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Jerome Rosen, music department founder, dies at age 89

Rosen retired in 1988 but continued his association with the university for two decades after that. “To the public, Rosen was the face of UC Davis music for a half century, present at nearly every concert, often as not participating in it,” said D. Kern Holoman, distinguished professor of music and conductor emeritus of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra.

“Jerry reveled in his work, and it was contagious,” Holoman said.

Professor Christopher Reynolds, chair of the music department, said: “One of Jerry Rosen’s greatest monuments and gifts to the university is the current excellence of the music department. He was the man with the vision that shaped who we now are and the personality needed to bring everything together over the span of several decades.”

Rosen, a clarinetist and saxophonist, signed on as the university’s first official instructor of music in 1952 and quickly redefined the music program as Davis transitioned from farm school to general campus. He took over the previously established Concert Band and University Chorus, started the chamber music program and began laying the foundation for the Symphony Orchestra.

A second instructor arrived in 1953, and, “while our main task was to prepare for the establishment of a music department, our teaching activities for the time being were directed to students who were not music majors, and who, in general, had little acquaintance with ‘classical’ music,” Rosen wrote in Pastyme with Good Companye , a history of the department, 1952-99.