PC: Danielle Gonzalez
Having a passion for youth and community engagement, Nicholas Felder (he/him) creates art that inspires relational bonds between people in a given space. He builds community in artmaking, unlocking truths around self-identity, and creating a space for embodied expression. Nicholas has led arts programs and workshops with El Sistema Colorado, Neutral Zone (Ann Arbor, MI), the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and American Composers Orchestra. He loves to encourage teens to express their social and political views through artmaking.
An active composer and collaborator, Nicholas has had his works performed nationally by ensembles, such as the Hawaii Youth Symphony, Mivos Quartet, Kennesaw State University Symphony Orchestra, DC Youth Orchestra Program and University of Michigan Converge Quartet. He recently worked with co-composer Alfredo Cabrera at The School at Marygrove in Detroit on a project called “Sing My Song.” Under the Hampsong Foundation’s partnership with the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, Nicholas and Alfredo led workshops to guide a class through writing, recording, and producing a song about experiencing and overcoming trauma.
Nicholas’s scholarly interests encompass the Black musical tradition with an emphasis on the voice. The voice interests him with the sensual-emotional effects of its embodied performance. He draws inspiration from artists like Anthony Braxton, Nicole Mitchell, and Julius Eastman who expanded conventional language to express felt, nuanced emotion. In Nicholas’s piece Skin: Stretching What You Know About Your Being (2021) for acapella solo voice or vocal ensemble, he focused on the word “skin”—a surface-level yet also ambiguous term—and explored through musical and extra-linguistic material (primarily various types of inhales) to discover a new sense of self. When he used a larger ensemble, he questioned the performance space and how musical structure influences the interaction between the performers and effects on the audience.
Nicholas’s piece This Space: A Place for Belonging (2022) for vocal ensemble, violin and viola further investigated this interaction, asking performers to move around the physical room and respond to each other’s impromptu meditations on prompts in the score. Nicholas wants to continue studying how communal and contemplative singing practices, like those in African American gospel and jazz, use improvisation to invite participants from various musical backgrounds. His goal is to start developing a model to guide numerous groups of people through singing exercises to empower creativity and heal.
Nicholas’s research interests are influenced, in part, by his passion for teaching and working with young students. Nicholas has worked with multiple K–12 education programs, including America Reads, at the University of Michigan, the Georgia Youth Symphony Orchestra, and St. David’s Episcopal Church Vacation Bible School. His love grew as he started leading the Activism Through Art program at the Neutral Zone, a teen-driven nonprofit in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Each session, he notes work by arts activists, such as Toshi Reagon (Parable of the Sower opera, 2015) and Jeff Donaldson (Jampact and Jelly Tite visual art, 1988), to encourage teens to express their social and political views through artmaking. By offering a wide array of art pieces and open-ended discussion questions, Nicholas challenges students to not only critique public work but also consider the role of their own art in the world.
Nicholas earned degrees from the University of Michigan and Kennesaw State University, studying with Evan Chambers, Kristin Kuster, and Laurence Sherr.
Nicholas loves freshly brewed coffee, any kind of earthy color (probably because he’s a Taurus) and laughing out loud with his friends and family.
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