Jack Kessler

Jack Kessler is a Master of Music student at the Yale School of Music, where he studies viola with Ettore Causa. He received his Bachelor of Music at the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Roberto Diaz and Edward Gazouleas. At Curtis, he took an interest in conducting and was mentored by Jonathan Coopersmith, the head of the Musical Studies department. He has performed on the Curtis Presents series with Noah Bendix Balgley, and is grateful for the numerous chamber music coachings he received from Shmuel Ashkenasi and Arnold Steinhardt. While growing up in Miami, FL and attending New World School of the Arts, he had the privilege of studying with Michael Klotz from Florida International University. Jack was a National YoungArts Foundation finalist and performed on NPR’s From The Top with Jeremy Denk at Dartmouth College. In recent summers, Jack studied at The Perlman Music Program, Ashkenasi-Kirshbaum Chamber Music Seminar at the Heifetz International Music Institute, the Verbier Festival Academy, and the Fontainebleau American Conservatory. He is also a proud alumnus of the Bowdoin International Music Festival. The Perlman Music Program has continuously invited Jack to perform on their alumni concert series at the Neue Galerie in NYC and in venues around South Florida, including in Sarasota and Manalapan. At the Fontainebleau Festival, Jack received a special award for a transcription of Ravel’s Song Cycle Don Quichotte a Dulcinee for Viola and Piano, for which he is working to publish with the Ravel Foundation. In the orchestral realm, Jack has been a substitute violist with the New World Symphony on numerous occasions. His non-classical ventures include recording on violin and viola for the hard rock band Breaking Benjamin’s album Aurora in Brooklyn in 2019.

At Curtis, he was the Chamber Music Coordinator alongside his mentor Steven Tenenbom. They organized a concert in the spring of 2023 to honor composers who perished in the Holocaust. To continue this passion, in December of 2023 in Brooklyn, Jack performed in the second production of the concert theater work directed by Ben Moore, Bill Barclay, and Shira Nayman titled Awake in the Dark, adapted from the collection of short stories of the same name by Shira Nayman. The story highlights the story of a “young woman desperate to understand the memory that haunts her and the woman she calls her mother.” Along with Ms. Nayman, Jack is working to bring the production around the country.

At Yale, Jack works for the Oral History of American Music, transcribing interviews with the major musical figures of our time such as Gabriela Lena Frank and students of the late oboist Ronald Roseman. Jack’s other passions include studying geography, archeology, and urban mobility. He attended weekly lectures at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology in Philadelphia, PA while a student at Curtis, and is in the process of writing an op-ed article for the Philadelphia Inquirer encouraging New Jersey Transit to allow bicycles on peak trains. He relishes his home of Miami, FL and is an avid kayaker in the waters of Biscayne Bay and the Everglades.