Jason Alexander Holmes: A Choir Director’s Journey

by David Lyman

The announcement came as a surprise. Jason Alexander Holmes, the director of the Cincinnati Boychoir, had been appointed the May Festival’s Associate Director of Choruses and Director of its Youth Chorus.

That was in March 2024.

From the moment he arrived in Cincinnati in 2019, Holmes ever-so-gradually started popping up all over the place. Whatever it was, local music groups were falling all over themselves to have him conduct for them.

His abilities as a musician were impeccable. But it was more than that. His gentle demeanor, perhaps? Or his genuine affection for those who sang for him? Or possibly it was his eagerness for all manner of musical collaboration.

When he became associate director of the Boston Children’s Chorus in 2017, the group posted a short interview with him on its various social media outlets. When asked about his favorite musical genre, he said that it “depends on my mood, the weather, what I’m doing and just about any other variable you could imagine. Some favorites these days are opera (of all periods), R&B, gospel, dance-pop, musical theatre and fabulous choral music of all styles. Ask me again tomorrow... :-).”

Small wonder, then, that Holmes would soon become an invaluable asset to the broader music community. He is also the director of Cincinnati’s MLK Chorale and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Classical Roots Community Choir. He has been music director for a raft of musicals, including at The Carnegie in Covington (Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, The Wonderful Music of Oz and, later this summer, The Color Purple), with Cincinnati Children’s Theatre (Cinderella, The Wiz Jr.) and with Cincinnati Opera (Liverpool Oratorio).

“When I first moved here, I made all the rounds,” he recalls. “I met all the people I could and just let them know that I was always interested in collaborations. Being a newcomer, it was really interesting.”

His friends back in Boston, though, were highly skeptical of his move to the Midwest.

“People in Boston were like ‘Oh, Jason, are you sure you want to move to Cincinnati?’ But I had to remind them that my family in Virginia had said ‘Oh, Jason, are you sure you want to move to Boston?’ And that worked out, didn’t it?”

Cincinnati, as it turned out, has been very, very good to Holmes. And he has, most definitely, returned that kindness.

A month after the May Festival announced Holmes’ appointment, it introduced a new “strategic alliance” between the Festival and the Cincinnati Boychoir. “Effective July 1, 2024,” the May Festival said, “the organizations will begin operating under the May Festival organizational structure while preserving the Boychoir identity, brand, programming and independent non-profit status.”

“It was an arrangement that made sense on every front,” says Holmes. “Musically, financially, philosophically — we both had shared goals.”

It was all set into motion, says Holmes, when Matthew Swanson — the May Festival’s Director of Choruses — asked if he might consider leaving the Boychoir to join the May Festival.

“I wasn’t looking for a move,” says Holmes. “But selfishly, there were practical reasons it made sense to me.”

He turns 40 on May 24 — one of those milestones when most of us reflect on where we are headed professionally, personally and financially. Holmes was no exception. 

“I have to admit that the idea of really well-defined retirement benefits was very appealing,” he says. “I was completing my fifth year with the Boychoir and had seen them through the Covid lockdown — it was horrible — and ….” He’s very quiet for a moment. “At the Boychoir, we had been through so much together. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving that just as we were getting back on our feet. It felt weird. And wrong. So I shared my reticence with Matthew.”

That launched a healthy bit of institutional brainstorming for both organizations. What would be the benefits — and the downsides — to a deeper organizational collaboration?

“Neither Matthew nor I are legal minds, so we didn’t know what to call it,” says Holmes. They discussed the idea with board members and well-informed constituents.

In the end, the alliance was regarded as a win-win for both groups. One of the many pluses for the Boychoir is that it was able to become tuition-free last September, matching the “no tuition, no fees” model of the May Festival Choruses.

“It used to cost parents between $500 and $900 a year for their boys to be in the choir,” says Holmes. “Not any more. You know, there is no shortage of ways to spend money on your kids. It’s great when I can go to a school to visit or do a workshop to be able to say all you need is the desire to sing and the desire to sing with others. Those are the very best reasons to sing.”

For the May Festival, the alliance rounds out a full spectrum of singing opportunities capable of seeing a singer through an entire lifetime of opportunities. Some of them you already know well — the May Festival Chorus, for instance. But did you know about the May Festival MiNiS program geared to children ages 0–12? Or the Cincinnati Choral Academy for grades 3–6 at several partner schools? With the addition of the Cincinnati Boychoir to the roster, there is now a pair of programs for boys with unchanged voices—the Apprentice program for grades 3–6 and the Journey Men program for grades 4–7.

