Originally from Flint, MI, composer Jonathan Bailey Holland (b. 1974) began studying composition while a student at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he received a school-wide award for his very first composition. Upon graduation from Interlochen, he continued his composition studies with Ned Rorem at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree. He went on to receive a Ph.D. in Music from Harvard University in 2000, where his primary teachers were Bernard Rands and Mario Davidovsky. He has also studied with Andrew Imbrie, Yehudi Wyner, Robert Saxton, and Robert Sirota. Currently, he is Chair of Composition, Contemporary Music, and Core Studies at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He is also a Founding Faculty member in the first ever low-residency MFA in Music Composition program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he also served as Faculty Chair from 2016 until 2019.

 Holland’s works have been performed and commissioned by numerous organizations, both nationally and internationally. Highlights include: three major works commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, including Ode (premiered during the 2018-19 season when  Holland was composer-in-residence), Stories from Home (commissioned in 2018 to celebrate the reopening of Music Hall), and Halcyon Sun (commissioned to celebrate the opening of the Freedom Center National Underground Railroad Museum in 2003); El Jaleo, commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and premiered by the Phoenix chamber orchestra; Primary Movements, a ballet commissioned by the Dallas Symphony and the Dallas Black Dance Theater; Motor City Dance Mix, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony in celebration of the opening of the Max M. Fischer Music Center; Signals, commissioned by the National Symphony in honor of the 25th Anniversary of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; House of Dreams, commissioned by the Enterprise Foundation for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in memory of the Foundation’s founder James Rouse, and many more. 

Recent concert seasons have included such highlights as the premiere of Holland’s The Party Starter by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, in celebration of Paavo Järvi’s final season there as music director; Sonata Variation, a newly interpreted first movement for Samuel Barber’s 1928 Violin Sonata, loosely based on Barber’s original sketches, which was commissioned by the Curtis Institute of Music and the Samuel Barber Society for the 100th Anniversary of Barber’s birth; the premiere of Shards of Serenity, commissioned by the Chicago Sinfonietta and the Chicago Architectural Foundation in celebration of the iconic architecture of Chicago; the premiere of The Clarity of Cold Air, commissioned and premiered by the Radius Ensemble; and His House is Not of this Land, commissioned and premiered by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, based on visual artist Cornelia Parker’s DeYoung Museum installation Anti-Mass.

These works and others have also been performed by the Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Philadelphia, Richmond and San Antonio Symphony Orchestras, the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Florida Philharmonic, Alea III, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia (currently Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia), Orchestra 2001, Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, and soloists Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Sarah Bob, Demarre McGill, and others. During the 20/21 season his music was performed and streamed by Hotel Elefant, Tribeca New Music Festival, the Neave Trio, Cincinnati Symphony, Oberlin Sinfonietta and Contemporary Music Ensemble, Radius Ensemble, Emmanuel Music, Castle of our Skins, and more. In addition, his work has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today, and on Rob McClure’s podcast Lexical Tones. Holland’s chamber work Synchrony was profiled in the January/February 2018 edition of Harvard Magazine, and he was one of three living African American composers featured in the 2014 New York Times article, “Great Divide at the Concert Hall.” 

Holland has worked with such conductors as Louis Langrée, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, Roger Norrington, Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, Michael Morgan and David Zinman, among others. He served as 2019 Classical Roots Composer-in-Residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which included serving as mentor composer for the American Composer’s Orchestra’s EARSHOT Readings with the Detroit Symphony. He has also served as composer-in-residence with Boston’s Radius Ensemble during the 2008-2009 season, which featured the premiere of his composition Tone-Grafting for flute/alto flute and string quartet, with the Ritz Chamber Players during the 2006-2007 season, and with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra in 2003, as part of the Music Alive program, sponsored by Meet the Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League (currently the League of American Orchestras). During this residency, he gave presentations at several schools, libraries and churches in the greater South Bend area, and the orchestra premiered two of his compositions, including Four Sections and Actions Rendered: Interpretations of Pollock for Three Orchestras. He has previously held residencies with the Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota (currently VocalEssence) as part of their 1995 WITNESS program, and with the Detroit Symphony, also in 1995, through the Unisys African American Composer Residency and National Symposium program, which included the premiere of his composition Fanfares and Flourishes on an Ostinato, which was later recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and released on their private label. 

A winner of a 2021 Live Arts Boston award from The Boston Foundation and a 2019 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, Holland is also a recipient of a 2015 Fromm Foundation Commission from Harvard University. In 2006, he was awarded a Faculty Fellowship from the Berklee College of Music to begin researching various aspects of artistic creativity. During the same year he was awarded an Artist Fellowship Grant by the Somerville (MA) Arts Council. He was a two-time winner of the Indianapolis Symphony’s Marian K. Glick Young Composer’s Showcase, in 1997 and again in 1999, which led to performances by the orchestra of his compositions Martha’s Waltz and Summer Frenzy. He received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995, as well as a scholarship from the Presser Foundation that same year. Other awards include several Composer Assistance Grants from the American Music Center in 2003 and 2005, as well as awards from Austin Peay State University (1999), ASCAP (1998-2021), Harvard University (1998-2000), and Boston Conservatory (1992). His composition Visit to St. Elizabeth was awarded first prize in the treble division of the 2003 Roger Wagner Contemporary Choral Composition Competition and is published by Gentry Publications.

His music has been recorded by Cincinnati Symphony, the University of Texas Trombone Choir trumpeter Jack Sutte; and flutist Christopher Chaffee, pianist Sarah Bob, and more. Most recently his work Rebounds was featured on Transient Canvas’s release “Right now, in a second”. 

A strong advocate for music education, Holland has written several works for educational concerts, and has given lectures and presentations at over 50 schools and other public institutions. In 1995, his composition It’s About Time was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, in consortium with the Cleveland Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, specifically for their youth concerts. This work introduces the audience to the idea of musical meter. His work Four Sections was commissioned by South Bend Symphony Orchestra. It features each member of the different sections of the orchestra. Additionally, Holland has written educational works for the Baltimore Symphony and WAMSO – the Volunteer Association of the Minnesota Orchestra. 

Upcoming projects include a new work commissioned for Roomful of Teeth, A Far Cry, and pianist Awadagin Pratt; Holland’s fourth string quartet, commissioned with support from a Live Arts Boston grant from The Boston Foundation, to be premiered by Boston’s New Gallery Concert Series; a consortium commission for a new concerto for two percussionists and orchestra, featuring the arx duo; and The Bridge (working title), a new opera commissioned by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project that explore the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the period between his seminary studies at Boston University and his rise to national prominence.