John Holiday on Over My Head

Released this Friday on Pentatone, countertenor John Holiday's debut solo recording Over My Head is an eclectic passion project, taking in spirituals, gospel, jazz standards and song cycles by American composers Carlos Simon, Theo Morrison, H. Leslie Adams, and Robert Leigh Morris. (It also happens to feature some of the most jaw-dropping singing I've heard all year, of which more at the end of the week...)

In a break from rehearsals for the Bayerische Staatsoper's new production of Handel's Alcina (which opens tonight and will be broadcast live on BR Klassik), John spoke to me about the repertoire on the album, the relationship between his faith and his music, and two trailblazing Black singers who inspired him in his youth.

It’s so refreshing to hear a debut album from a countertenor that centres on contemporary song repertoire rather than the Baroque…

That was exactly my thinking, because I didn’t want to replicate what so many other countertenors had done before me – I wanted to present things that nobody has heard which are very important to me. I’ve been lucky enough to make this album with my best friend Kevin Miller, who in addition to playing so beautifully knows me inside-out: right at the outset, I told him I didn’t want to include anything that doesn’t speak to my heart, mind and spirit, because it has to mean something to me in order to mean something to the audience. 

One of the pieces that’s been with me for the longest time is the very first song on the album, ‘I’m Gonter Tell God All O’ My Troubles’, which my mother really loves. She’s not someone who listens to classical music 24/7, but it’s one that reminds her of when she was growing up with her great aunt Ethel, who helped to raise her. 

That makes it special for me in turn, as do the words themselves – the idea of taking all the worries of the world and everything that you’re experiencing in your own life right now to God is so powerful for me.

Has your faith always been an integral part of your identity as an artist?

Absolutely. For a lot of Black singers in particular, the church is the first place which gives you permission to explore your voice and get to know it – what I like to call the Amen Choir are the first people to say ‘Yes, you can do that! Sing, John! Sing, baby!’. I still hear those affirmative voices in my head when I perform, and the elders from my church often chime in with such sweet things on my social media. 

In a roundabout way, it was a shared connection with the church which led me to the incredible American composer Carlos Simon, whose three Vocalises appear on the album. Carlos came into my life when I was looking for the right person to fulfil a commission that I’d asked Lincoln Center to do – I knew that the piece was going to address various things that are going on in the world right now, and I wanted to work with somebody who could write from an experience that is similar to my own. 

I was exploring various options through social media when I came across a clip of Carlos playing the organ at his father’s church and I thought ‘Oh my gosh, this guy is exactly like me – we both come from the church, and we both play the organ’. I felt such a strong connection that I wrote to Lincoln Center straight away and said I’d found the person I would like to write the piece.

Carlos and I met up for dinner and drinks at a restaurant in DC, and the rest was history. It’s been a really wonderful collaboration, and we’ll be premiering his new song cycle The After Party! in Los Angeles in September.

Picking up on that idea of shared identity and experience, were there any particular singers who inspired you from that perspective when you were growing up? 

First of all, my immediate family. My grandmother doesn’t sing so much these days as her health isn’t great, but when I was growing up she was one of the most amazing singers I knew, and I wanted to be exactly like her. My mother sings too but she's very shy, and in my teens I discovered that my father was also a singer. My mother and father divorced when I was very young but one Sunday I had the good fortune to be on the program at my father and stepmother’s church, and my father was in the choir. I went up to him afterwards and said ‘Wait, you can sing too?!’ I was stunned to say the least.

Someone outside the family who had a transformative effect on me as a young boy was Denyce Graves. It was 1997 so I was twelve years old, and I was singing in the children’s chorus for Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust; Denyce was Marguerite, and through that interaction I saw myself being reflected up there on stage. The most beautiful thing about this story is that Denyce is now one of my dearest friends and most ardent supporters, and had it not been for that encounter with her all those years ago I may not have believed that it could be possible for me to do what I’m doing today.

