Nevilla Ottley-Adjahoe


Conducted (2) Messiah DC Strings concerts in December 2017

Conducted (2) Messiah DC Strings concerts in December 2017

Nevilla Ottley-Adjahoe
Conductor

NEVILLA E. OTTLEY-ADJAOE, Guest Conductor 
NEVILLA E. OTTLEY-ADJAHOE, B.Mus.Ed., M.A. (organ & music history), M.Mus. (conducting) is the founder of the Ottley Music School, established in 1973 a year after she graduated with her Master of Arts in organ and music history from Andrews University where she had earned her B.Mus. in music education and piano performance. The Ottley Music Studio existed out of her home in Maryland, while she taught piano and theory, and later added other piano teachers, violin, voice and clarinet teachers.  She worked as a church musician, organist and choir director, since while in school in 1971.In 1974, she went to work at the Catholic University of America (CUA). During her tenure there, earned second graduate degree, a Master of Music in choral and orchestral conducting. After taking a class at CUA on Black Composers, she began a weekly one-hour radio show, Classics of Ebony, aired over WGTS 91.9 fm from 1976 to 1997, when the station changed format from classical to contemporary religious. She makes sure that music of Black Composers is included in what Ottley Music School students learn, and their ensembles and orchestra play. She has written three books on the subject, “Black Composers Born Before 1850,” “Black Pianists of Classical Music,” available at the Ottley Music and Book Store and “Still’s Life in Pictures” (published and sold out for the 1995 Washington, D. C. centennial celebration of composer William Grant Still). She worked with Takoma Park Symphony from 1988-1995, and with the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra from 2000-2002 as music director/conductor.

Her students have always rated very high in both the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and of the National Guild of Piano Teachers annual examinations and auditions. Over the past 40+ years, her piano, organ and voice students have taken (and are still taking) places of responsibility in the music world and other fields internationally. Mrs. Nevilla E. Ottley-Adjahoe has high ideals and goals for all students and teachers of the Ottley Music School (OMS). She expects teachers to have the same level of motivation and achievement for their students as she expects of herself.