By Dr. Bill Clemmons, professor of music theory
I first met Dr. Dan Jackson in the spring of 2002 when the Department of Music was searching for a church musician and choral educator. We had interviewed several candidates but nothing quite fit. However, the moment that Dan stepped in front of the Concert Choir, the room came alive. His interactions with the choir were natural, inspired, and the choir’s energy and focus instantly notched up. I remember looking at my colleague, the late Dr. Dan Nelson and saying, “This is it. He’s what we are looking for.”
From the moment Dan started at PLNU, we became close friends. His friendship, skill, and collegiality brought us together, and I treasured his insight, musicality, and steady hand in a crisis. We spent so much time working together and sharing our ideas and dreams for the department that when the former chair of the music department, Dr. Paul Kenyon, left in 2013 to take a position at Olivet Nazarene University, we stepped in as co-chairs, one of the first departments at PLNU to split the chair duties among two people. Dan was a friend, a gifted administrator, a skilled classroom teacher, but above all a peerless choral conductor. What Dan could bring out of a choir was magical, and his abilities as a conductor were respected nationally.
Dan’s “secret sauce” consisted of his incredible attention to detail and time management and his unswerving dedication to honoring Christ in every aspect of his life and career.
Dan planned every rehearsal to the minute. He could squeeze more out of a fifty-minute class than anyone I have ever met. Rehearsals were planned out with Melva Morrison, Dan’s right hand and an accomplished pianist and conductor in her own right, over lunch an hour before they started the rehearsal. How many times have I seen the two of them hunched over a score in Melva’s office, munching sandwiches and talking about the procedure and timing of the rehearsal.
The second thing that distinguishes Dan’s career and approach to making music is the 100% sold-out love of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Everything in Dan’s rehearsals and performances had to point to the Lord. Expressions on faces, body posture, dynamics and color, the emotion to be conveyed, the unrelenting, musical precision that Dan demanded of his singers; everything needed to pour out of the text and point to the Gospel message at the end of every concert. Every performance ended with Lutkin’s The Lord Bless You and Keep You. I am not sure that I can ever hear that work again without a lump in my throat, thinking about Dan.
“I miss Dan every day and losing my dear friend just hurts. Walking our building brings back a thousand memories of how he shaped the culture of Cooper Music Center.”
I miss Dan every day and losing my dear friend just hurts. Walking our building brings back a thousand memories of how he shaped the culture of Cooper Music Center. I miss the way he would stop by my 7:30 a.m. class to check on my first-year music theory students. He cared deeply about their progress and made it a point to check on them regularly. I miss seeing him planning rehearsals with Melva; I miss talking to him at 12 p.m. when I finish teaching; I miss the frantic run-up to Cider Celebration; I miss seeing him in the Cooper lobby enjoying the joyous noise and bedlam of the music students between classes. But mostly, as I walk Cooper Music Center, I am reminded of the many ways that he shaped our department, our work, and our students. I see his fingerprints on everything that we do. It is those days that I thank the Lord for Dan’s friendship, his impact on my life and the lives of our students, and a life well lived. Well done, Dan, well done, good and faithful servant. Well done.
