The Side Door Corcoran Holt – Bass Stacy Dillard – Tenor & Soprano Saxophone Josh Evans – Trumpet Benito Gonzalez – Piano Kweku Sumbry – Drums & Djembe Corcoran Holt is a force of nature on the bass — a musician whose commanding presence, deep groove, and musical intelligence have made him one of the most sought-after players on the New York scene.
A son of Washington, D.C., Holt began his musical journey at age four playing djembe and West African percussion before taking up the upright bass at ten with the renowned DC Youth Orchestra.
He attended the prestigious Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and went on to earn his B.A. in Jazz Studies from Shenandoah Conservatory and his M.A. from Queens College under the tutelage of Buster Williams.
His connection to the music runs deep — legend has it that his great-grandfather, a bassist who grew up in High Point, North Carolina, lived next door to a young John Coltrane and gave him his first music lessons.
Holt has performed and recorded with some of the most celebrated names in jazz, including Kenny Garrett, Roy Hargrove, Curtis Fuller, Jimmy Heath, Benny Golson, Wynton Marsalis, Christian McBride, Delfeayo Marsalis, Carmen Lundy, and Jazzmeia Horn, among many others.
He appears on three Grammy-nominated recordings — Kenny Garrett’s Pushing the World Away (2013), Jamison Ross’s Jamison (2014), and The Baylor Project’s The Journey (2017) — and on Kenny Garrett’s Sounds from the Ancestors , which won the NAACP Image Award for Best Jazz Instrumental in 2021.
In 2009 he represented the United States as a Jazz Ambassador with the U.S.
State Department, touring the Middle East as both performer and clinician.
He has performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, and Dizzy’s Club, and has toured across North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Jazz Bass at Arizona State University and is the DC Jazz Festival’s Artist-in-Residence.
As a bandleader, Holt channels that same depth of spirit and vision into his own music.
His debut album The Mecca (2018) paid homage to his D.C. roots, and his acclaimed sophomore release Freedom of Art stands as his most personal statement yet — a testament to transformation, family, and the enduring principle at the heart of jazz: freedom itself.
The compositions emerged during the 2020 pandemic, drawing from the loss of his fathe…
