Holland Andrews is a gender-fluid singer, composer, performance artist, and clarinetist. Andrews, who uses they/them pronouns, is a solo artist and has previously performed under the name Like A Villain. Their style of music draws from contemporary opera, musical theater, jazz, ambient music and noise music. They also compose music for dance, theater, and film.
Andrews released three albums and two EPs, and they are known for their long, improvised live sets and cinematic music.
Early life
Raised in
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
, Andrews comes from a family of singers that included their mother, sisters and cousins. Their mother and sister released the songs "What's Your Game" and "Running and Pushing" as the group MDLT.
Andrews' mother was troubled, suffering from schizoaffective disorder, as well as alcohol and drug abuse. When they were 3, their mother's boyfriend tried to drown them, and as a result, their mother lost custody. Andrews moved to
Irvine, California
Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...
to live with their father.
Their parents had been divorced for several years, when, at 16, their mother committed suicide.
Music career
Andrews moved to
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
at 19, and joined the music community, playing clarinet and singing in the indie-folk bands Meyercord and The Ocean Floor. They began to perform as a solo artist, drawing on their childhood for their improvised music."
Under the moniker Like A Villain, their first album, ''The Life of a Gentleman,'' was self-released in 2010. ''Willamette Week'' described the music as "wall after wall of sound in choral blasts before switching to light, playful clarinet and snippets of spoken word."
In 2014, Andrews' house was robbed, including a computer with some of their early songs. However, they were able to still go ahead and independently release a second album of music, called ''Bast'', that they recorded with Mike Erwin, and members of Typhoon, The Ocean Floor,
Machinedrum
Travis Stewart, better known as Machinedrum, is an American electronic record producer and performer from North Carolina. They also began a residency to create a musical piece for the avant-garde Time-Based Art Festival, part of the
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) is a contemporary performance and visual arts organization in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. PICA was founded in 1995 by Kristy Edmunds. Since 2003, it has presented the annual Time-Based ...
.
Two years later, they secured a Creative Exchange Lab residency with PICA (Portland Institute For Contemporary Art). There, they met Dorothee Munyaneza, who they would eventually begin a collaboration. That same year, Andrews performed as a septet of artists in the Portland Jazz Composer's Ensemble. Their music and visual graphics focused on their work about trauma, and healing by music. The group included Andrews as composer and vocalist; Douglas Detrick, trumpet and music director; Reed Wallsmith, alto saxophone; Ian Christensen, tenor saxophone; Lars Campbell, trombone; Jon Shaw, bass; and Ken Ollis, drums.
After another performance with the Time-Based Art Festival, Andrews—again as Like A Villain—recorded their third album, ''What Makes Vulnerability Good'' at Color Therapy Recording Studio in Portland with Arjan Miranda before moving to
New York City, New York
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
to participate in the ISSUE Project Room 2020 residency program. The album was released September 2019 on Accidental Records.
“We were thinking of ways that transform and keep the listener interested without sacrificing who I am as an artist,” they said about the use of synthesizer effects with arrangements that included guests like saxophonist Joe Cunningham (Blue Cranes). Lyrically, Andrews expounded on the relationship they had with their mother, among other personal topics.
In January 2021, under their own name for the first time, Andrews released the single and video, “Gloss”, followed by the ''Wordless'' EP in February. They wrote, produced and mixed the EP themselves. Around the same period, to keep connected to fans during the isolation of the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, they created ''There You Are'', a series of “microperformances” for their fans via telephone. ''There You Are'' was created as their final work for their artist residence program at ISSUE Project Room to supplement the online performances. These personalized performances were later a part of ''Darkness Sounding'', a music festival organized by the
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
ensemble, Wild Up.
Theater, film and dance
Andrews created music and performed in a collaboration with Rwandan-born refugee, singer/dancer/choreographer
Dorothée Munyaneza
Dorothée Munyaneza (born 1982) is a British-Rwandan singer, actress, dancer and choreographer. She has produced two performance pieces, ''Samedi Détente'' and ''Unwanted'', both about the Rwandan genocide.
Personal life
Munyaneza was born in ...
called ''Unwanted''. The work, which had its United States premier in 2017 at Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, was created from stories from refugees of
Rwanda
Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...
,
Congo
Congo or The Congo may refer to either of two countries that border the Congo River in central Africa:
* Democratic Republic of the Congo, the larger country to the southeast, capital Kinshasa, formerly known as Zaire, sometimes referred to a ...
and other countries. These were stories of sexual violence used as a tool of warfare told by women who were survivors of genocide in their countries. It was set to electronic music by Alain Mahé. They performed the piece in October 2018 at
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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's
Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to:
Africa
* Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi
Asia East Asia
* Museum of Contemporary Art Shangha ...
.
In 2018, they performed as one of the vocalists in Gabriel Kahane’s ''Emergency Shelter Intake Form'', a live piece of 13 vignettes with full orchestra that premiered at the Oregon Symphony. The concert, with theme of homelessness, was performed at the
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Jay Pritzker Pavilion, also known as Pritzker Pavilion or Pritzker Music Pavilion, is a bandshell in Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is located on the south side of Randolph Str ...
in
Millennium Park
Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. The park, opened in 2004 and intended to celebrate the third millennium, is a prominent civic center near ...
in
Chicago, Illinois
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the following year.
Andrews created the music soundtrack for the 2019 documentary, ''Zero Impunity'', a film that presents incidents of sexual violence in armed conflicts around the world.
In September 2020, Andrews along with other experimental musicians Justin Hicks and Alicia Hall Moran, provided the soundtrack for
Lee Mingwei LEE Mingwei (Chinese: 李明維; born 1964) is a Taiwanese-American contemporary artist currently living and working in Paris, France and New York, USA. Lee Mingwei creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, in ...
’s meditative performance installation, ''Our Labyrinth'', at New York’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
. Choreographed by
Bill T. Jones
William Tass Jones, known as Bill T. Jones, (born February 15, 1952) is an American choreographer, director, author and dancer. He is the co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Jones is Artistic Director of New York Live Ar ...
, their music accompanies various dancers as they sweep mounds of rice around the floor in 90-minute intervals. That year, Andrews scored the music for Jones’ ''Afterwardsness'' dance piece, which was filmed at New York's Park Avenue Armory to lobby the State government for special permission to present reduced capacity, socially distanced performances due to
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...