As far as countertenors go, I fell in love with Derek Lee Ragin when I was a sophomore in college: here was a Black man doing exactly what I aspired to do. We’re friends on Facebook but we’ve only met in passing, and that was a chance encounter: I was doing a workshop for an opera in New York and popped into a bodega to get my morning croissant and coffee, where I spotted this man who looked exactly like my hero…I went over and said ‘Oh my gosh, is your name Derek Lee Ragin?’ and it was indeed him! I told him what a huge impact he’d had on me since my early days as a countertenor, and I only hope that I can provide that sweet inspiration to the next generation - it’s so important to pay it forward.

Did you ever sing as a tenor/baritone, or was the treble stave always your natural vocal home?

Always! In my church choir I sang soprano, partly because my grandmother told me to! I still sang as a soprano in ninth grade, then in my sophomore year at high school I transitioned to be a Tenor 1 which is basically the same thing. My teacher said ‘There aren’t going to be a lot of men who can sing as high as you can, so let’s put you on the top line’ and I won everything! In my first year I was voted most outstanding singer in my state, and the momentum just kept building from there.

So the upper register has always been there naturally for me: they say ‘Use it or lose it’, and I’ve definitely used it! I think the work that I do now as a professor of singing also plays a part in keeping things fresh and open: I teach a lot of sopranos and mezzos, and I’m always singing up there with them in lessons!

You do get to hear my high C on the album, in Robert L. Morris’s Juba ‘Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit’! I’m singing Ruggiero in Handel's Alcina this month in Munich, and I’ll be interpolating one into the coloratura of my first aria ‘Di te mi rido’...

Theo Morrison’s five settings of poems by James Joyce (especially ‘I hear an army’) are extraordinary - how did the man and his music come onto your radar?

Isn’t that song something?! I get chill-bumps just thinking about it right now. I chose ‘I Hear an Army Charging Upon the Land’ as one of the tracks for pre-release because of the powerful text, and if that doesn’t speak to what’s going on in our world right now then I don’t know what does…

But the entire set is so beautiful and goes directly to the heart: people often weep openly through these songs, especially ‘Now, O Now, in this Brown Land’ which I sang a month or two ago in Atlanta. Members of the audience came up to us afterwards and said how poignant they found these songs; my teacher, from graduate school, Karen Lykes, was in the audience, and she said she would make sure that word got back to Theo about how his music had been received.

Theo is a wonderful human being who taught composition and theory at the University of Michigan, where I think he’s now Professor Emeritus. I came to know his music as a graduate student working with Karen at the University of Cincinnati. She gave me this song cycle as a part of my graduate recital, and I knew that they hadn’t been recorded before even though quite a few singers had programmed them in concerts. When we were talking after one of our recent recitals, Theo said that he felt this was the best the cycle had ever been sung and played, so I’m really happy that he feels we’ve done the music justice.

H Leslie Adams was also a new name to me - was he another composer you knew personally?

‘H’ passed away maybe in 2024 and he’s somebody that I didn’t get the chance to meet, but I found that his music is just balm for the soul – I find that with Carlos as well. His music paints such vivid pictures, and I fell in love with that. My father passed away in 2014 and H's setting of James Weldon Johnson’s ‘Sence you went away’ is so special to me in that context. It sounds exactly like the church music that I knew growing up, so I’m very happy that we got a chance to include it on the album.

This album is obviously conceived as much more than a calling-card for you as an artist - what else did you hope to achieve with the project?

Obviously a GRAMMY and all the other awards would be lovely! But joking aside, we live in a time when it’s so important for people to know exactly what you think and feel. Leontyne Price once said that we have a duty to speak up, and I think that this has never been truer. In a world where some people tell you to be quiet and dribble a ball, I say ‘I’m going to be quiet and sing, and you are going to know exactly what I think through my music’.

I’ve invested so much in this project on various levels, and I hope with all my heart that the album speaks to the time we’re living in and gives people some courage and hope about what’s to come. But more than anything I would love it to inspire people to think about their position in the world and how we see others, in the hope that we can leave this place in a better state than we found it.