About

Brandon Wilhelmsen is a composer, arranger, performer, and educator currently residing in Cincinnati, Ohio. His music explores nature, faith, storytelling, human relationships, personal experience, and the complexity of human experience. For Wilhelmsen, composition is a process of communication, based on ideas words cannot fully express. He approaches music creation with a curious, intellectual, and expressive style. As a composer, Wilhelmsen works across orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, solo, and electroacoustic media. He questions how musical materials interact through melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, texture, form, instrumentation, and technology, asking how they can communicate within a particular work. A piece may begin with a simple image, question, experience, or musical gesture and develop through experimentation, revision, analysis, and listening. The result is a musical experience that draws audiences in for connection, inspiration, and healing. 

Wilhelmsen's identity as a composer is closely connected to his experience as a performer. He was classically trained as a pianist, violinist, organist, and vocalist. He later explored the cello, bassoon, clarinet, and other instruments. He has performed with ensembles including the University of Cincinnati Concert Orchestra, BYU Symphony, BYU Men's Chorus, Millennial Choirs and Orchestra, BYU Opera, and BYU-Idaho Opera. His experience in orchestral, choral, operatic, and collaborative music has given him a deep understanding of composition from the performer's perspective, particularly in relation to instrumentation, timbre, physicality, and collaboration. He has also experimented with instrument building, including the Manviola, an experimental instrument combining four mandolin strings with a five-string viola.

His mentors and teachers have included performers and composers at Brigham Young University, Arizona State University, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Mentors include Brandon Stewart (founder of Millennial Choirs and Orchestra), Ruth Giauque, Dambi Um, Anthony Constatino, Dr. Daniel Kerr, Dr. Sue Neimoyer, Dr. Cook, Dr. Stephen Jones, Dr. Steven Ricks, Dr. Douglas Knehans, Dr. Mara Helmuth, and Dr. Michael Fiday. 

Education remains an important part of Wilhelmsen's musical life. He has taught piano and violin privately through Arizona Music Academy, West Chester Academy, and his independent studio, Melodic Resonance Studio. He has also worked as a K–8 music educator, teaching piano, orchestra, band, and musical theater. His teaching emphasizes technical development alongside confidence, curiosity, meaningful relationships, and personal growth. Through private instruction, classroom teaching, and mentoring, he has developed his own unique curriculum. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Brigham Young University and is currently pursuing a Master of Music in Composition at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Wilhelmsen's interests extend beyond music into science, history, theatre, languages, and world cultures. At Brigham Young University, he studied microbiology alongside music and the arts. These experiences have shaped his interest in understanding people, environments, ideas, and systems and in finding connections between different areas of knowledge.