About
Brandon Scott Coleman is a guitarist, composer, arranger, and producer based in Northern Kentucky, from eastern Kentucky originally. He produces, mixes, and masters records for other artists, and teaches at Northern Kentucky University.
In August 2026 he is the guitar soloist for the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra's Zappa program, playing Revised Music for Guitar and Low-Budget Orchestra and G-Spot Tornado on a bill with Mozart's "Haffner" symphony.
My versatility has provided me a path from folk music all the way to playing hypercomplex Frank Zappa music with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra: Juan Trigos' Ella-Miau opera, with new-music density. A very specialized guitarist with exceptional versatility, reading ability, and stylistic gamut.
Those are two separate engagements, incidentally: the Zappa program with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra is one thing, and Juan Trigos' opera Ella-Miau is another. What they have in common is a density of rhythmic writing that most guitarists don't spend much time around, which is probably why the same phone tends to ring for both.
In practice the year tends to divide roughly three ways.
Roots and Americana records with Ben Sollee and Barnweaver, pop and rock sessions, and the arranging work that grows out of them: string and horn writing for other people's songs.
His own trio and quartet, Chaos Magick, the fusion group Spherical Agenda, and dates with Sam Blakeslee, Dan Pugach, Nicole Zuraitis, Zach Brock, and Noah Preminger.
Long-form composition for his own large ensemble, orchestral and new-music chairs, opera pits, and the arranging work that other people commission.
Some of this work is the kind a guitarist waits a career for: playing under John Adams as he conducted his own El Niño, sitting in the pit for a world premiere at Cincinnati Opera, and this summer, taking the solo chair for Zappa's orchestral music on a program that also includes Mozart.
Brandon performed John Adams' El Niño conducted by the composer, at Music Hall in Cincinnati. Playing under a composer's own baton on his own major work is a categorically different thing from performing with an orchestra.
The world premiere of Fierce, an opera by Cincinnati composer William Menefield with a libretto by Sheila Williams, which she developed from more than a year of interviews with young women in Cincinnati. Menefield's score moves between jazz, modern, and classical writing.
Guitar soloist for Summermusik's final Mainstage.G-Spot Tornado is from The Yellow Shark. Zappa wrote it on the Synclavier believing no humans could play it.
A recording with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Pops.
Also performed and recorded with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, concert:nova, and the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra.
One of my HUGE musical passions is a rhythmic language that I've developed based on several musical influences: the strict subdivisions of Frank Zappa's art music, the flowing rubato of impressionist Classical music, the dynamic interplay of jazz music, the structural subtleties of Indian Classical music, and the natural rhythms of human speech and movement.
It's worth saying that this is a private obsession that happens to be useful: the subdivisions he chases for their own sake are the same ones that turn up in a Zappa score.
The Brandon Scott Coleman Trio and Quartet, with Matt Wiles on bass and Jeff Mellott on drums, and Ben Tweedt or Keigo Hirakawa on keys. Also the Sam Blakeslee Quintet and Wistful Thinking, Grammy-winning drummer-composer Dan Pugach and the Dan Pugach Nonet, Grammy-winning vocalist Nicole Zuraitis, Grammy-winning violinist Zach Brock, Noah Preminger, Leo Sherman's Tonewheel, saxophonist Randy Villars, and Keigo Hirakawa. Earlier: Fourth Kind and Miller.
As a session player, Brandon is featured across the discography ofDoctor Bionic, the project of Cincinnati producer Jason Grimes: six-plus releases on Chiefdom and Colemine Records, where his playing is chopped and rebuilt into someone else's beats.
Session guitar heard across many records and on soundtrack work for television and film, notably including DC's Legends of Tomorrow. Session work has been placed on programming from ABC to Netflix.
Brandon teaches at Northern Kentucky University, and takes occasional private students. He has given masterclasses at UNAH-VS in San Pedro Sula and UNAH in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; UDLA in Quito and the Universidad de Loja in Ecuador; and at West Virginia State University, Morehead State University, the University of Virginia, and Belmont University.
Smalls · The Kennedy Center · The Blue Wisp Jazz Club · Bop Stop · BluJazz+ · Bar Next Door at La Lanterna · 55 Bar · Club Bonafide · The Jazz Estate · Cliff Bell's · Rudy's Jazz Room · Jimmy Can't Dance · Merriman's Playhouse. Festivals: Loja Jazz Festival, Ecuador (2012); CBGB Festival, NYC (2014); Columbus Jazz & Rib Fest (2014, 2016).
He has also been a hired gun for classic acts including The Drifters, The Marvelettes, and Il Divo.
In his own words: "I infamously wrote a jingle for Eric C. Conn."Conn was the eastern Kentucky disability lawyer whose yellow billboards and self-produced TV ads were unavoidable in the region, and who was later convicted in one of the largest Social Security fraud schemes in US history. Apple TV+ made a four-part documentary about him,The Big Conn, in 2022. Brandon wrote the jingle years before any of that came out.
"I like to put a lot of care into my art. It's quite difficult for me to come up with a 30-second or shorter bite-sized nugget to satiate the appetites of the masses. My time feels better suited crafting something that's more meaningful and deep to me."