Evanston RoundTable, Feb. 27, 2024
In the 1995 movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, Mr. Holland (played by Richard Dreyfus) has to “settle” for a career as a high school music teacher when what he really wants to do is write a monumental symphony.
Dean Holland at his desk. Behind him is the keyboard on which he composes.
The new Dean of Music at Northwestern University, Jonathan Bailey Holland, seems to have the movie character’s conundrum all figured out: he’s a top music school administrator, longtime teacher and award-winning composer.
Last Sept. 1 he took over the job of running Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music, rated No. 2 in the nation. Since then several of his pieces have been performed on campus, and in early April he heads to Los Angeles to hear the L.A. Philharmonic play the world premiere of his latest symphony, titled Assemble, a commissioned piece.
In his spare time he likes to teach composition, which he did for 22 years at Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory, at the same time also teaching for 10 years at Vermont College of Fine Arts. He also was on faculty at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Last year he briefly headed up the Carnegie Mellon School of Music before coming to Northwestern.
How does he find time to do it all? Does he sleep?
“When I was younger I could burn the candle at both ends. That doesn’t work as well these days,” the affable 49-year-old said, laughing.
“I’ve been doing it so long, it feels natural to me at this point,” Holland added during an interview in his comfortable fourth floor office of the Ryan Center for the Musical Arts, overlooking Lake Michigan, affectionately nicknamed Battleship Bienen. In fact, he pointed out that everything fits together: the teaching informs his understanding of what the faculty needs and keeps him in front of students, while the composing feeds his nearly lifelong creative drive.
“I enjoy all of it,” he added. “The faculty is outstanding, the facility is amazing and the students put on great performances. So it’s great to come to work every day.”
From Flint to Harvard
Holland was born and grew up in Flint, Michigan. His father taught auto mechanics at the local vocational high school. Though his parents weren’t musicians, they loved music and had a piano in the living room, his grandfather’s, on which as a boy he would “write little songs.”
In middle school, he said, he began thinking seriously about music as a career, playing trumpet in the school band, and convinced his parents to send him to the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy for high school.
After he blew out his lips on trumpet his sophomore year, he “naturally gravitated” towards his other musical passion, composing. At Curtis, he studied with composer-in-residence Bernard Rands, who was on faculty at Harvard University, which is where Holland got his doctorate. His doctoral submission was a 20-minute piece based on the paintings of Jackson Pollack titled Actions Rendered: interpretations of Pollock for Three Orchestras.
Since then he’s written some 100 compositions, including more than 20 orchestral pieces, two dozen chamber works, seven short solo pieces (including for piano, electric guitar, violin, B-flat cornet and marimba), operas and ballets, song cycles and choral works. Most are listed on his website and have links to online recordings.
Many honors
Aside from numerous commissions, he has received many honors and awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Fromm Commission from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship and a Live Arts Boston grant from the Boston Foundation.
One of the pieces, the song cycle To What Purpose, April, for soprano and piano, was written at the request of a professional vocalist who later became his wife, Sarah. They live in Evanston and have a 14-year-old daughter, Fiona, who is studying viola and will start at Evanston Township High School in the fall.
His 2003 expressionistic orchestra piece Halcyon Sun was commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony to celebrate the opening of the National Underground Freedom Center. Holland described writing it while “thinking about what the sun represented for someone in captivity,” and then “all of the different colors of the sun slowly moving across the sky as it might appear to someone fleeing to and finding freedom.”
Though he has no single favorite among his many compositions, he said, “I feel proud of Halcyon Sun, which was my first, larger-scale orchestral work. I felt that I was successful at realizing my artistic vision.”
Not a pianist, he manages to composes on the portable keyboard at his desk, with which he works using the software program Finale.
With respect to his large output, he may have been influenced by composer Ned Rorem, with whom he studied at Curtis Institute. “He said there was no such thing as writer’s block,” Holland reflected. “It took a while for me to understand what that meant. But in essence his point was that while a creator might have a momentary point of inspiration, you can always be working on that piece, regardless of whether you remain inspired. It was an important lesson.”
Nowadays, when he finds some free time, he may sneak off to an empty practice room to work on his latest composition. Dean Holland’s opus, it would seem, is managing to juggle all his hugely demanding roles.
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