poetry from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses) and The Days Gone By (2000, with songs based on poetry of Eugene Field, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Whitcomb Riley) were honored with the prestigious Parent’s Choice® Award, with A Child’s Garden of Songs receiving a Parents’ Choice® Silver Honor Award and The Days Gone By taking home a Parents’ Choice® Gold Award.  The Days Gone By was additionally honored by Parents’ Choice® as one of their “25 Best Albums of the Last 25 Years.”  Both albums also received NAPPA (National Parenting Publications) Gold Awards.  Ted Jacobs’  2011 release, Back to the Garden (2011), is the long-awaited companion to A Child’s Garden of Songs.

Born in Park Ridge, Illinois in 1963, Ted Jacobs taught himself to play piano and guitar at the age of five.  From the very first, a vital part of his musical adventures has been writing songs. Following formal studies at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and encouragedby the sale of his first song, Jacobs moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a songwriter.  He landed a job as staff writer at Sony Music, where he wrote and produced half a dozen songs for a youthful girl group that featured an 18-year-old Stacey “Fergie” Fergusson.  Through the years, many of Ted’s songs have been featured on TV (Scrubs, Chicago Hope, Providence, Felicity, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and more). His work inthe film industry produced the title song to Blake Edwards’ Skin Deep and the score for the award-winning indie film Idling Brando, among other projects. As a music producer, he has also worked with Clint Black in re-creating thirteen of Black’s back catalog hits as R & B and pop songs.  While Ted spends much of his time as an independent music producer for indie artists, his music-based-on-poetry albums are his passion.  He explains,”I write music, not lyrics; so to find these breathtaking poems and set them to music has been the great joy of my life.”  Ted feels strongly that the poems should be sung exactly as the poet wrote them, with nothing repeated and nothing deleted. – Find out more about Teb Jacobs at www.houseatthecorner.com.