Jake Wren once sold guitars, basses, banjos and more at the iconic House of Guitars in Rochester, NY. He leaped into musical instrument repair: soldering horns, rebuilding clarinets, and restoring flutes. He even helping in the historical restoration of a 1924 Aeolian pipe organ built for the Sarasota Ringling Museum’s Ca’ d’Zan in Sarasota, Florida. Along the way he has taught dozens of students in music and the arts: from elementary painting skills to plucking the banjo and picking the guitar. 

Now Jacob is a Ph.D. student in Cornell’s Music and Sound Studies program, where he applies a decade of experience in the musical trades to scholarly inquiries into musical labor; working-class expression; and American folk and roots traditions. His hands know what his theory suspects: it’s just sound, but it’s never just sound.