Meet Nicholas Felder

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicholas Felder a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nicholas, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

The Summer 2022 was a rough time for me. I was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the time, and I had just received my master’s in music composition from the University of Michigan. Which yes, yay! It was definitely a victory. But I was also coming out with virtually no jobs or contacts outside the university. My parents also lived in Atlanta, Georgia, so even if I wanted to go back (I didn’t even consider it an option at the time though), it wouldn’t be easy. Ann Arbor was the first place, at least in a while, I felt like I truly belonged. I found people who just understood me and felt like family. If I couldn’t make it there, what was the point? So, I hung onto a string of composition and freelance projects and just networked like crazy. Finally, a connection through my dad came through, and I got an interview to help with marketing for a jazz club in town. They could only hire me for two months at a time before needing to check in again, but it was a start. Another month later, I got an interview with a teen center that combined my loves for youth development and arts activism. And then got hired on the spot! It felt too good to be true. Could I actually make a living AND do what I loved at the same time? I never took it for granted. I kept networking with people, in case one of the jobs fell through, and gradually, what started out as something to survive became something fun—very much like making friends. I was just finding people passionate about the same mission and work as me. And then that became more chosen family.
I think, to this day, I still don’t take my career for granted. That I can be comfortable and do what I love is everything. And what gives me resilience I owe all to the people I consider chosen family. They ground me.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My growing up was split between Houston, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia. I always knew I was an artist. As early as I can remember, I was obsessed with drawing pictures of people in faraway lands, going on adventures, and falling in love. I started writing stories to accompany the pictures and somewhere around middle school and high school, I decided to try out songwriting and then composing. I now see these two forms of music creation as one in the same, but growing up, I think I compartmentalized and grouped pop music and jazz and R&B in one area and film and Eurocentric classical in another. But either way, music was speaking to me in a way it hadn’t before. I sang in cherub choir at the same time I was drawing and started playing violin in fifth grade. Yet somehow, I think it was the ability to tell stories through another medium that greatly attracted me to music creation.
I explored a lot in college, going from film soundtrack to musical theatre to Eurocentric classical to experimental and then found myself returning to my roots after graduation. I didn’t want to choose anymore between the different sides of myself. I just wanted to connect with who I was as a person and artist. So, I suppose I did what many people might do and returned to the beginning—delving into my ancestral history through African American spirituals, gospel, jazz, and folk music. I now blend these styles with my Eurocentric classical training in my compositions. I love singing in my own pieces and writing music about identity, communal joy and healing, and youth empowerment.
In high school, I was old enough to assist with the music program at my church’s Vacation Bible School, an annual weeklong summer camp for K–5 students to participate in Bible lessons, crafts, games, and music making. Each week culminated in a short musical performance with hand motions and dance moves for parents and families. It was my entry point into working with youth, and I simply loved it. For a while, I just thought it was because I enjoyed sharing music with people (and I do). But then one year, the music director was out for a day, and I was in charge of leading 70 students throughout the music classes and assemblies. I just came alive! I remember small group leaders coming up to me afterward, admiring my warm, magnetic, and commanding energy. The more I work with youth over the years—serving as a K–5 literacy tutor, music composition teacher, and arts activism program advisor (to name a few)—and learned from them, the more I realize how much I was meant for this work.
Youth hold so much knowledge and experience and creativity. They know and notice a lot more than we, as adults, give them credit. And though they begin to bottle that energy up as teens, many of them still carry a fire strong enough to incite a revolution. I continue to ask myself questions, like: How do we empower youth to use their voices and express themselves and speak out on social and political issues that directly affect them just as much as anybody else? How do we support them in collective healing and give them the safe space to just breathe and be? How do we help youth learn about their emotions and connect with themselves and others? Some teachers transition to administrative work because they exhausted the limits of influencing change in the classroom. Similarly, I found the limits of effecting change through writing and premiering music. It wasn’t enough. I needed to be in the room with students, teachers, social workers, administrators, counselors, and policymakers.
