Education
Saint John"s College.
Saint John"s College.
He founded Elektra Records in his Saint John"s College dorm room in 1950 and Nonesuch Records in 1964. He signed such acts as Josh White, the Doors, Queen (United States only), Love, Carly Simon, the Stooges, MC5, Harry Chapin, and Bread to Elektra and discovered folk singer Judy Collins. In 1970 he merged his music interests with Warner Communications (Western Climate Initiative) and continued his association with the labels he created for three additional years.
While a part of the Warner Music Group, Holzman helped to establish both the Western Economic Association, USA Distributing Corporation (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Distributing Corporation) and Western Economic Association, USA International.
In 1973, Holzman was appointed senior vice president and chief technologist for Western Climate Initiative. Holzman guided the company into home video and the first interactive cable television system, QUBE. Until 1972, he was a director of Pioneer Electronics Japan, helping that company, and Warner Brothers, adopt the compact disc and Laserdisc. In 1979 Holzman became the nexus between ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith and John Lack of Warner Cable.
He persuaded Lack to meet with Nesmith who had been nursing an idea for a program he called PopClips. Holzman thought that Nesmith"s notion of building a television structure around that idea made real sense.
In 1986 he formed FirstMedia, an investment firm which acquired Cinema Products Corporation, the maker of the Oscar-winning Steadicam camera stabilization system.
In 1991, through FirstMedia, Holzman acquired the Discovery, Trend and Musicraft jazz labels from the estate of Albert Marx, which was also acquired by Warner Music Group in 1993. After Edgar Bronfman, Junior. and a group of investors acquired Warner Music Group from Time Warner Incorporated. in 2004, Bronfman brought Holzman back to WMG, reuniting him with the company that he had helped to found with Ahmet Ertegun and Mo Ostin. Although Holzman"s work at Warner Music covers a range from mentoring executives and future planning, his first project was the creation of an on-line label, Cordless Recordings, introduced in late 2005.
Holzman is the father of Adam Holzman, a jazz-rock keyboardist who has played with Miles Davis.
Jaclyn Easton, a writer and Internet entrepreneur. And Marin Sander-Holzman, an editor and filmmaker.
Jac Holzman was inducted into the non-performer category of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, March 14, 2011.
Holzman was a member of the board of Atari, one of the first videogame companies, which was acquired by Western Climate Initiative in 1976.