For organist Paul Jacobs, a life without Bach is a life not worth living.

By that measure, Jacobs will be living life to the utmost when, for 14 consecutive evenings starting Sunday, he undertakes a marathon performance of Bach's complete organ works.

"I look at it as nothing less than a serious and grievous crime that more people have not had the proper exposure to Johann Sebastian Bach," he said on Tuesday from his Philadelphia home. "Because Bach literally can affect and change a person's life — and does.

"That's the purpose of his music," Jacobs added. "It wasn't meant to be entertainment at all. It was meant to move intensely."

It will be one day after he graduates from the Curtis Institute of Music that Jacobs, 23, will launch the remarkable musical undertaking.

The performance of more than 200 works will take place at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, following a $10 million renovation of the site and its 4,000-pipe Casavant organ.

Jacobs already accomplished this formidable task once before during this 250th anniversary of Bach's death. He performed the Baroque master's complete canon of organ music in March at the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, Pa., where Jacobs is the Chapel's organist.

"Bach had always been one of my very favorite composers," said Jacobs, who began studying the organ at 13. "And my first year at Curtis in 1995, it was a dream of mine one day to play all of his organ music."

Jacobs began preparing the complete Bach organ cycle that same year, extensively researching the music for authenticity and rehearsing intensively, even spending a full seven to eight hours of each day of his summer breaks in relentless practice.

"How long have I been rehearsing?" Jacobs said, pondering the question and chuckling amiably. "Of course, all my life is the real answer."

Ask Jacobs about the importance of Bach's work in our world today, however, and his response is far more expansive.

"The music of Bach today is one of the most powerful and moving expressions that we have — of anything. And that's pretty remarkable considering that here's a human being that's been dead for 250 years, but yet he's sort of wafted over into eternity.

"Bach will be around long after we are all gone," he said. "I think if we ponder that, it gives us a sense of what greatness really is. And if we realize that he's truly great, then we can begin to understand that there's something here that's going to move us. It's intense, it's beautiful, and it can stir every emotion in our soul."