by Dom Celauro

Mike Holober is a Grammy nominated jazz pianist and composer. Holober has directed and conducted many jazz orchestras and has released studio albums. Holober is also a professor of Jazz at CCNY.

Question 1: What do you think jazz educators could do to make students more interested in their courses?

“Part of that is, ‘What can the department do to make the huge campus community aware that the courses exist?’ One thing that we do, which I think that we should do more of, is student performances on campus. Being active on campus as a program and making sure the program is in the public eye.”

Question 2: Do you believe jazz is mainstream?

“What does mainstream mean?… For me jazz is mainstream, but it depends on what your stream is. Billboard? (hot 100) no. But if you listen to wbgo in Newark, the jazz station, or stream jazz programs, or listen to certain pandora stations, then yes, it is very easy to make it a mainstream part of your life. In terms of sales, no its not mainstream in that way but it is easy to make it mainstream in your life.”

Question 3: How do you get over “writers block” when composing new pieces of music?

“The famous Duke Ellington was asked once, ‘What’s your motivation?’ and his answer was ‘A deadline.’ When you have a deadline and something must be done and it will really be bad if you don’t get it done, that takes care of it… If I have writers block one of my favorite things to do is experience some other artform. Seeing an artist in another genre who’s fearless and creative is the most thrilling thing.”

Question 4: Which era of jazz is your favorite?

“I’m not sure, I guess I can’t really answer that because I like so many of them. I think style is a better question than era. Many of the eras are still with us. It’s really hard to say, ‘I like the hard bop era’, I mean I do, but I can listen to a lot of music in the style of the hard bop era in Smalls (NYC jazz club).”

Question 5: Do you believe we will eventually see new eras of jazz or is jazz done evolving?

“No, I think it’s going to continue to evolve. I definitely think there’s some circular stuff in there, but you hear new things all the time and that doesn’t mean that they’re better but that does mean there’s new information that’ll find its way into people’s consciousness and be fused with other things into something new. Not everyone is trying to constantly emulate something they’ve heard. We are all evolving as individuals and musicians.”