Brandon Harnish

By day, I am Manager of Orchestra Operations and Social Impact at the Reno Chamber Orchestra. My work involves planning and running RCO's primary concerts and concerto competition, the Nevada Chamber Music Festival, and community-oriented events.

I am also the Director of Orchestra & Choir at Reno Video Game Symphony. I am perhaps best known (at least, in the realm of video game music) for founding Virtual Video Game Orchestra, which is an online community of musicians that host orchestral recording projects, founded in response to COVID-19.

I taught math and economics part-time at the University of Nevada, Reno from Fall 2021 through Fall 2023, and am set to teach math at Truckee Meadows Community College in Fall 2024 as part of TMCC's Adult Basic Education program.

I worked at the University of Nevada, Reno's Math Center tutoring students in math, stats, physics, and mathematical aspects from various disciplines. I developed a tutoring resource compendium there that spans all the difficult or otherwise obscure topics in the lower division math curriculum. I also wrote and hosted the annual UNR Integration Bee.As a musician: I am an arranger/orchestrator, copyist/engraver, bari-tenor chorister, player of assorted middle/low brass, former classical pianist, and have dabbled in mallet percussion and low reeds. I mostly perform music from video games and other media.

In addition to being a performer with Reno Video Game Symphony and Virtual Video Game Orchestra, I've performed with numerous orchestral ensembles that specialize in video game music, namely: the Game Music Ensemble at UCLA, The Intermission Orchestra at Berkeley, the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra, and the University of Maryland Gamer Symphony Orchestra. I participate in Dwelling of Duels (DoD) as an arranger and recording artist, where I arrange/orchestrate for the DoD Brass Collective and sing with remote a cappella group Gamer Tag. I appear on various cover albums with Pixel Mixers, and have contributed to VGM charity albums hosted by VGM CON and Speed Jammers.

Outside of video game music, I have sung tenor/baritone with the Reno Philharmonic Chorus and the UNR Chamber Chorale, and played sousaphone for the Carson Street Ragtime Band playing traditional jazz. I am a former musical director of Nevada Glee Club at the University of Nevada, Reno, where my journey as an arranger began.

I am a former competitive speedcuber, having started competing in 2009. I'm best known there for having held the world record for solving the Skewb puzzle for most of 2014. I also held the world record for the average amount of time for solving the Skewb around the same time. In 2016, I won a U.S. National Championship title for solving the classic 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube in the fewest number of moves.

I started organizing speedcubing competitions in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 under the name Bay Area Speedcubin'. I am a former president of the Rubik's Cube Club at the University of Nevada, Reno. I organized the first competition held simultaneously in multiple continents, and co-organized the first three western regional championships for CubingUSA.

I served as a Delegate for the World Cube Association from 2017 until June 25th, 2022, where I trained up-and-coming competition organizers, officiated competitions, and helped establish and grow local communities in California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Hawaii. I am considered by many to be the chief perpetuator of the 6.25 meme. (Hi Mitch!)