Leading Industry Executive Bill Holland has Died, Aged 79

Holland worked with artists including Andrea Bocelli, Jamie Cullum, and Katherine Jenkins

Music industry executive Bill Holland has passed away at the age of 79. He was formerly the longtime managing director of Universal Classics & Jazz, which was rebranded as Decca in 2009. 

During his tenure, he was a significant figure in the classical crossover market and worked with artists including Andrea Bocelli, Jamie Cullum, Katherine Jenkins, and Russell Watson. 

Previously, he had worked at Deutsche Grammophon before moving to Warner Music to launch its Warner Classics label in 1990. 

He went on to achieve many crossover successes, including with the Three Tenors, which reached number one on the main albums chart in 1994.

Following his retirement from Universal in 2006, he remained in a consultancy position there for the next three years. 

In 2009, he returned to Warner Classics as its new A&R consultant. By then, he had a network of contacts built over nearly 50 years in the music industry to search for new signings. In this role, he helped discover new talent and worked with existing Warner artists.

“One of my strengths is repertoire, putting specific repertoire with particular artists and knowing what will work,” Holland told MusicWeek in 2010. “I can also imagine the potential of some artists that might not be immediately apparent, for instance getting a classical artist to sing lighter music.”

“We had a particularly brilliant boss, Bill Holland,” Universal Music UK’s newly appointed CEO Dickon Stainer told MusicWeek in 2019. “He was this guy with a great imagination who believed in risk-taking. So when he saw an opportunity for something he would say to us, ‘I hope you’re really going after this’. We’d put the figure in front of him and he’d say ‘Double it’. He had the attitude that, if you’re thinking small, it’s not going to work, you’re not doing justice to the opportunity.”

Our condolences to Mr. Holland’s family, friends, and colleagues.