Oral Historian / Documentary Director & Producer
Educator / Musicologist / Shakespearean / Radio Host
Steve Rowland has spent a career using media, music, theater and art as windows to explore issues in American history, society, race relations, human creativity, spirituality, aesthetic beauty, the nature of change and human possibility. All of his work examines the intersection of culture, social justice and education. He is a veteran story teller committed to social change and believes that open communication and personal accounts are powerful tools. He has been a professor at Evergreen State College, taught Oral History at Columbia University and founded the innovative educational program “Time Out of Joint” which employs people who became educated in prison as teachers in high schools, colleges and law schools.
Rowland has won 2 Peabody Awards and is the producer/director “Leonard Bernstein: An American Life, narrated by Susan Sarandon” (11 hours); “The Miles Davis Radio Project, narrated by Danny Glover” (8-hours) and “Tell Me How Long Trane’s Been Gone” narrated by Professor Michael S. Harper (5-hours).
Rowland was recently a full-time visiting Professor of Business and Communications at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, teaching business, podcasting, theater and ethics. He has taught at Columbia University, Emory University and has been teaching Shakespeare courses in prisons for over 5 years. He is past President of AIR (1998-2004), The Association of Independent Radio Producers, a national organization and was in charge of the AIR Mentoring Program. He also created and hosted one of the country’s first World Music radio programs 1980-1984 on WRTI-FM in Philadelphia.
As an oral historian, Rowland has interviewed hundreds of musicians including Bob Marley, Fela Kuti, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Betty Carter, Lester Bowie, Cachao, Kenny Barron, Steve Coleman, Wynton Marsalis, Smokey Robinson, Dionne Warwick, Stephen Sondheim, Mstislav Rostropovich, John Lee Hooker, Carlos Santana, Ahmet Ertegun, Leslie Uggams, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Guitar Watson, Big Daddy Kinsey, Art Farmer, Clark Terry, Jon Faddis, Grover Washington, Jr, Quincy Jones, Ken McIntyre, Oliver Lake, Alice Coltrane, Joe Zaiwanul and many others.
He also has a deep interest in Shakespeare and has conducted over 240 interviews (audio and video) of actors, directors, and theater professionals on the global impact of Shakespeare now, and was lead interviewer for the Globe to Globe Shakespeare Festival in London, April, 2012.
Rowland’s teaching has led him to form a new non-profit anti-racist education project, “Time Out of Joint”, (TOOJ.org) which hires people who became educated in prison to be teachers. And he is completing a feature documentary film “Time Out of Joint: Prison Reflections on Shakespeare” based on classroom work he conducted in a NY State Prison.
Rowland received an MBA from Columbia University in 2001.