While Mr. Holt comes to Boston Arts Academy from New York City, he has had a long association with Boston. He moved to the area after earning a BA in music and graduating with departmental honors from the State University of New York in Plattsburgh. He also received a M.M. degree in music education from the New England Conservatory. Throughout all of this he has maintained a long, free-lance musical career which has included playing with numerous organizations and musicians such as the Boston Pops, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Brookline Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Civic Orchestra, the Longwood Symphony, The New York Voices, blues artists Johnny Adams and Sam McClane, jazz artists Kurt Elling and Deborah Henson-Conant, folk artists Susan Werner, Martin Sexton, Eric Schwartz and the Thompson Sisters. During his time at NEC, Mr. Holt was also involved in the Boston Music Education Collaborative and taught at several schools in the Boston Public Schools system. In 1998, Mr. Holt moved to New York City and began teaching in the Ossining Public Schools system. While there, he conducted two of the student orchestras and arranged music for those orchestras. Here at BAA he is responsible for teaching courses in music technology, music theory, strings and he has directed the new String Expansion Program. Mr. Holt was also a 2006 Surdna fellow to further his study of synthesis and music technology. In his spare time, Mr. Holt still maintains a busy free-lance musician schedule.