Contact Information

Office Hours

• Monday 10:00 am - 11:00 am
• Thursday 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
• Note:

Bio

As a conductor, artistic director and educator, Melodie Galloway is known as someone who brings people together through music that captures the beauty of the human experience. As Professor of Music and Director of Visual & Performing Arts at UNC Asheville, her choirs have performed for numerous state and local events, and for invited performances as part of the Holiday Open House Events at the White House each fall (2006-2022), including a private audience with President and Mrs. Obama in 2012.

In 2025, she was named the Ruth Paddison Distinguished Professor of Music and Drama. Dr. Galloway’s “Exploring Music Migrations as Markers for Cultural Identities” project aims to bridge music and documentary film to explore cultural identities through historical artifacts in the Thistle & Shamrock collection. Hosted by the University of North Carolina Asheville’s Center for Music and Roots, the project investigates music-related migration stories primarily focused on European, Scandinavian, and British Isles immigrant movements to North America while acknowledging the transatlantic slave trade. The project will utilize Fiona Ritchie’s music collection from NPR’s award- winning program, The Thistle & Shamrock, donated to the Center, and emphasize the connection between past and present cultural identities through music. It will involve faculty-student collaborations for research, documentary production, and undergraduate studies.

Dr. Galloway holds a Master’s degree from Florida State University in Vocal Performance and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her experience as a conductor and soprano soloist includes opera, musical theatre, and jazz. Her credits as a conductor include a 2012 Carnegie Hall invited performance featuring 200 singers and orchestra. She led combined choirs and the Beethoven Academy Orchestra (Krakow) in Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living in May 2017 in Vienna, Prague and Salzburg, including the Eastern European première of the work.

Among her original compositions, written as an expression of the acute loneliness and silence caused by the COVID pandemic and the hope of coming back together in song, is Gloria, a work for SATB choir, brass and percussion. This inspiring work received its premiere with the Asheville Choral Society in December, 2022. Her continued scholarship includes the choral/orchestral music of legendary jazz artist, Dave Brubeck; how to combat the effects of aging on the voice; music and wellness; and the migration of Celtic music to Appalachia. One of her recent papers, “Breaking Barriers – Blurring Lines: Genre-homogenous Choral Music of Resilience: Exploring works by Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Dave Brubeck and Margaret Bonds,” was presented as part of the American Choral Directors Association Southern Regional Conference in Raleigh, NC, February, 2022. She is in demand as a choral clinician, guest conductor, composer/arranger and consultant.

Education

• B.M., Appalachian State University
• M.M., Florida State University
• D.M.A., University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Courses Taught

• MUSC111-001 ARTS: University Singers
• MUSC111-002 ARTS: Asheville Singers
• MUSC291 Applied Voice
• MUSC201 Aural Skills
• MUSC291 Music Theory
• MUSC373 Music for Film
• MUSC272 Beginning Conducting
• HUM214 Humanities 214
• MUSC373 Musical Theatre

This faculty member teaches in UNC Asheville's Humanities Program.