Jake Darnell

Jake Darnell, originally from Emerson, Georgia, is the Timpani Fellow of the New World Symphony. He is also the Principal Timpanist of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra in Huntsville, AL, a position he has held since 2022.Jake is passionate about the performance of new and innovative music. He spent the summers of 2022 and 2023 performing with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra as a fellow of the Lucerne Festival Academy; he also performed in the Lucerne Festival’s 2023 Forward Festival. It was in Lucerne that Jake performed world premieres of works by Liza Lim and Thomas Adès, and Swiss premieres of works by Mathias Spahlinger, Unsuk Chin, Wolfgang Rihm, and Tyshawn Sorey. In 2022, Jake premiered Rhiannon Giddens’ and Michael Abels’ Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar at Spoleto Festival USA. Jake was additionally a fellow of Music Academy in 2019.Jake holds an Artist Diploma from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he was a student of Matthew Strauss; a Master of Music degree from Boston University, where he was a student of Tim Genis and Kyle Brightwell; and a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Markus Rhoten.An experienced orchestra librarian, Jake has worked as a part-time assistant and substitute librarian in the libraries of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Houston Symphony. He spent four seasons as the librarian of Music Academy of the West and two as the librarian of Spoleto Festival USA.In his spare time, Jake enjoys making espresso, running, doing yoga, hiking, and napping on the beach.