Arts & Cultural Events

All concerts are Fridays at 12:00 Noon - bring a lawn chair and a lunch and enjoy the music on the Quad outside of Old Main. In the event of inclement weather, seating will be in the Wallace Memorial Chapel.

Alex Johnson grew up in a suburb of Dallas, Texas where his musical training began with piano and percussion from an early age. He didn’t discover the carillon until he started his undergraduate studies at the University of Rochester in 2015: a campus tour guide mentioned you could play the bells… she didn’t know the world carillon, but he was hooked instantly. He graduated in December of 2018 with a degree in physics. Then, he was able to dedicate the spring of 2019 to carillon performance and composition through a fellowship program at Bok Tower Gardens in Florida. He is pursuing graduate work in music theory and composition as well as a career involving carillon performance and teaching.

All concerts are Fridays at 12:00 Noon - bring a lawn chair and a lunch and enjoy the music on the Quad outside of Old Main. In the event of inclement weather, seating will be in the Wallace Memorial Chapel.

Margaret Pan began studying carillon in 2007 with Robin Austin at Princeton University and passed the carillonneur's exam of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA) in 2008. She graduated from the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen, Belgium in 2012 as a student of Eddy Marien, Koen Cosaert, and Erik Vandevoort, and spent autumn 2015 as a carillon fellow with Geert D'hollander at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida. Currently, Margaret is a freelance carillonneur in the Boston area, practicing and performing regularly at Cohasset and Norwood. She has given recitals across the United States, Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands, including at the 2013 International Carillon Festival in Springfield, Illinois and the 2014 GCNA congress in Denver, Colorado. Margaret won first and second prizes respectively at international carillon competitions in Springfield, Illinois (2017) and Groningen, The Netherlands (2012). She also serves as juror on the GCNA exam committee.
Margaret holds physics and astrophysics degrees from MIT and Caltech and has returned to MIT for research on planetary dynamics and planet formation in our and other solar systems.

All concerts are Fridays at 12:00 Noon - bring a lawn chair and a lunch and enjoy the music on the Quad outside of Old Main. In the event of inclement weather, seating will be in the Wallace Memorial Chapel.

Geert D’hollander - Mr. D’hollander was named Bok Tower Gardens’ fourth full-time carillonneur in October 2012. He has studied, among others, piano, chamber music, choral- and orchestral direction, fugue, and composition at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp (Belgium), and carillon at the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen (Belgium). He was first prize winner in more than 30 international competitions for carillon and/or composition. In 1997 he succeeded Ronald Barnes as University Carillonist and Professor of Carillon at the Department of Music at UC Berkeley. In 2008 he was awarded the “Berkeley Medal of Honors” for “Distinguished Service to the Carillon.” Currently, he is a carillon composition teacher at the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen in Belgium. He has made five appearances at our International Carillon Festival. Geert D’hollander studied at the Royal Carillon School, Mechelen (1978- 1982), at the Royal Flemish Conservatory, Antwerp (1983-1992), and briefly at the Lemmens Institute, Leuven (1993-1994).