Brandon Hollihan

Throughout his career, Dr. Brandon Hollihan has enjoyed a musical life as a conductor, singer, keyboardist, and teacher. He serves at Carson-Newman University as Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities. As a conductor, he has participated in the Norfolk Festival, the Chorus America Conducting Academy (Fullerton, CA), and served as a conducting fellow with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, where he made his orchestral conducting debut. Recent conducting credits include Handel’s Messiah, Faure’s Requiem, Arnold Schoenberg’s “Friede auf Erden,” Dr. Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living, and Beethoven’s Fantasia in C Minor op. 80 in which he performed alongside C-N piano professor Dr. Ryan Fogg. As a singer, Dr. Hollihan has performed professionally with Opera Columbus, South Bend Lyric Opera, and Ensemble/Concept 21 in South Bend under the direction of Dr. Carmen-Helena Téllez. In 2024 he and his wife, Dr. Junghwa Lee, presented a staged dramatization of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise at Carson-Newman, which was made possible with a generous grant from the Appalchian College Association.

As a teacher, Dr. Hollihan taught in Columbus City Schools, Ohio, in instrumental music at Beechcroft High School and then vocal music at Whetstone High School. Prior to Carson-Newman, he also taught classes in aural skills and music education at Indiana University-South Bend and Bethel University, conducting the wind ensemble at the latter institution. His teaching philosophy has always placed an emphasis on the program’s quality over its quantity and “maximizing” the gifts that students bring with them into rehearsal and performance. Dr. Hollihan has also worked in church music his entire professional career and is the music director for First United Methodist Church in Jefferson City.

Dr. Hollihan earned his Bachelor’s in music from the University of Notre Dame, dual Master’s degrees in choral conducting and vocal pedagogy from The Ohio State University, and his DMA in choral conducting from the Sacred Music Program at Notre Dame. He has scholarly articles published in Choral Journal, The Choral Scholar & American Choral Review, Choral Director, and the Ohio State Online Music Journal. His dissertation, “Rehearsal and Performance Issues in Steve Reich’s Tehillim: Unlocking the Process,” focuses on the singing and conducting challenges the minimalist structure of Tehillim presents. He also had the privilege of performing Tehillim at Notre Dame in collaboration with Third Coast Percussion, a Grammy-winning ensemble from Chicago. Dr. Hollihan and Dr. Lee live in Knoxville.