Holland Andrews
They // Them // Theirs
[ID: A person with brown skin, brown eyes, and short black hair, looks into the camera. They are wearing a red shirt, one blue earring, and have small tattoos on their neck.]
Portrait photo by Ariel Crocker.
Brooklyn, NY
2024 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
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Holland Andrews is a vocalist, composer, producer, and performer whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build cathartic and dissonant soundscapes. Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet, and electronic sounds and frequently highlights themes surrounding vulnerability and healing. Andrews harnesses these instruments’ innate qualities of power and elegance to serve as a cohesive vessel for these themes. As a vocalist, their influences stem from a dynamic range including contemporary opera, theater, and jazz, while also cultivating their own unique vocal style, which integrates these influences with language disintegration and vocal distortion. Andrews previously performed solo music under the stage name Like a Villain.
In addition to creating solo work, Andrews composes and performs for dance, theater, and film, and their work is toured nationally and internationally with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dorothee Munyaneza, Will Rawls, Sonya Tayeh, Jenn Freeman, and poet Demian Dinéyazhi. Notable musical collaborations include Son Lux, Christina Vantzou, William Brittelle, Methods Body, West Thordson, Peter Broderick, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Nils Frahm.
Their previous work also includes composing film scores for Rebeca Huntt’s BEBA (nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and acquired by Neon and Onyx Collective/Hulu) and Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn’s Another Body (awarded SXSW 2023 Documentary Feature Special Jury Award for Innovation in Storytelling). They have gained recognition from publications such as The Wire, The New York Times, Vogue, Le Monde, and BBC Radio. Andrews is currently based in Brooklyn.