Jacob Pavek is a rising Minnesotan composer. He’s already been nominated for an Emmy, and he’s got a stream of new music coming out over the next three Fridays. His music will make the perfect transition from hurried workweek to chill weekend.
Please tell us about yourself.
Minnesota born-raised (for the most part) living in Saint Paul currently with my wife, three boys under three, and three cats. Quite the circus! My father is a musician so I grew up exposed to so many different genres of music. I finally picked up the guitar around age 14 and started writing “songs” and playing in bands with my friends. It wasn’t until senior year of high school that I discovered my love for piano and composing instrumental music. I went to university for music composition and soon after began writing modern classical type compositions with a blend of influences such as Radiohead, Bon Iver, Copeland, etc. While having a separate day job to pay the bills, music has always been my passion and have truly enjoyed checking things off my bucket list such as opening for me hero Johann Johannson in 2016, being nominated for an Emmy for an original soundtrack, and playing some extraordinarily fun shows throughout the years.
Your music is so lovely. The music conveys a mood or a feeling, while many your songs have tangible titles. How do you conjure the mood? For example, I expect the song Kate is written with someone named Kate in mind. (Please correct me if I’m wrong that would be so interesting.) Do you set off to write a song about Kate or do you start playing and Kate seeps in?
Thank you! Instrumental music is incredibly tough to name. Especially because MOST of my music isn’t intentionally about a certain subject matter. I like to think it’s semi sub-conscious. So I tend to use names for more of an aesthetic purpose. NINA, Bloom, Nome, etc were all pretty words to me.
“kate” is an exception. I won’t tell you the meaning directly but if you know me well (or do a quick social media stalking), you’ll be quick to figure it out.
I understand NINA was your senior project. It’s so rich and dreamy. How does one sum up or represent four years in a song? Especially given the four years in question.
Thank you, again! For some reason, it takes me a long time to finish a record. I usually have about 4x the subject matter and then whittle it down to my favorites to make up the album. NINA was no exception. But I feel like these last four years were quite eventful for me (for most of us in some ways tbh) but along with the pandemic, social strife, etc I became a father which has been the greatest adventure thus far. I feel like this album has been influenced by all of this in different ways so it’s a sort of collection of my experiences (though semi subconsciously).
What are blueprints for your music? I love the generous and collaborative nature of the idea.
I received many requests for sheet music so I thought it would be a fun exercise to transcribe a few and offer it for free. I wasn’t expecting anyone to spend much money on it anyway but seeing people post videos playing my tunes is payment enough. The feeling of watching a complete stranger in Russia on YouTube play Illume on piano better than me is pretty surreal and I’m very fortunate.
Please tell us more about your plans to release music over the next three weeks.
Well, lately I’ve only been posting videos of toddlers and cats on social media so I’m looking forward to finally sharing some music again! We’ll start with a couple singles and then NINA will be out in its entirety June 14th. We also have a release show in the works so stay tuned for that!
Mostly Minnesota 