About
Quote by Veronica Franco, trans. Margaret F. Rosenthal
Jumpsuit from Goodwill Boston
Photo by Geneva Lewis
Cellist Annie Jacobs-Perkins wants to do more than make art; she wants to turn her life into a piece of art. Annie’s love of interdisciplinary work has led her to collaborate with painters, dancers, potters, cheesemongers, fashion designers, boxers, composers, poets, woodworkers, essayists, knitters, and farmers. She believes that it is the duty of an artist to protect beauty that already exists in the world, and as such, is a passionate participant in local, sustainable agriculture and a boycotter of fast fashion. Music is one of the ways she digs her toes into the earth around her.
Praised for anything from “hypnotic lyricism, causing listeners to forget where they were for a moment” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) to "delightfully pluck[ing] and slapp[ing] her cello like a rockabilly upright bassist" (The Democrat and Chronicle), Annie is known for “eras[ing] all kinds of boundaries” (USC Thornton School of Music) with her music.
Annie is 1st prize winner of the 2023 Pierre Fournier Award in London, as a result of which she recently recorded her debut album with the Champs Hill Label and presented a recital at Wigmore Hall. In the coming seasons she will perform as soloist with the London Philharmonia, among fulfilling other performance engagements in England. She is also the recent recipient of 1st prize, “Prix Buchet,” at the 2024 Buchet International Cello Competition in Brussels.
After winning the 2022 Father Merlet Award from the Pro Musicis Foundation, Annie commissioned composers Stratis Minakakis and Daniel Temkin to write two works for cello and piano responding to the climate crisis. Working with living composers such as Timo Andres, Brett Dean, Konstantia Gourzi, Jessie Montgomery, Jeffrey Mumford, Paul Wiancko, Octavio Vazquez, and Jörg Widmann has been some of the most rewarding work of her career.
In the 2023-24 season, Annie was Artist-in-Residence at the EstOvest Festival Contemporary Cello Week in Turin, Italy and gave the Washington DC premiere of Jeffrey Mumford’s concerto of radiances blossoming in expanding air… with the Post-Classical Ensemble at the Kennedy Center. In the 2024-25 season she plays regularly as a guest cellist with Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern.
With a deep commitment to chamber music, Annie is the Artist-in-Residence of the Austin Chamber Music Center in Texas and the cellist of the Berlin-based piano trio, Trio Brontë. Trio Brontë is the 1st place winner and winner of the special CD-production prize at the 2025 Franz Schubert und die Musik der Moderne Competition in Austria, as well as 1st prize winner of the 2023 Ilmari Hannikainen International Piano Chamber Music Competition in Finland and 2nd prize winner of the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition in Germany. Annie regularly participates in festivals such as Krzyżowa Music, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Yellow Barn, Marlboro Music, La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, and Perlman Music Program, where she has collaborated with artists such as Miriam Fried, Viviane Hagner, Nobuko Imai, Anthony Marwood, Donald Weilerstein, and members of the Brentano, Doric, Juilliard, Kuss, and Verona Quartets. Her performances have brought her to venues such as Carnegie Hall, Flagey Studios, the Kennedy Center, het Konzertgebouw, and Wigmore Hall.
Annie holds an Artist Diploma from the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin and masters degrees from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler and New England Conservatory, where she was the recipient of the Laurence Lesser Presidential Scholarship. In addition to a bachelor of music, Annie holds minors in English and German Studies from the University of Southern California, where she was a Trustee Scholar and a recipient of the 2018 Outstanding Graduate Award. Annie combines her love of words and her love of music by writing program notes; she writes regularly for the Yellow Barn Festival and Newport Classical. In 2020 Annie guest lectured at McGill University on the topic of writing engaging program notes. Her primary teachers are Frans Helmerson, Troels Svane, Laurence Lesser, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Kathleen Murphy Kemp. Other important influences include Guy Fishman, David Geringas, Geoff Dyer, and Thomas Gustafson.
Annie spends her free time foraging for indigenous edible plants, painting a watercolor travel journal inspired by Felix Mendelssohn’s paintings of Switzerland, pretending to be a dog with her dogs Georgie and Farley, and adoring her nephews Charlie (human), Robin (human), Arthur (dog), and Dusty (cat). Annie’s historical role models are the Ice Princess of the Ukok Peninsula, Hypsicratea, Veronica Franco, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Ennio Bolognini.