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There is a crop of young, passionate choral conductors working across the United States who have something in common beyond their love of the canon of Bach, Verdi, Brahms, and Britten: they are protégés of Ann Howard Jones. After nearly a quarter century as a College of Fine Arts professor and director of choral activities, Jones spent one last summer leading a chorus of gifted high school students at the BU Tanglewood Institute before becoming a professor emerita and laying down her baton. But she plans to keep it handy. This academic year, she will return to teach and conduct on invitation, when her schedule allows.
That schedule, at least for a while, will mean a spell of much needed downtime alternating with much longed-for travel. “I’m hoping I can rest up enough and get the wanderlust out enough so I can organize a writing project or two,” says Jones, who was given an engraved crystal bowl at her last turn at Boston’s Symphony Hall podium in April, when the BU Symphony Orchestra and BU Symphonic Chorus performed Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, often referred to as the Resurrection Symphony.
“Professor Jones revivified choral music at BU on her arrival some 24 years ago, bringing the Symphonic Chorus into prominence and attracting singers from every unit of the University,” says Richard Cornell, director ad interim of the School of Music and a CFA professor of music. Cornell refers to his colleague as “a national force for choral art. With regular annual concerts in Symphony Hall, she has brought the experience of great choral music to thousands. At the School of Music, Professor Jones established one of the finest graduate choral conducting programs anywhere and trained a new generation of brilliant conductors, many of whom now hold important academic or professional positions.”
Among Jones’ long list of professional honors are the Robert Shaw Award, presented by the American Choral Directors Association in 2011, and more recently, the 2014 Distinguished Service Award from Chorus America. In 2003 she was the recipient of a Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, one of BU’s highest teaching honors.
In 2003 Jones was the recipient of a Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, one of BU’s highest teaching honors.
Although known to the greater BU community for presenting a classical symphonic choral repertoire, from the stirring requiem masses of Verdi and Brahms to Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, Jones has also been an innovator. She and her colleagues decided last year that instead of a big chorus all the time, “we’d carve that chorus into small groups, madrigal, duets, trios, quintets, and for big concerts they’d sing all together,” Jones says. “It’s been extremely successful.”
Jones’ close friend and longtime colleague Scott Allen Jarrett (CFA’99,’08), Marsh Chapel director of music and School of Music director of choral activities ad interim, came to BU in 1997 as a master’s student in conducting. “Though Dr. Jones had only recently established the graduate degrees in conducting at BU,” Jarrett says, “her regard and reputation as the very best in our field was enough to make BU my only choice for graduate study.
“She has a singular sense about people and can recognize the ‘stuff’ of them in an instant,” he adds. “What may not yet be present musically and emotionally, she can cultivate at just the right pace, challenging students and helping them to discern and align passions with skills and abilities.”
Jones possesses a gravitas that commands students’ respect and a playfulness that earns their affection. When she speaks of her students, her face lights up. “If Boston University could have been more fortunate, I don’t know how,” she says. “We have the best, the brightest, the most talented. I never had to lower my standards. My students came up to whatever level I wanted to extract. If we can teach it to them and let them know what they’re capable of, they always measure up.” And Jones has always been emphatic about the school’s uncompromising demands. “If you think majoring in music is about Glee, and you don’t get that it’s intellectual,” she says, “once you hit the ground with music theory at 8 a.m., you think, whoa—you’re going to get BU’s rigor as a music major.”
Before arriving at BU in 1993, Jones says, choral music here was almost an afterthought. If CFA wanted to do the Mozart Requiem, an easel was put out on the building’s sidewalk urging singers to sign up. She came with the tacit understanding that at that time BU was a solo place, geared toward grooming opera singers.
“I started with only a symphonic chorus. There was a great orchestra at BU and I thought we could showcase a chorus with a big orchestra faster than we could get a small choir finessed to the finest detail. For a year all we did was symphonic chorus, and then the faculty said, don’t you think students could benefit from a smaller chorus? and I said yes. I didn’t even have to push it.”
Now, as she prepares to step away from the podium after nearly two and a half decades, colleagues say her legacy will continue to be felt by those whose lives she’s touched. “For those of us who are privileged to number Ann Jones as a friend, we cherish that quality that brightly beams to even the most remote seat in Symphony Hall,” says Jarrett, “an unbridled joy for the life worth living and the urgent cultivation of beauty in all things.”
Ann Howard Jones is not only a superbly gifted musician, mentor, and teacher, she was an always cheerful, accommodating colleague and citizen of Boston University. The University will surely miss this gifted, delightful leader. I hope this next chapter will be the rewarding, fulfilling one she has richly earned. Lou Lataif