MELVILLE, N.Y. – Music has always been part of David Jacobson's life. But the tragedy of 9/11 let the 43-year old president of indirect lending company GrooveCar use his talents in a way he never anticipated by inspiring him to write a song he performed in public on July 4, 2002 together with the Long Island Philharmonic Orchestra. Jacobson says he's been writing songs or playing music "forever." He has particularly fond memories of being a member of a three-person band in junior high school called Black Diamond whose bass player now plays with well-known group Pink Floyd. Jacobson estimates he's written about 1,000 songs, but he's never had time to take his music interests "to the next level." "You have to choose a career, and I chose this one I'm in now," he says.
Still, Jacobson has remained extremely involved in music-he has a recording studio in his home in Jericho, Nassau County.
Jacobson lost a lot of people he knew in the 9/11 attacks. Many of the people he went to school with worked for brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which was located in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center and lost 658 employees in the terrorist attack.
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"As all Americans learned, you didn't have to lose someone personally in the attack to be touched by what happened," he said adding that, "Everywhere you went on Long Island you met people who lost someone, or when you went into Manhattan and passed a fire station you saw a sign about how many people they'd lost. You just couldn't get away from it." Jacobson needed to find an outlet for his emotions, and not surprisingly he found that by writing the song "The Hero Bells Ring." Remembering when he wrote the piece, he recalled, "Usually it takes me awhile to write something because I have to give it some thought, but this song came to me in 20 minutes. I wrote nonstop. I needed to put the words down."
After he burned the song on a CD, a friend who heard it suggested it would sound beautiful with background orchestration. As it happened, the Long Island Philharmonic's headquarters was located next to GrooveCar's offices, so Jacobson brought it over for them to hear. "They were blown away," he remembers, adding they suggested he contact composer and arranger Larry Spivack who wound up putting it into a 40-piece orchestra arrangement. The Long Island Philharmonic also decided to include it in their planned 9/11 tribute during the upcoming July 4th celebration at the Brookhaven Amphitheatre, complete with Grucci fireworks. Jacobson, a tenor, wound up singing his song to an estimated audience of over 100,000 people. Since then, Jacobson has written a second 9/11 tribute song called "From Ashes to Life" about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. The song has been recorded with an orchestration of 15-20 instruments, and the Long Island Philharmonic has suggested Jacobson play it for a ballet company to perform. "I've written a lot of songs in my life, but these two songs have been a complete labor of love for me," says Jacobson. -
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