Keith Johnston

Keith Johnston, director of Band & Orchestra, has a long and varied career as a performer, conductor and educator in the United States and internationally. He has taken the SHU Band & Orchestra on national and international tours, commissioned new works, been featured in national television ad campaigns and even made an appearance on MTV. In addition to directing the Concert, Marching and Pep Bands and Orchestra, he also directs the Brass and Wind Ensembles, teaches trombone and oversees the instrumental chamber music program.

Johnston has been a music director and conductor for professional, community and educational bands, orchestras and opera companies, conducting performances in a dozen states and six countries around the world. He has conducted high school honor bands in CT, PA and IL and gave master classes at Mott College and University of Michigan-Flint.

Johnston has conducted and taught at Ecole Musique Sainte Trinite in Port au Prince and CEMUCHCA in Cap Haitian, Haiti, and has directed brass festivals in Port au Prince and Jacmel, Haiti. An advocate of Haitian composers, he gave the American and European premier of Occide Jeanty’s “Chery Marche Funebre” and gave the American and European premier of the band transcription of Ludovic Lamothe’s “Danza No. 4” during the SHU band’s European tour in 2018. Johnston has given numerous world premieres including “Blue Iris for Trombone and Organ” and “9 Feet of Brass, Concerto for Trombone and Band” - both composed for him by Steven Rosenhaus - and Edward Thompson’s “The Poem of the One World” for trombone and organ, premiered in Ireland in 2016. In February 2017, he was invited by the Orquesta Sinfonica de Oriente in Santiago, Cuba, to perform and conduct in a program that included the world premiere of Cuban composer Ernesto Burgos’ “Suite Cubana Para Metales.” In 2018 he conducted a new music project at SHU featuring a faculty and student ensemble premiering new works by composers Mel Mobley, Steven Rosenhaus and Ray Strobel for chamber ensemble, dancers and mixed media based on the Buddhist tradition of the The Four Immeasurables. In the spring of 2025, Johnston was part of a project to commission Roger Zare’s “Deep Underground” for orchestra and in fall 2025 he joined the adjudication committee for the Walter Beeler Memorial Composition Prize at Ithaca College.

Johnston has taken the Sacred Heart Band & Orchestra on six international tours to Ireland, Italy, Prague and Vienna and will conduct the ensembles on a tour in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in 2026.

Johnston received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Music from Carnegie Mellon University. He studied trombone with Byron McCulloh and conducting with Robert Page, Juan-Pablo Izquierdo, Eduardo Alonso-Crespo and Keith Lockhart, as well as advanced conducting studies at London’s Royal Academy of Music. He currently serves on the board of BLUME Haiti, a non-profit organization that works to develop leadership skills through music education and performance in Haiti. Johnston is a member of NAfME, CBDNA, CMEA, the International Conductor’s Guild, VP of the Northeast Region for College Orchestra Director’s Association, a life member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi.