Family, music, service to community and country define Brad Halverson’s life
Originally published in the Ojai Valley News
This story was published in the Ojai Valley News on September 8th, 2025.
“Somewhere in the weeks before, it’s going to hit me,” Brad said. “I’m performing where Miles Davis and Tchaikovsky played.”
That was Ojai’s Brad Halverson quoted in the Los Angeles Times back in 2002. Halverson, then 16 years old, was preparing to perform alongside more than 100 Nordhoff High School band and choir students at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
Brad tragically died of a heart attack on Aug. 27, his parents, Dr. Jim and Robyn Halverson, said. Brad was planning to marry his fiancée, Nicole Jahng, on Oct. 25 in Ojai.
Brad and Nicole met in 2019, as pit orchestra musicians for Nordhoff High School’s production of “Crazy for You.” Brad was on the drums, Nicole was on the cello, and Jim served as producer.
For the Halverson family, the Nordhoff High School musical has been a family affair since 2000. That’s when Brad’s older sister, Jenna Halverson, a singer, took the stage. While Jenna was singing, Jim and Brad were in the pit orchestra, playing trumpet and saxophone, respectively.
In the weeks before he died, Brad celebrated his 39th birthday and his bachelor’s party.
“I will never understand this beautiful, terrible life,” Nicole wrote, reflecting on her fiancé’s passing. “Brad is gone painfully too soon, but I am the luckiest woman to have spent the last six and a half years living the best life with him.”
Community members will remember Brad by the diverse talents he shared with the valley: He was a virtuoso musician, performer, and founder of Ojai’s Chief Peak Builders.
“Brad was one of those musicians who could teach himself almost any instrument,” fellow saxophone player and close friend Rubén Salinas reflected. The two went through the Nordhoff music program together. “Though he played saxophone, he also played drums and bass and would teach himself Incubus songs after listening to them for a few hours.” Salinas remembered: “Once in high school, there was an important bassoon part in a piece we were doing — but nobody played bassoon. When [Nordhoff Music Director Bill] Wagner asked if anyone wanted to try and play it, Brad took the bassoon home over the weekend and came back able to not just play the little bassoon solo, he could play the bassoon effortlessly.”
Learning to play the bassoon, Wagner said, should take a musician “a good, solid year. I actually wrote a piece specifically for Brad on bassoon for that Carnegie Hall performance,” he remembered.
Brad was more than a musician, Wagner was sure to mention.
“It was Brad’s junior year that he decided instead of playing in the orchestra pit, he wanted to be on stage.” The musical that year was “Fiddler on the Roof.” “He came in at the last minute to take the audition and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ for us,” Wagner recalled with a laugh. “Not prepared at all.” Halverson was cast in the lead role as Tevye. “He had a gift, obviously,” Wagner remarked. Learning to play the bassoon, Wagner said, should take a musician “a good, solid year. I actually wrote a piece specifically for Brad on bassoon for that Carnegie Hall performance,” he remembered.
Like many who grew up in Ojai, Brad departed the valley after graduating from Nordhoff High School in 2004. He moved to San Francisco in 2008, where he composed music for television and commercials. Brad joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 2010, Jim said.
And like many children of Ojai, Brad eventually made his way back home to Ventura County — for him it was 2015.
Kelly Nimmer, who attended school with Brad, remembers reconnecting with her old classmate on the first night of the Thomas Fire: Dec. 4, 2017. Kelly, who owns Mission Beekeeping with her husband, Steve Nimmer, described being woken up by a phone call around midnight, with the news that her family’s 160 beehives in West Ventura were in the path of the blaze. Kelly pleaded for assistance on Facebook. Brad, then based in Oxnard, answered her call.
“He spent the entire night moving dozens of beehives onto Steve’s trailer until dawn, saving our young business,” Kelly remembered. “The whole time he was relaxed, good-spirited, and steadfast.” Brad was wearing flip-flops throughout the evacuation, Steve added, getting stung repeatedly without complaint.
Brad helped the Nimmers save half their hives that night, Kelly remembered, and stood with the couple in solidarity while the flames engulfed the rest. “We will never forget his spirit of generosity that night. Instead of running away from the fire, he ran toward it, for no reason other than to help.”
Tara Saylor, another Nordhoff High School classmate, remembered reconnecting with Brad during the Thomas Fire, too. One of Saylor’s clearest memories of that night is Brad on the roof of a family friend’s home, soaking it with a garden hose. “That was Brad,” she said. “Brad did so much for Ojai.”
After finishing his commitment to the Army Reserves in 2019, Brad was ready for a career change. Inspiration came in an unexpected place: an old chain link fence in his parents’ Ojai back yard. After carefully building a 100-foot redwood enclosure in the old chain link’s place, Brad turned to Robyn and said, “I could do this for a living,” Jim remembered. And he did.
That was the beginning of Brad’s business, Chief Peak Builders, a licensed framing contractor. (A framing contractor is responsible for the “bones” of any building project, colleague Johnathon Maxson explained.)
Since 2020, Maxson worked with Brad on projects across the Ojai Valley, including the Nordhoff administration buildings, the iconic trellis at Ojai City Hall, and a new bus and Trolley stop on Ojai Avenue in the downtown Bank of America parking lot.
“There are things that Brad has built in this town that will be there for 100 years,” Maxson said.
When he died, Brad had six employees and five ongoing building projects, his father said.
Jim shared a memory of his last Sunday evening with his son, at Oak View’s Ojai Pizza, where they had dinner with Robyn and Nicole. “At least four or five people came up to him,” Jim said, and Brad proudly introduced his mom, dad, and fiancée. Later, Jim, a well-known local doctor, remembers Brad saying: “‘Dad, I’ve just got to tell you something: That’s the first time we ever went out to dinner when more people knew me than knew you. That was really cool.’”
In lieu of flowers, the Halverson family has established the Brad Halverson Memorial Scholarship at his alma mater, Nordhoff High School in Ojai.
This annual scholarship will be given to a graduating senior pursuing further education in instrumental or choral music or musical theater.
Contributions can be made by sending a check made payable to MAESTRO, with Brad Halverson Memorial Scholarship in the memo. The mailing address is:
Nordhoff Jr. High and High School
Attn: Music Department
1401 Maricopa Highway
Ojai, CA 93023
Contributions can also be made through Venmo: nhsmusic-maestro