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Welcome To The Richard Holder Experience
posted (March 16, 2023)
And in softer news, tomorrow night at the ImagiNATION Factory, you'll get the chance to experience the duality of one well known artist.

Richard Holder's photos have been in a number of exhibits over the years, and even hung on the walls of the Bliss Center For Performing Arts. He's no stranger to the visual art world, but 7 months ago, he embarked on a musical project that he hopes will see as much success as his photographs.

And you'll be able to see his vision come alive, but ahead of the launch of the latest exhibit and the release of his new album, he sat down with us today. Courtney Menzies has that story.

Richard Holder is a name known widely in the art community. He's a photographer who's been in the game for over two decades, and now, he's on a path to new experiences as a musical artist.

And to launch his new album, Sacrifice, he's combining his past art works with his future album to create the "Richard Holder Experience."

Richard Holder, Visual & Musical Artist
"It's a celebration of visual arts and music. So I'm simultaneously releasing a musical project on March 17th at the exhibition itself and there will be traditionally what people have known about me as a photographer but there will also be works of paintings and drawings so that might be somewhat of a new category for some people as well and then finally the musical side of the project as well. So that's why we call it the experience."

"It's a small space more or less but it's a snapshot of basically all I intend to do, the direction I plan to move in, and acknowledging the pieces that have gotten me here, that I love a lot, because these pieces are close to my heart."

And for Holder, he says he'd always been immersed in music growing up but never took the leap until now, creating his own songs under his stage name, "Aedryan."

Richard Holder, Visual & Musical Artist
"If you want to do something in your life, the time to do it is now. There's a kid among us right now in Belize who will be our next prime minister in the future. You have to begin now, if you want to do something, you can't just say, oh man, I missed that. I used to say that for the longest time, I used to say I missed my calling in life and that was to be a musician and then one day I just decided, I will do it, no matter what. I will just sit down now, because I was playing keyboards, but I'm not formally trained as a musician, I've been listening to it intently because of my upbringing. My grandfather was Cleveland Berry, he made Good Mawnin Miss Lady, so people used to look up to him in the family as sort of an artists, my mom especially made me look up at him as kind of the first artist I knew, so it was a musical artist and because of her upbringing with him, we had a lot of jazz, world music, everything, R&B, pop, funk, you name it, and that was basically my foundation, I think that's how I got the wheels turning in my head."

But his new venture is part of his idea of what an artist - of any kind - should be - someone who strives shock their audience with new and innovative pieces.

Richard Holder, Visual & Musical Artist
"I think one of the things as artists we look forward to is new experiences because if we're trying to create the same thing, why should we even continue? What keeps us going and what keeps us motivated is trying to find new things so for me even music is a new embarkment, it's a new adventure for me, I'm just beginning this and I'm planning to do these so called experiences a little more where we have visual and audio so I create exhibitions that are curated to have these thematic ideas, whatever it might be, and music specifically for those projects so this is kind of a new direction for me which answers your questions as to what I'm looking for when I'm approaching art."

"It is to find new things, it's to experiment, it's to bring things to the public, I think that's the purpose of an artist, is to kind of give people a way to dream a little bit, escape a little bit from reality."

And at the launch of his exhibit tomorrow night, he's hoping everyone who attends can form a connection between the art and the music.

Richard Holder, Visual & Musical Artist
"I guess there's multiple vibes but the underlying connection would be joy, I want them to feel the celebration of art and music and I'm trying to take it up a level too because for me, photography and photo exhibits are wonderful but as an artist who has an appetite for a lot more I always felt like, music is a living thing so to have them together is potent because you have these great images to look at but they don't move. They go in but now the music is coming externally and that's causing you to feel something. And it's like a different experience so it's animated, it has life, it's a landscape that's moving, you're in a train and you're going from the beginning and the destination is the end of the song."

At the exhibit, Holder will also be launching the music video to one of his new songs, "Bird of Paradise."

The album will be on all digital platforms tomorrow and the first music video premiered on Youtube tonight.

The exhibit opens at 6 tomorrow night and is free of charge and opened to the public.

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