I now develop and lead music improvisation workshops with high school teens, applying methods from Black American musicians and practices from improvisers and community singing facilitators—artists and psychologists, such as James Oshinsky, David Darling, and Victor Wooten. I guide teens through building blocks of improv, such as call and response and ostinatos (short repetitive ideas) and offer numerous interactive and self-reflective exercises to empower teens’ voices and musical language. Whether students are beginners or experienced performers, exercises, such as ostinatos formed from the rhythmic content of teens’ names, are designed to highlight everyone’s unique talents and abilities. Everyone enters as a teacher and learner. I’ve led educational programs and workshops with numerous arts organizations, including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Denver Young Artists Orchestra, El Sistema Colorado, Neutral Zone (Ann Arbor, MI), and the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music.
I believe in empowering young voices in creativity, leadership, and cultivating compassionate relationships both with themselves and each other. Artmaking is just one powerful tool through which this is possible. This is my calling—my mission.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I would definitely say one impactful skill is networking. I would not be anywhere without all the friends, mentors, colleagues, and connections I made along my journey. I also don’t mean this just for getting jobs. I mean, yes, there was that too, but I really learned about myself and my passions through working with different people. For the longest time, I just wanted to be a film composer and then it was university professor. But then, I worked for a children’s literacy program during my master’s and just fell in love with education policy and after-school programs. I then found the teen center with arts activism programming and discovered a world where I could support youth in creativity, learning about their emotions, and empowering their voice. I found a world where we can help educators rethink how we’re teaching and forming relationships with students. How we’re fostering community from an early age and building resilience. I never would’ve found any of this without all the people I met along the way.
Another area I would highlight is to center your values. First, ask yourself how you define your own self-worth, and then, think about how people can respect those values. For example, one of my values is to listen to my mind and body. Last year, I was experiencing some severe anxiety, and I let my warning signals go by until my emotions just overwhelmed me. I didn’t listen to myself because I started to value other people’s thoughts and expectations (or my perception of their expectations—this is where anxiety can take over) above my own. But you deserve to listen to yourself and take care of yourself. And one line you may have heard, but I know I never tire of, is that you can’t take care of others if you haven’t already taken care of yourself. Even if it’s as simple as taking a walk or drinking some water, give yourself permission to listen to what YOU need in a moment.
This skill may seem like a no-brainer (especially as an artist haha), but I cannot recommend it enough—be ready to pivot! Now here, I’m not just talking about when you get to a gig, and the folks want you to switch out a song at the last minute. Rather, I’m talking about moments when you feel like you’re on a set path, and then everything just stops, and you have to figure out what to do next. Don’t get me wrong—these moments suck! But you end up learning so much about yourself and what you’re capable of. Probably my most significant pivot moment was after I graduated from the University of Michigan and had to figure out what I wanted to do, if it wasn’t in academia. It was rough. But I started with what I knew and was constantly putting my name out there and learning on the spot. And I grew comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing what I was doing all the time. It’s when you pivot when you discover passions of yours that you would have never even considered otherwise.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Yes, I am looking to collaborate with other artists and teaching artists and arts administrators who practice joy in their daily lives and are devoted to making space for other people to do the same. I personally specialize in music and poetry, but I love working with people across disciplines—dance, theater, visual art, videography, psychology. If you are passionate about empowering youth voice and nurturing healing and belonging, I would love to chat! You can email me at Nicholas.felder@colorado.edu. You can also find more about me at: nicholasfelder.com

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nicholasfelder.com/
• Instagram: @nicksterz
• Facebook: Nicholas Felder
• Linkedin: Nicholas Felder
• Youtube: Nicholas Felder
• Soundcloud: Nicholas Felder

Image Credits

Johnette Martin; Clementine Miller; Gracie Fagan; Sly Pup Productions; Annika Socolofsky