Jazz ace Mike Holober wins American Academy of Arts and Letters music award

Mike Holober, the renowned City College of New York music professor and Grammy Award nominee, is the recipient of the 2022 Andrew Imbrie Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

The award, which comes with $10,000, recognizes “a composer of demonstrated artistic merit in mid-career.”  Holober and 17 other noted recipients of various music awards from the Academy of Arts and Letters will be honored at the Academy’s Ceremonial on May 18.

A long-time faculty member in CCNY’s music department, Holober is an internationally acclaimed composer, arranger, pianist and bandleader. He was a 2020 Grammy Award nominee for “Hiding Out,” his Gotham Jazz Orchestra’s double album. The collection was a nominee in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category. 

Highly in demand by high-caliber ensembles, Holober has served as artistic director for New York’s Westchester Jazz Orchestra (2007-2013). He spent four years as associate guest conductor of the HR Big Band in Frankfurt, Germany; and has written and conducted a number of projects for the WDR Big Band in Cologne among other orchestras.

In addition to his teaching position at CCNY, Holober is the director of the popular CUNY Jazz Festival. The annual spring event attracts major performers and both student and faculty ensembles from the City University of New York. Click here for more information about Holober.   

Holober is the latest CCNY faculty to receive a major national or international honor in 2022. Others include:
 

• Daniel A. Keedy, assistant professor, chemistry and biochemistry, the 2022 Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement;
   
• Jeff Morris, director, Benjamin Levich Institute for Physico-Chemical Hydrodynamics, Grove School of Engineering, the 2022 Weissenberg Award from the European Society of Rheology; and
   
• William C. Gibbons, associate professor and curator of archives and special collections, the American Library Association’s “I Love My Librarian Award.”

About the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues. In addition to electing new members as vacancies occur, the Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes totaling more than $1 million, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country, and presenting talks and concerts.

About the City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.