Holly grew up in East Tennessee and began playing the piano very early, always watching her parents play and wanting to copy what she heard. She was three years old or so when she picked out her first tune by ear on the piano. Loathe to take lessons, she mainly taught herself by learning music by ear and arranging it however she liked on the piano until college, when she met Donald Brown at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Brown recognized Holly's inclination for the jazz idiom and immediately took her under his wing, which quickly resulted in Holly's firm decision to pursue a professional career as a jazz pianist. During her time at UT Knoxville, Holly also studied classical piano under the direction of world-renowned pianist and Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano Dr. Chih-Long Hu, as well as music composition under the direction of award-winning new music composer Dr. Andrew Sigler. ...
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Holly grew up in East Tennessee and began playing the piano very early, always watching her parents play and wanting to copy what she heard. She was three years old or so when she picked out her first tune by ear on the piano. Loathe to take lessons, she mainly taught herself by learning music by ear and arranging it however she liked on the piano until college, when she met Donald Brown at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Brown recognized Holly's inclination for the jazz idiom and immediately took her under his wing, which quickly resulted in Holly's firm decision to pursue a professional career as a jazz pianist. During her time at UT Knoxville, Holly also studied classical piano under the direction of world-renowned pianist and Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano Dr. Chih-Long Hu, as well as music composition under the direction of award-winning new music composer Dr. Andrew Sigler.
Since the age of eight, Holly was trained in vocal technique and repertoire across genres including classical, pop, broadway, and R&B. She performed in church and school up through college. She said her farewell-for-now to performing classical voice once she decided she wanted to focus on her in-depth piano studies. This decision followed a tour of Europe in 2017 with Clemson University's chamber choir, the Clemson University Singers, under the direction of Dr. Justin Durham and Dr. Anthony Bernarducci. Of many engagements on the 2017 tour, the most memorable was a performance of works by J.S. Bach, in the presence of the composer's physical grave, within the Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas' Church) in Leipzig, Germany, with Holly performing as a soloist in the ensemble. This was the highlight of all her performances as a classical vocalist, and a happy end to that chapter of her life. After tour, Holly transferred to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she studied music theory and composition with Dr. Sigler for a full year before officially switching her major to Jazz Studies under the direction of Professor Brown. Thanks to her strong background in voice, it was natural that the language Holly learned on the piano from Brown should transfer over to that instrument as well. She began singing in the jazz idiom around the same time that her jazz piano studies began, combining her technical understanding of the voice with a new approach to singing, inspired by recordings of famed jazz vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Billie Holiday.
Since the completion of her Bachelor's Degree in 2020, Holly has quickly become one of the most in-demand rising stars within the rare breed of women jazz pianists in New York City. Apart from Brown, some of her major musical influences include Mulgrew Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Amy Winehouse, Jazzmeia Horn, Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, Billie Holiday, Red Garland, Erykah Badu, Thelonious Monk, Maria Schneider, Moonchild, and John Coltrane. An accomplished pianist and vocalist across genres, Holly has performed at such revered and historical venues as Birdland Jazz Club and the Django NYC, with the likes of Joseph Farnsworth, Alexander Claffy, Jeremy Pelt, Julius Rodriguez, Benny Benack III, Luther Allison, Giveton Gelin, and many others. She has held residencies at the Woolworth Building, Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Le Rivage NYC, Flaweless TriBeCa, and the acclaimed Caroga Lake Music Festival in upstate New York, among many others past and current. She competed at the UNISA International Piano Competition in South Africa after only two years of studying the with Brown, whose unique musical language and legacy she aspires to carry forward in her career. Holly is the newest member of cross-genre chamber trio Empire Wild, represented by the Concert Artists Guild. She is currently furthering her independent studies in New York with master pianists Aaron Goldberg and Thomas Linger while continuing her freelance work as a jazz and classical performer and educator. She aims to utilize her musical career to draw well-deserved attention to Donald Brown's influence on the art of jazz, to help inspire and lift up more younger women and non-binary performers within the jazz field, and to one day provide a more accessible educational environment for ALL young aspiring jazz musicians, so that they may learn in the way that she did from Brown.
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