Colleen Brannen, Violin

THE HOPE OF LOVING, May 30-31, 2026 Meet the musicians: Colleen Brannen

If you attended our December 2025 performance of Messiah, you heard Colleen in her role as concertmaster. We are so happy that she will be part of the string quartet this coming weekend as we perform THE HOPE OF LOVING, May 30-31.

Violinist Colleen Brannen has enjoyed a distinguished and varied career as an orchestral and chamber musician. She has held positions in The New Haven and Portland Symphonies and as assistant concertmaster of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony under Gustav Meier. She appears regularly with many Boston area ensembles, including Back Bay Chorale, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Chamber Orchestra of Boston, Odyssey Opera, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and Rhode Island Philharmonic. Colleen is a founding member of the Craft Ensemble, a string quartet highlighting female composers of the past and present. She has appeared as a soloist with the New England Classical Singers and recorded with various ensembles on the Naxos, BMOP/Sound and Cantaloupe labels. With BMOP, Colleen played on the Grammy winning opera album of 2019, Fantastic Mr. Fox. She holds degrees from Rice University, where she studied with Kenneth Goldsmith, and New England Conservatory, where she studied with James Buswell.