Background of Principal
Musicians
David Stewart Wiley, Artistic Director & Conductor
of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Music Festival, serves concurrently as
Music Director & Conductor of New York’s Long Island
Philharmonic and Virginia’s Roanoke Symphony Orchestra
. Active as a guest conductor, pianist, arranger and film
composer, Wiley has guest conducted acclaimed symphonies
including Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Milwaukee,
Indianapolis, Minnesota, Saint Louis, Atlanta, Oregon, Honolulu,
and Utah, among many others in 35 U.S. states. Wiley’s music
career has taken him to dozens of countries in Europe, Asia, and
Africa. He has previously served as Assistant Conductor of the
Minnesota Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
Among his diverse activities, he created and leads an acclaimed
event with business executives and musicians together on stage
titled
which helps executives to model
leadership skills in a fun and engaging atmosphere.
David’s U.S. Summer Music Festival conducting appearances
include Aspen, Brevard, The Music Academy of the West,
Tanglewood, Park City, Minnesota Orchestra
Summerfes
t,
Indianapolis Symphony on the Prairie, and many others. From
1999 until 2006, Wiley was the Artistic Director & Conductor of the
Wintergreen Summer Music Festival, where he founded the
Festival Orchestra and Academy. His seven years at Wintergreen as
artistic director and conductor were a time of remarkable artistic
and financial growth for WPA, where he programmed and led over
100 performances of symphony, jazz, chamber music, and
educational concerts.
Wiley's CDs include an album of French cello concerti with Zuill
Bailey & the Roanoke Symphony on Delos International,
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 "Choral", American Piano Concertos
with Norman Krieger on Artisie 4, "David Wiley & Friends: Classical
Jazz", "American Trumpet Concertos" with the Slovak Radio
Symphony and Paul Neebe, and violin/piano duo CD "Preludes &
Lullabies" with Akemi Takayama. In 2013 he released a solo piano
CD of his music “Full Circle” and just released his brand new 2014
solo release “Piano Bells” – both now available this weekend.
Wiley holds a Doctor and Master of Music in Conducting from
Indiana University, a degree in Piano Performance with honors
from the New England Conservatory of Music, and a degree in
Religion, summa cum laude, from Tufts University. Wiley was
honored by the NAACP as Citizen of the Year in the Arts, and he is
a recipient of the Perry F. Kendig Prize for service to the arts as
well as being honored as a Paul Harris fellow from Rotary
International.
As a solo pianist, Wiley has performed with numerous major
orchestras throughout the United States including Minnesota,
Indianapolis, Oregon, Honolulu, Wheeling, and at the Aspen, Garth
Newel, Wintergreen, and Prince Albert (Hawaii) summer festivals.
He has also appeared as a jazz pianist in Boston's Symphony Hall
and in recital appearances throughout the U.S. as well as in China,
Russia, Romania, Hungary, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, and
Bulgaria.
Wiley collaborates with a diversity of well-known solo artists and
groups in the Classical and Pops world, including Billy Joel, Sir
James Galway, Jessye Norman, Midori, Lynn Harrell, John Williams,
Andre Watts, Jon Nakamatsu, Eiji Oue, Norman Krieger, Zuill
Bailey, Giora Schmidt, Christian Zacharias, Orly Shaham,
Bernadette Peters, Bruce Hornsby, Jennifer Holliday, Marvin
Hamlisch, Mercedes Ellington, Lou Rawls, Doc Severinsen, Aaron
Neville, Michael McDonald, Art Garfunkel, the Pointer Sisters, Ben
Vereen, Kool & the Gang, Cirque, Jeans n’ Classics, Boz Skaggs, Billy
Ocean, K.C. & the Sunshine Band, The Moscow Ballet, and Sounds
of Blackness. Wiley website
Akemi Takayama, Concertmaster
,
appears
internationally as a soloist and chamber music collaborator and
has recently collaborated with famed Irish pianist
She is an associate professor at the Shenandoah University
Conservatory of Music and concertmaster of both the Roanoke
Symphony Orchestra and The Williamsburg Symphonia in Virginia.
In the fall of 2012 Takayama also served as a faculty member at
the Oberlin Conservatory. Acclaimed by Isaac Stern as “a true
musician,” she was invited to the Marlboro Music Festival and has
served on the faculties of the Chautauqua Institute in New York,
the Idyllwild School for the Arts in California, the Brevard Music
Center in North Carolina, Shenandoah Performs in Virginia and at
Virginia Tech. Takayama also enjoys her recent associations with
New Orchestra of Washington and Virginia’s Blue Ridge Music
Festival. She has served as an adjudicator for Virginia ASTA Solo
Competition, The Virginia Music Teachers’ Association and
National Music Teachers' Association and currently serves as a
member of the Collegiate Advisory of Virginia String Teacher's
Association. She was also a violinist in the recently retired
Audubon Quartet, of which she was a member for fourteen years.
Born to musical parents in Tokyo, Japan, Takayama began her
violin studies with her mother at the age of three. Her professional
violin career began in Japan at the age of 15. She has performed
throughout Japan, France, and the U.S., including appearances
with the Shinsei-Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Toho School of
Music Orchestra, and on a "FM Recital" broadcast throughout
Japan on NHK Radio. She also has performed with the Tokyo
Metropolitan Orchestra, the Yomiuri Philharmonic Orchestra,
Music at Gretna, and with the New World Symphony Orchestra.
Her solo performances in the U.S. have included radio and TV
appearances in the greater Cleveland area and with the Cleveland
Institute of Music Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Junction
Orchestra, and the University of Wyoming Symphony
Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra.
Akemi Takayama's recent solo performances with orchestras
include Daugherty’s
Fire and Blood
and
Ladder to the Moon
,
Mendelssohn's
Double Concerto
, Vivaldi’s
The Four Seasons
, Pärt’s
Fratres
, Beethoven’s
Violin Concerto
, and Brahms’s
Double
Concerto for violin and cello
, Mozart’s
Violin Concerto
, Bach
Concerto
, Mendelssohn
Violin Concerto
, and Roskott's
Violin
Concerto
. During her graduate studies, Akemi was a teaching
assistant to the renowned Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland
Institute of Music, where she earned both an Artist Diploma and a
Master of Music degree. Previously, she studied with Toshiya Eto
and Ryosaku Kubota at the renowned Toho School of Music in
Tokyo, where she earned her bachelor degree in music
performance. She also studied with Brian Hanly at the University of
Wyoming where she earned her professional studies degree.
Ms. Takayama plays a J.B. Ceruti violin from Cremona, Italy, made
in 1805.
Jeff Midkiff, Mandolin and Composer
--
“I feel at home
in the Blue Ridge Mountains playing fiddle tunes,” Jeff Midkiff
says, “but then again, I feel at home in a professional orchestra as
well.” A mandolinist and fiddler raised on Bluegrass and a
professional clarinetist, Jeff Midkiff is an outstanding musician who
