Holling Smith-Borne was hired as our pianist at a special called business meeting on June 27, 2010. Holling has a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and a Masters of Information and Library Science with a specialization in music librarianship from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He is the director of the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library at Vanderbilt University. As part of his position, he co-curates a field recording collection of the music of East Africa. In May of 2008, he was able to travel to Uganda for two weeks to gather field recordings and learn more about the people and music of Uganda.

Holling has spent most of his life as an accompanist and enjoys vocal coaching and accompanying choirs and opera singers. In graduate school, he spent the summers as an accompanist at Interlochen. His favorite summer was the summer of 1997 when he served as an accompanist and music librarian for the American Institute of Musical Studies, traveling around Europe accompanying opera singers for their opera auditions. In addition to being Glendale’s pianist, he is the assistant accompanist with Nashville in Harmony and accompanies the tuba/euphonium studio at the Blair School of Music.

He and his wife, Joell, have a 10-year old son, Jaden. In his spare time, Holling enjoys hiking, gardening, and playing music with his son who plays the violin and piano and sings.