Kent Holliday is a native of St. Paul, Minnesota and began piano studies  with his father at age five. He received a B.A. degree in music and philosophy from Hamline University in 1962, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in music composition-theory from the University of Minnesota in 1964 and 1968. His major composition teachers were Paul Fetler and Dominick Argento at the University of Minnesota, Pietro Grossi at S2FM Studio De Fonologia, Florence, Italy and Witold Salonek at Hochschule der Kunst, Berlin, Germany.

Holliday taught for nine years in Colorado at the University of Southern Colorado and at Colorado State University, and 43 years at Virginia Tech, retiring in 2017. An avid hiker and mountain climber, he has sojourned extensively in Europe, Central and South America, and the South Pacific in search of “peak experiences,” believing that the spiritual qualities of mountains and music are not nearly so dissimilar as might first appear.