Faculty Spotlight: Jonathan Harvey

 

Jonathan Harvey was born and raised in Ann Arbor Michigan, where he had the benefit of growing up in fantastic public school music programs, right in the backyard of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. Although no one in his family had any significant musical experience, they strongly encouraged his early interest in music as a singer and a tuba player. He was able to study tuba at the Interlochen Center for the Arts for two summers, and played and sang in the Michigan All-State choir, band, and orchestra.

As an undergraduate student at Earlham College, he majored in Music and Philosophy and received his B.A. in 2007. As part of his studies there, he spent a semester in Vienna Austria, was assistant conductor of both the Concert Choir and the Symphony Orchestra, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He then went directly into the graduate program at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he received his M.M. in Choral Conducting and Musicology in 2009. While at IU, he was a member of the University Singers, assistant conductor of the Symphonic Choir, and was also Director of Music at Roberts Park United Methodist Church in Indianapolis.

In 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession, he and his girlfriend (now wife) Jessica moved to Massachusetts, where he had a job as choir director at Elms College in Chicopee, and she had a job as a librarian at UMass Amherst. For the next six years, he led the life of a hustling freelance musician and academic, including work at Elms College, UMass Amherst, New England Public Radio, the Pioneer Valley Symphony Chorus, the South Hadley Chorale, the Wilbraham Choral Society, Florence Congregational Church, and the Children’s Chorus of Springfield. He gets exhausted just thinking about it now…

During that time, he also began doctoral studies at the University of Connecticut, where he received his DMA in Conducting and Music History in 2015. At UConn, he was conductor of the Collegiate Choir and the Collegium Musicum, and his dissertation was on the secular Latin-texted vocal music of 16th century Venetian composer Adrian Willaert.

After finishing at UConn in 2015, he worked as the Interim Director of Choirs at Providence College in Rhode Island for a semester, and as the Interim Music Teacher at the MacDuffie School in western MA, before beginning work at Fitchburg State in 2016!

At Fitchburg State, he directs the choirs, and teaches courses in music history, ear training, and the First-Year Experience seminar. He continues to publish and present research on the music of Adrian Willaert, and has more recently began publishing and presenting on applications of Paul Hernandez’s “Pedagogy of Real Talk” in musical settings - an opportunity that arose from his work as part of the Fitchburg State Faculty Academy. He is also the Music Director of two choirs in Vermont - the Brattleboro Concert Choir, a large symphonic choir, and the Brattleboro Camerata, a small chamber choir focused on Renaissance-era and Renaissance-inspired music.

He and his wife Jessica now have a son Wally, who just started kindergarten(!), and they live in Westminster, just minutes from campus.

Select Musical Performances

Secular Latin-texted Works of Adrian Willaert (Gallucci-Cirio funded recording project)

Brattleboro Music Center: Brattleboro Camerata 12/12/21

Brattleboro Music Center presents: ​Brattleboro Camerata – To Live in Pleasure 4/24/22

Select Publications

Keyser, Wendy; Unus, Wafa; Harvey, Jonathan; Goodlett, Sean; Day, Danette; Tracy, Kisha; Tyner, Scott; and Budd, Eric. “Empathy in action: Developing a sense of belonging with the Pedagogy of ‘Real Talk’.” Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, vol. 19 no. 4 (July 2022).

Harvey, Jonathan. “Virgil’s Words and Willaert’s Music: Humanistic Case Studies.” The Choral Scholar & American Choral Review, vol. 59 no. 2 (Fall / Winter 2021).

Harvey, Jonathan. “C.P.E. Bach’s Heilig, H.778: Construction of Narrative Meaning.” The Choral Scholar, vol. 5, no. 1 (Fall 2015).

Harvey, Jonathan. “A Beginner’s Guide to Prophecy: Orlande de Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum.” Choral Journal, vol. 50, no. 11 (June / July 2010).