1969 Notre Dame alum is teaching and making music in Detroit; also connects with local Irish community.
Notre Dame alum Dr. Ronald Prowse (’69) is associate professor and music director at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
When Ron Prowse stepped up to the podium at Detroit’s Gaelic League in Corktown last month to do a reading from James Joyce’s book, Ulysses, this 1969 Notre Dame alum delivered big time and with an Irish accent as authentic as Leopold Bloom himself.
It was the League’s 29th annual Bloomsday celebration, where local Joyce devotees joined millions worldwide on June 16 to recall Joyce's Ulysses, the story of Leopold Bloom's 1904 day (and night) long journey through Dublin, Ireland.
Prowse, who is associate professor and music director at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, is a regular at the League’s annual Joyce-fest and his participation is a result of a long love affair with books, especially Irish literature. He said it was while a student at the University of Michigan when a professor first made a great connection for him between music and literature.
“My professor showed how early 20th-century music, literature and art was intertwined,” Prowse said. “And I just became enamored with early twentieth-century music, literature, and art. I wanted to know everything I could about the interaction of the arts, especially among the expatriates in Paris after WWI, the so-called lost generation. I literally couldn’t get enough of Paris in the twenties: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett and Joyce, of course.”
He said it was such a passion for him that he thinks it bordered on fanaticism. “I couldn’t get satiated with that era,” he said. “It was such a creative period for the arts. And with Ulysses, when it first came out, it was generally panned by the literati of the day, who said it was nearly impossible to read or understand.”
But that’s all Prowse needed.
“I was going to read it — AND understand it,” he said. “It was kind of like telling a mountain climber that Mount Everest was not climbable.”
It appears that Prowse has climbed his Ulysses “mountain,” and then some. “I have probably near a thousand books that are either about Joyce or were written because of Joyce,” he said. “Plus, I enjoy reading aloud, and the annual Bloomsday event is tailor-made for a Joyce fanatic who likes to read aloud.”
In 2000, Prowse recorded a CD, "Organ Music of Ned Rorem.” The CD cover features Prowse standing next to the organ at St. Joan of Arc church in St. Clair Shores, Mich., where he served as music director for 21 years. Prowse played organ at Detroit’s latest “mass mob” celebration, which was held July 10 at Sacred Heart Major Seminary’s chapel.
Aloud is also a good word to describe Prowse’s professional career. As a member of the full-time faculty at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, he teaches classes in sacred music and holds private piano lessons and organ lessons. As director of liturgical music, he plans and performs the music for the seminary liturgies. Prowse also teaches organ as a member of the adjunct faculty at Wayne State University and serves as an adjudicator for organ competitions in the United States and Canada. Prowse currently serves as dean of the executive board of the Detroit Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
He has studied under the direction of Pierre Toucheque, Gale Kramer, Ray Ferguson and Marilyn Mason, and after graduating with his doctorate from the University of Michigan, he continued the study of organ improvisation and composition with Naji Hakim at La Trinité in Paris, France.
As a concert organist, Prowse has performed in both the United States and Europe, and in 1987, the Archdiocese of Detroit selected him to be the organist for the Papal Mass in the Pontiac Silverdome, which concluded the historic second visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States. He regularly lectures and has been published in national journals, and in 2000, Albany Records released Prowse's world premiere recording, “Organ Music of Ned Rorem.”
In addition to his doctor of musical arts degree in organ performance from U-M, Prowse holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Wayne State University.
Prior to his position at the seminary, Prowse served 21 years as music director at St. Joan of Arc parish in Saint Clair Shores, which is where he also grew up and attended grade school.
After finishing grade school at SJA, Prowse, like many of his classmates along with other boys on the east side, attended Notre Dame High School in Harper Woods. He has many memories of Notre Dame, including some of a particular English teacher.
“Conrad Vachon,” he said. “What can I say! He was such a big influence on me. I remember that he told us never to start a sentence with ‘this,’ or ‘there’ or ‘it.’ And if we did, our papers would automatically get an ‘F.’"
To this day, Prowse said, he never begins a sentence that way.
“Conrad was bigger than life,” he added. “Yes, he was cranky, bald, and occasionally menacing, but you really learned in his class.”
Prowse said he also was influenced by Notre Dame’s music director at the time, Larry Egan. “I studied under Mr. Egan and played both piano in the jazz band and clarinet for the marching and concert bands at Notre Dame,” he said.
His other memories of high school at Notre Dame include the fact that his class, the Class of 1969, was not particularly known for its good behavior.
Prowse, at podium, reads from the James Joyce classic, “Ulysses,” at the Gaelic League Detroit’s annual Bloomsday celebration on June 16.
“I was pretty much a nerd as a high schooler, but our class in general was kind of caught up in the hippie culture that was going on in this country back then,” Prowse recalled. “We didn’t have a very good reputation, but looking back now, I suppose we were not that different from most other young people during the late sixties.”
Meanwhile, back to the year 2016, Prowse said he is thoroughly enjoying his career in music and spending more time with his wife, Cathy, and their children and grandchildren. Before this interview, Prowse and his wife were outside working hard in his yard.
“We’re doing some gardening,” he said. “We have a big, beautiful garden that needs a lot of work.”
It also appears that with much work Prowse has created a big, beautiful career that continues to serve both his faith and his devotion to the arts. It’s a devotion that still allows plenty of room for a particularly favored Irish author and book.
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