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Early Music Ensemble Tour with Play of Daniel (July 1979) — Mondavi Center retrospective (2002) — Duke University Symphony debut 1967 (program | review) — Siena July 1968: Dvořák WInd Serenade (program | photo) — Retirement symposium: Philharmonia (May 2014) (program | poster) — Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius video (March 2013) — UCDSO France tour 2003: Berlioz bicentennial

Biography

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1947, D. Kern Holoman holds the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude with distinction in music from Duke University, and the Master of Fine Arts and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. Additionally he studied bassoon and conducting during the inaugural years of the North Carolina School for the Arts / Accademia Musicale Chigiana Summer Sessions in Siena, Italy. He is retired from the faculty of the University of California, Davis, which he served for 40 years, 1973–2013.

At the University of California, Davis, he was fourth conductor of the UCDavis Symphony Orchestra, 1977–2009. Holoman was founding Dean of Humanities, Arts & Cultural Studies in the College of Letters & Science at UC-Davis (1995–96) and prior to that time chairman of the Department of Music (1980–88) and interim chairman of the Department of Dramatic Art (1994–95); in 2009–10 he served as interim chairman of the Department of Art and Art Studio. He was a founding editor (with Joseph Kerman and Robert Winter) and longtime managing editor of the journal 19th-Century Music.

As a musicologist Holoman’s work through 2003 focused on the music of the nineteenth-century French composer Hector Berlioz. He is author of the first thematic catalogue of Berlioz’s works (Kassel, etc.: New Berlioz Edition, vol. 25, 1987; 2nd edn., digital, 2018) and Berlioz (Harvard UP, 1989; Faber & Faber 1990), and editor of the New Berlioz Edition’s Roméo et Juliette (New Berlioz Edition, vol. 18, 1991. He was a member of the international Berlioz 2003 Bicentennial Commission, planning and delivering over five years a series of concerts, productions, colloquia, and publications culminating with Berlioz: La Voix du Romantisme, catalogue of the bicentenary exhibition (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2003), of which he was a co-author.

Turning to the ensemble most closely associated with Berlioz and his music, Holoman wrote The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (1828–1967), a chronicle of the celebrated Paris Conservatory Orchestra (UC Press, 2007); and he co-authored Orchestre de Paris, 1828–2008, an anniversary retrospective (Orchestre de Paris, 2007, with Cécile Reynaud and Catherine Massip). A biography of the Alsatian conductor Charles Munch followed (Oxford University Press, 2011), as well as a study of the philharmonic society past and present, The Orchestra: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Evenings With the Orchestra: a Norton Guide for Concert-Goers (W. W. Norton & Co., 1992) grew out of Holoman’s six years as chief program annotator for the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra. He has written program notes for the Sacramento, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Boston, and Paris Symphony Orchestras and the San Francisco Opera, liner notes for Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft (DGG) and essays for The New York Review of Books. For university students he developed the multimedia course of study Masterworks: A Musical Discovery (Prentice Hall / Simon & Schuster, 1998), with subsequent editions through 2010 and finally a free e-book. Writing About Music, for students and professional writers, is in its third edition (UC Press, 2014).

Highlights of Holoman’s tenure as conductor of the UCDavis Symphony Orchestra were first performances of two works by Berlioz and premieres of music by Jerome Rosen, Richard Swift, Maria Niederberger, Steven Mackey, Eric Sawyer, Wayne Slawson, Pablo Ortiz, and Laurie San Martin. The 1988–89 season of the UCD Symphony Orchestra commemorated the bicentennial of the Republic of France, culminating in a three-week tour of French Polynesia and Australia. In 1999 Holoman conducted the world premiere performances of Jerome Rosen’s opera Emperor Norton of the USA. In 2003 the UCD Symphony traveled to France to participate in the Berlioz bicentenary; for the bicentenary the UCDSO published its third CD, Marching with Berlioz.

Full Academic Bio-Bibliography

In addition to the summaries presented here in the menu categories (Books | Articles & Essays | Archive | Albums}, a full academic biography appears below, organized in three categories (Publications & Research | Concerts | Professional Activities), with links to the electronic archive. The document also serves as an index to the hard-copy archive of my professional papers.