Courtney Cochran
Courtney Cochran is a creative leader, musician and community builder whose work has long centered on how culture brings people together.
Her interest in cultural exchange began early. As a teenager, she participated in the Ulster Project, building friendships with young people from Northern Ireland and seeing firsthand how conversation, shared experiences and culture can create connections across religious and cultural divides. Her work as a teen with Native American communities in partnership with the Methodist Church and Dr. Thom White Wolf Fassett further shaped her interest in the ways people preserve, practice and share living traditions.
A violinist since age eight, Courtney has played across classical, old-time, bluegrass, jazz and traditional Irish music. In 2025, she co-founded TradChattanooga, helping create Chattanooga’s recurring traditional Irish session and a gathering place for musicians, listeners and newcomers interested in the living tradition of Irish music. That growing community became the foundation for Chattanooga Celtic Connection.
Professionally, Courtney has spent more than 25 years in creative direction, communications, design and storytelling. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from East Tennessee State University and an MA in Communications from Wake Forest University. Her community work has included service on the Chattanooga Public Art Commission as well as arts, cultural and civic initiatives throughout the region.
Courtney founded Chattanooga Celtic Connection to bring those threads together: music, culture, storytelling and community-building. Her work focuses on developing partnerships and creating opportunities to experience the music, arts, history and living traditions of the Celtic nations while exploring their enduring connections to Appalachia.
Founder & Executive Director
Tom Morley
Classically trained with a degree in music education, Tom Morley has performed professionally in almost every music genre over several decades, with a focus on and passion for Irish Traditional Music throughout the past 15 years, both as a performer and teacher. As co-founder and session leader for TradChattanooga, Tom brings an educational mindset to Chattanooga’s only authentic Irish session.
As an Irish fiddler, Tom has made multiple trips to Ireland to perform and research traditional Irish music (studying with and playing alongside legendary fiddlers including Manus McGuire, Maurice Lennon, Liz Carroll, Kevin Burke, Frankie Gavin, and Gerry O'Connor). He teaches privately and at fiddle workshops and has taught Irish fiddling at the O'Connor String Camp in Charleston, SCOR Adult String Camps in Atlanta, and for the Boston area annual 3-day workshop event known as the Fiddle Hell Gathering. In 2013 he took his adult fiddle group, the Irish Trad Explorers, on a tour across Ireland, where they performed in community centers, churches, and pubs, often alongside top Irish musicians. He is a regular contributor to iFiddle digital magazine and is the author of two well-received fiddle books: the tutorial Learn to Play Irish Trad Fiddle (reviewed in Fiddler magazine, Irish Music magazine and the American String Teachers Assoc. Journal) and Fiddle Club Favorites, a collection of fun tunes for beginning players.