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Olly Woodrow Wilson
In Memoriam

Olly Woodrow Wilson

Professor of Music, Emeritus

UC Berkeley
1937-2018

Composer, musician, and musicologist, Olly Woodrow Wilson, died on March 12, 2018, at the age of 80. 

A nationally recognized composer of concert music, Professor Olly Woodrow Wilson created a large catalog of innovative symphonic, chamber, and electronic music. In his work, A City Called Heaven, Wilson deftly mixes twentieth century avant-garde techniques with elements of African American music including the blues and black spirituals. In his own words, "Music is experience consciously transformed, and because my experience has been an African-American experience, I think it expresses that." His career included commissions by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic. He was recipient of numerous awards and accolades including two Guggenheim fellowships. In 1994, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, one of the highest awards for any practicing composer in the United States.

As a scholar, Professor Wilson contributed to the field of African American studies through lectures, teaching, and published articles including “The Significance of the Relationship between Afro-American Music and African Music,” in The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. II, No. 1 (Spring 1974), and “The Heterogenous Sound Ideal in African American Music,” in New Perspectives on Music (1992). Wilson introduced the study of jazz as well as the range of African and African music history into the curriculum of the Department of Music. He was host to the African Music Ensemble under the tutelage of Ghanaian master drummer C. K. Ladzekpo and also the University Gospel Chorus.

Born in St. Louis, MO, on September 7, 1937, Wilson graduated with a B.M. from Washington University (1959), earning his Master of Music from the University of Illinois (1960), and his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa (1964). He taught at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (1965-1970) where he established the first center for electronic music in any American conservatory, which was later named Technology in Music and the Related Arts (TIMARA). In 1970, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he remained until his retirement in 2002. 

Almost uniquely among faculty in the Department of Music, he mentored students in the three fields of specialization at the Ph.D. level—composition, ethnomusicology, and musicology. His list of former students includes Terrye Yizar, Robert Greenberg, Scott DeVeaux, Dwight Banks, Neil Rolnick, Anthony Kelly, Trevor Weston, Laurie San Martin, Tom Swafford, Anthony Brown, Shannon Dudley, and Steven Pond.

“Olly was indeed a model for all around excellence; I have never met anyone close to his unique combination of compositional, musicological and administrative skills,” noted Wilson’s colleague Michael Senturia, who conducted the University Symphony Orchestra from 1962 to 1992. During his tenure at UC Berkeley (1970-2002), he served as chair of the Department of Music (1993-1997), assistant chancellor for international affairs (1986-90), and associate dean of the Graduate Division (1986-90). Appointed to be the first faculty assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Affirmative Action (1974-1976), Wilson helped to develop the nascent programs for diversity and inclusion on campus. An indefatigable champion of the arts and diversity, he helped to establish, and served for several decades in a leadership capacity for the Young Musicians Program, responsible for providing music education to hundreds of gifted low-income youths throughout the Bay Area.

“Olly was very important for the department, for the campus, and for the study of African American music more broadly, in addition to his significant impact as a composer and professor of composition,” said Professor Benjamin Brinner, a colleague in the music department. “Knowing him first as a teacher during my graduate school days, I came to consider him a mentor, a valued colleague, and a friend after I joined the Berkeley faculty.”

A symposium and celebration of the life of Olly Wilson took place on the Berkeley campus on February 16, 2019. In memoriam, the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra opened its 2019 concert season with the orchestral work, Shango Memory. The piece, originally commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1997, takes its inspiration from the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning, Shango, and what Professor Wilson called the "cultural memory of African ideas reflected in music.

He is survived by his wife Elouise Wilson; his daughter Dawn Wilson Johnson and son Kent Wilson, and their spouses; four grandsons, two granddaughters; and his sister Marion Palmer.

Edmund Campion
Bonnie Wade
2020

Photo credit: Elliot Khuner