Brian Dooley – Guitar, Ukulele (Faculty Member Since 2025): Brian Dooley is a guitarist and highland bagpiper residing in Asheville, NC. On the guitar he performs a wide variety of classical, finger-style, and Celtic music. His concerts typically blend a wide gamut of repertoire dating back from the Renaissance to the modern day, often including his own arrangements of popular and original material. Dooley holds a DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) in guitar from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY and studied fingerstyle guitar privately with Kinloch Nelson.
As a teacher, he has lectured on fretboard harmony, guitar pedagogy, guitar history, music theory, and has taught secondary lessons in classical and jazz guitar. As a guitarist, he has performed in a wide variety of ensembles on both classical and electric guitar, including solo recitals, film scores, opera, and chamber music. In addition to teaching Brian frequently performs in hospital spaces through EPAM (Eastman Performing Arts Musician) as part of the Friends of Strong program where he provides music for bedside performance and various spaces in the hospital virtually.
Brian is a recording artist on both KOTEKAN and Azica Records. His solo guitar performance of Matthew Welch’s composition “Gorgamor the Giant Gecko” can be found on all streaming services. In Fall 2025, his recording as a soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra will be released performing Derrick Skye’s “To Seek is Jubilance.”