It also completes a circle that began in 1965, when the Cincinnati All-City Boys Choir, as it was known then, made its debut with the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for a presentation of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.

You can hear the relief in Holmes’ voice as he talks of the alliance — a successful resolution to the reticence he described to Swanson. It’s clear the enormity of care he feels for his singers, whatever their age.

There is a profound connection between Holmes and his singers. It’s as if he is an extension of the chorus rather than their conductor.

For all of his years in front of audiences and choirs, there is a certain shyness that permeates Holmes. His smile is big and genuine. But it’s as if every question you ask surprises him a little. And maybe it does.

He is, after all, a small-town boy, raised in Ridgeway, Virginia, a tiny town with fewer than 750 inhabitants. Music was not at the heart of the town’s interests. Nestled in the rolling hills in southernmost Virginia — it’s just three miles from the North Carolina border — Ridgeway is in the heart of NASCAR country. If you check out Ridgeway’s appropriately small Wikipedia page, it lists six notable former residents. Three are NASCAR drivers.

Holmes’ high school, Magna Vista High School, touts not just its own livestock barn, but one notable alumnus, Ultimate Fighting Challenge fighter Tony Gravely.

That’s life in Henry County, Virginia — as in Patrick Henry, whose 10,000-acre Leatherwood Plantation was nearby.

But Magna Vista also had an active music program that staged musicals every year. It was there at Magna Vista that young Jason Holmes found his niche.

It would carry him on to the Eastman School of Music and Ithaca College and, eventually, to Cincinnati and the May Festival.

When he was introduced to the young singers of the May Festival Youth Chorus, it was a shock for some of them. After all, Matthew Swanson was the only May Festival conductor they had ever known.

“For me, it was a difficult change at first,” says 15-year-old Oliver Wagner, a 9^th grader at Sycamore High School. “I really, really liked Dr. Swanson. I was used to how his rehearsals were.”

His first encounter with Swanson was just a year earlier, when he auditioned for the MFYC.

“The audition was so much simpler than I expected,” he recalls. “I sang ‘Amazing Grace.’ And there were some rhythm exercises, too. I could have sung a German piece — I speak German — but it seemed difficult.”

From the very start of his May Festival experience, he was thrilled.

“I still remember my first rehearsal,” he says. “I know it was two-and-a-half hours. But it flew by. It felt like 20 minutes. I couldn’t wait to come back the next week.”

And as for his new music director, he has grown to enjoy Holmes.

“He’s very cheerful, so it’s hard not to like him,” says Wagner. “And we’re getting to sing some really great, diverse repertoire. We’re learning one in the native language of Ghana. I have absolutely no clue how to pronounce it yet. It’s in 2/4 and most of the notes are triplets and … it’s really complicated music. I like it.”

Elyse Longbottom, a junior at Indian Hill High School, joined the MFYC just last October. And like Wagner, she has been attracted by the complexity of the music she’s had the chance to sing.

“I went into it expecting it to be a little bit rigorous,” she says. “And I haven’t been disappointed. It’s a way for me to keep performing outside of regular school hours and to be performing with different people.”

Like many of the MFYC choristers, she has a schedule jam-packed with extra-curricular activities. She runs cross-country, regularly performs in school musicals and plays — she did Footloose in February — and is a teen volunteer at the Cincinnati Zoo. As Holmes says, this is a chorus filled with overachievers.

“I was vaguely aware that he (Holmes) was a new conductor this year,” says Longbottom. “But you couldn’t really tell. He seems so comfortable with us. I really like working with him thus far. He has a great energy and always comes to the table with a lot of ideas. He’s very inspiring that way. And I especially like that he has a little silliness sometimes. He has such a positive vibe. You’re never afraid of doing something wrong. Really, he has been a joy to sing for.”

For his part, Holmes feels pretty much the same way. At one point in an earlier interview, he pondered the relative merits of leading a professional 16-voice choir versus a choir made up of less experienced singers.

“Obviously, the elite choir is appealing,” he says. “But then I think of the realities that go with it. You know, when you work with community choirs, there is something about that avocational group that is so beautiful. And working with kids, too. I have such a passion for teaching that I don’t think I would ever want to give up seeing that moment on a child’s face when they ‘get it,’ when they fall in love with a piece of music. There is nothing like it.”