Jonathan Bailey Holland, Dean and Composer

Jonathan Bailey Holland, current Dean and Professor of Music at Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music, was raised in Flint, Michigan, by music-loving parents who worked for the Flint schools. Music was always playing in their home, either on the radio or from his ­father’s extensive record collection of everything from jazz to classical. Jonathan says that all styles excited him from an early age and he responded to “any kind of music that made you move!”

Jonathan began taking piano lessons at ten, then added trumpet a year later, a choice inspired in part by his dad’s recordings of Cliff Brown, Miles Davis and other jazz greats. Then an excellent middle school band teacher inspired him to take music seriously. In fact, the first public performance of a Jonathan Bailey Holland composition was a fanfare for trumpets in that same middle school. When he was in eighth grade, a poster for Interlochen Arts Academy piqued his ­interest and, in those pre-Internet days, he sent away a ­postcard for a catalogue. The very idea of Interlochen ­excited him because it was a place where everyone was focused on music and the arts; he convinced his parents that ­Interlochen was the best place for him to spend his high school years.

Jonathan played the trumpet seriously during his four years at Interlochen and also began to focus more on composition, where he won a school-wide award for his very first piece. He recalls an assignment to compose a work for solo violin but, when he sat down to write the piece, he’d just had an argument with a friend; that argument found its way into his composition! 
Interlochen prepared Jonathan well for the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he earned his Bachelor of Music degree, and Curtis prepared him well for Harvard, where he earned his PhD in composition. And composing is one of his passions. He often sits down at the piano to try out ideas for a new composition and, when it’s partially formed, will transfer what he’s written to a notation ­program on his computer that plays back his draft and lets him make adjustments.

Once a piece is finished and ready for public performance, Jonathan says it’s “always interesting to hear someone else play your music. It’s a bit humbling and amazing to watch someone spend so much of their time and energy on something you’ve composed!” 

We asked Jonathan what his reaction is if a performance doesn’t quite hit it? Someone will do something different that’s not quite what he wrote, he said, “but that can be okay, even interesting. Other times a conductor may make changes. You have to let the current performance happen and wait for another performance in the future. If ­something isn’t quite what you’d like it to be, you can’t do anything about it!”

We hope the ESO’s performance of Jonathan Bailey ­Holland’s Motor City Dance Mix on February 2 lives up to his expectations!

—Kelly Brest van Kempen