Abram began improvising at age 3 and performing in public at age 6. At the urging of Ignace Jan Paderewski and Josef Hofmann, who had heard Abram in concert, his parents enrolled him in the Curtis Institute, where he studied with Ernest Hutcheson. At age 13, Abram transferred to the Juilliard School, where he continued his studies with Hofmann and David Saperton. The National Federation of Music Clubs awarded Abram its Schubert Memorial Award in 1937.

During World War II, Abram was stationed with a special services unit in San Antonio, Texas. He served as Artist in Residence at Toronto, Canada's University of Toronto and Royal Conservatory of Music in the 1950s, and in 1963 he moved to Tampa, where he was on the faculty of the University of South Florida.

In 1948, Abram gave the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's piano concerto in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1949 he gave the work its New York premiere under the baton of Leopold Stokowski, and on January 25, 1956 he was soloist in the work's first recording, with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Herbert Menges. EMI has reissued that recording on compact disc. According to the composer, Abram also gave the first English and US performances of Arthur Benjamin's 1949 Concerto quasi una Fantasia; in Benjamin's words, "Jacques Abram, the American pianist, gave it its first English performance at the Cheltenham Festival in 1952 and the first American performance in San Antonio in 1953.

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