Trevor Holder   ·  drums

Trevor Holder: drums

Trevor Holder: drums

Drum­mer and com­poser, Trevor Holder, has been sought out for both his musi­cal as well as groove-oriented approach to play­ing the drums.  Known as a “musician’s drum­mer”, Trevor’s sen­si­tive and cre­ative style has served as the rhyth­mic foun­da­tion for crit­i­cally acclaimed artists cov­er­ing var­i­ous gen­res. His abil­ity to simul­ta­ne­ously sup­port a groove while gen­er­at­ing side-conversation pieces has resulted in a sound that is unmis­tak­ably his own.

Born and raised in New York City.  His musi­cal tal­ent was revealed at the age of five, when he began com­pos­ing songs on the piano.  Trevor devel­oped his musi­cal foun­da­tion in clas­si­cal piano at the Man­hat­tan School of Music Prep Divi­sion for nine years.  Dur­ing his teen years Trevor’s musi­cal inter­ests expanded to the drum kit as he lis­tened to the music of Jazz artists Miles Davis, Weather Report, and Rock group The Police.  His for­mal drum set stud­ies began at Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity, from which he earned a degree with hon­ors in music in 1996.

Upon his com­ple­tion of stud­ies at Wes­leyan, Trevor returned to New York where he started per­form­ing with var­i­ous artists.  The list of per­form­ers include Jazz greats Roy Ayers, Angela Bofill, Jay Hog­gard, Tom Browne, Lil­ias White, Craig Har­ris, and Brian Jack­son with whom Trevor co-wrote and pro­duced their 2001 record­ing enti­tled “Gotta Play”.  Trevor has also col­lab­o­rated with Grammy award-winning singing sen­sa­tion Caron Wheeler (Soul II Soul), pianist/composer Vijay Iyer, hip-hop artists the Jun­gle Broth­ers, and Dead Prez, Tibetan Pop Star Dadon La, record­ing artist and pro­duc­ers Angela John­son and Lisala, Greg Tate’s eclec­tic Burnt Sugar Arkestra, and poets Amiri Baraka and Jes­sica Care Moore.

Draw­ing upon his West-Indian her­itage and train­ing in West­ern Clas­si­cal music, Trevor’s lan­guage as a com­poser is also diverse.  His music draws upon Afro-Cuban, Swing, Reg­gae, and Funk rhythms, and don’t claim alle­giance to any par­tic­u­lar har­monic struc­ture.  His orig­i­nal jazz com­po­si­tions are a cel­e­bra­tion of the many musi­cal styles Trevor enjoys and performs.

In addi­tion to his per­for­mance work, he cur­rently gives pri­vate drum lessons to stu­dents at the Dal­ton School as well as at Trevor Day School in NYC.