Ask composer and conductor Henry Dorn (MM ’20, Wind Conducting, Composition) about his musical influences, and his answers reflect a broad swath of pop culture: Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, and other Motown artists from his father’s record collection, the movie soundtracks of John Williams and Hans Zimmer. And Bugs Bunny.
“Remember Leopold?” he asks, referencing the Warner Brothers cartoons that featured Bugs as Leopold, the famous conductor in a white curly wig who snaps his baton in half and commands the orchestra with only the force of his hand gestures. “I was fascinated by him. He showed how you can have a great time making music.”
Still, it wasn’t until his undergraduate band director at the University of Memphis pulled him aside and asked if he’d ever thought about conducting as a career that Dorn actually considered the possibility. “I imagined being a teacher, but I never imagined being a conductor,” he says. “But then I saw all the conductors I was interfacing with and thought, ‘Man, this could be amazing.’”
“But it really did kind of start with Bugs Bunny.”
Since then, as a conductor, Dorn has directed the Nu Chamber Collective, worked as assistant director of the Memphis Area Youth Wind Ensemble, and guest conducted the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own.” He is also a composer, with compositions that often draw on intimate, personal life experiences told through the lens of a Black American musician. His orchestral work, Transitions, inspired by his mother’s death from lung cancer, has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
But there was a point, Dorn says, when he thought a career in music wouldn’t happen.
During his first go-round as a Peabody student, he explains, “I completely walked away. Like I walked off the edge of the planet, you could say, for almost six years.”
He suffered burnout, abstained from making music, and supported himself by managing several CVS stores in the Baltimore area (including stores in Harbor East and Federal Hill), an experience he came to treasure because of strong connections he made with staff and customers. But in 2017, the death of his mother in his native Little Rock, Arkansas, prompted Dorn to re-evaluate his musical intentions and re-enroll in his degree program. Returning to campus, says Dorn, made him “feel like the Prodigal Son coming back.”
“But [Peabody] meant more to me the second time after having walked away for a while.”
Dorn went on to earn two doctorates in Conducting and Composition from Michigan State University. He says that being both a composer and a conductor is a bit of a musical anomaly. “It would seem that those two things—composing and conducting—are connected,” he says. “But it’s not as common as people might like to think.”
He was repeatedly told by mentors that he would have to choose one or the other. That makes his current job as assistant professor of Conducting and Composition at St. Olaf College, in Minnesota, where he also conducts the award-winning St. Olaf Band, feel that much sweeter. “The fact that I can wear both hats is kind of a perfect marriage of sorts that I don’t know that I would be able to do someplace else,” he says. “And the students are fabulous.”
Dorn says he urges his students to take risks in both their listening and composing, invoking another pop culture reference. “I am very open with my students about my journey because I think that it’s good for them to know that, to quote [Dr. Seuss’] Oh, The Places You’ll Go: ‘Hang ups and bang ups will happen to you,’” he laughs. “Things happen. But it’s the moments where we’re confused or making mistakes that are the greatest learning opportunity moments, because that’s where real growth starts to happen.”