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Corcoran Holt transcript, 2022-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

 Item
Identifier: dcpl_dcohc049_02_tra_eng.pdf

Scope and Contents

From the Collection:

D.C. Oral History Collaborative (DCOHC) is a citywide initiative to train community members in oral history skills, fund new and ongoing oral history projects, connect volunteers with oral history projects, and publicize existing oral history collections. DCOHC is a project of DC Public Library, HumanitiesDC, and the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. This collection contains oral history interviews, transcripts, and indexes produced by DCOHC grantees.

Dates

  • Creation: 2022-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

Biographical / Historical

Corcoran Holt is a world-traveled jazz bass player who grew up in the Petworth and Sixteenth Street Heights neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. After being inspired by a west-African drum class at age four, Holt pursued music as a passion (and then as a career) throughout D.C. and Maryland public schools before coming under the tutelage of Davey Yarborough at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. While at Ellington, Holt would develop his musical and professional skills and begin gigging around the city. He attended college at Shenandoah University and later grad school at Queens College in New York City. During the 16 years he lived in New York, he played with icons of jazz like Jimmy Heath and has been the bass player in saxophonist Kenny Garrett’s band for several years now. He currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and is playing shows across D.C.

Extent

From the Collection: 1.13 Terabytes

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

The full transcript of our fourth interview in the project, with bassist Corcoran Holt. Corcoran Holt was raised in the Petworth and Sixteenth Street Heights neighborhoods. His parents instilled a love of a wide range of music in him from an early age – as well as the importance and value of community – and his father introduced him to music through a west-African drum class when Holt was 4. He would then start playing bass at age 10 while his parents took him to local jazz clubs to see some of the great D.C. bass players like Butch Warren and Keter Betts. After attending elementary school in northeast D.C. and middle school in Maryland, Holt enrolled in the Duke Ellington School of the Arts for high school. It was there that he began to more deeply hone his craft and professionalism under Davey Yarborough and meet jazz icons like Wynton Marsalis and Reggie Workman, who would help inspire his musicianship. While playing shows around the city in high school, Holt became aware of the Westminster Presbyterian Church's Friday night jazz concerts and stressed the importance of them as beacons of excellence and inspiration to younger musicians like him. He went on to study bass with Michael Bowie at Shenandoah University before moving to New York to study at Queens College for graduate school. In his time in New York and D.C., he became a reliable, well-known musician who now frequently tours the world with saxophonist Kenny Garrett. Holt, who performed his first headlining concert at Westminster in March 2022, talks about the changes he's seen in D.C. broadly because of gentrification, as well as the impact on the jazz scene and why Westminster’s continued existence is so important to the jazz community.

Repository Details

Part of the The People's Archive, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library Repository

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