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About John

John Jacobson was born in Black River Falls, Wisconsin February 21, 1957. He spent his childhood in nearby Blair, Wisconsin where his father was the superintendent of schools and his mother a fifth grade teacher. He has five brothers and four sisters who are all either, teachers, ministers or school administrators. Blair was a small union town with the primary industry being the Blair Cheese Factory. If you didn't work at the Cheese factory you probably worked on the farm providing the milk to the factory. Jacobson's brothers all worked summers at the cheese factory to pay their way through college. In his youth Jacobson worked for the local dairyman delivering products to homes and businesses throughout the community and for the local farmers during the harvest. It is here that Jacobson first learned that in America unions were our greatest antipoverty generators, a vital role they continue to play in our society today.

After graduating from high school Jacobson attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin where he earned a Bachelor in Music Degree. During the summers of his undergraduate years he began a long working arrangement with Walt Disney Productions. After college graduation this summer job became a permanent position and Jacobson worked for Disney in many capacities at Walt Disney World in Florida, Disneyland in California, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, all over the world with the Disney On Ice productions and for a year as a performer and show director at Tokyo Disneyland in Japan.

On returning from Japan, Jacobson combined his educational background with his professional entertainment experience and started John Jacobson Productions. His professional activities included teaching workshops for teachers all over the world, staging extravaganzas such as portions of The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for NBC and the inaugurations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. It was during this time he moved to Washington DC in order to complete his masters degree at Georgetown University where he graduated with distinction having earned a Masters of Liberal Studies Degree. For his Master's Thesis Jacobson wrote an account of the life of Mitchell Red Cloud, a Winnebago Medal Of Honor winner in the Korean conflict.

Jacobson is the founder and volunteer president of America Sings! Inc., a non-profit organization that encourages young performers to use their time and talents for community service. In October of 2001 President George Bush named John Jacobson a Point of Light award winner for his "dedication to providing young people involved in the arts opportunities to combine music, charitable giving and community service." Jacobson is recognized internationally as a creative and motivating speaker for teachers and students, school boards and parent associations. He is the author and composer of many musicals and choral works that have been performed by millions of children worldwide, as well as educational videos and tapes that have helped music educators excel in their individual teaching arenas. Jacobson stars in children's musicals and exercise videotapes, most recently the series jJump! A Fitness Program for Children and is the Senior Contributing Writer for John Jacobson’s Music Express Magazine. Both jJump! and John Jacobson's Music Express have been awarded prestigious Parent's Choice Awards. Jacobson's book A Place In The Choir: Finding Harmony in a World of Many Voices with a forward by Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund is rapidly becoming a staple with music teachers worldwide. He is an author on the new Macmillan-McGraw Hill textbook series Spotlight On Music. Jacobson has conducted seminars for teachers in every state in the union as well as numerous overseas conferences.

Fifteen years ago, Jacobson moved to Siskiyou County in Northern, California. He now lives on a fifteen hundred acre ranch just outside of Weed, California where he continues to serve as the CEO of America Sings! and its nearly 300,000 participants and as senior writer for John Jacobson's Music Express Magazine with 3.5 million readers worldwide.

Among his greatest personal achievements Jacobson lists climbing Mount Kilimanjaro; boating the Amazon, the Nile, and the Rhine; crossing the former Soviet Union via the Trans–Siberian Railroad; filming a documentary for the Lutheran Church in Madagascar; traversing Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Liberia, Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, Spain and the rest of Europe, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, and most of Central America; greeting the dawn in Varanasi, India; teaching music in Papua New Guinea and on and on. But his greatest accomplishment has been spending a lifetime using beautiful music to help inspire beautiful children.