About David Stewart Wiley
Music Director and Conductor
David Stewart Wiley has proven to be a strong, innovative, and inspiring young American music director, leading orchestras to artistic success, especially in challenging times. Wiley serves concurrently as Music Director & Conductor of New York’s Long Island Philharmonic and Virginia’s Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. Prior to these positions, he served as Assistant Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and served for seven successful summers as the Artistic Director of the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival.. .
Active as a guest conductor, pianist, lecturer, and composer, Wiley conducts professional orchestras throughout the U.S and abroad. He has guest conducted in nearly all U.S. states, including the symphonies of San Francisco, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Minnesota, Saint Louis, Atlanta, Oregon, Honolulu, Utah, and Buffalo. Wiley’s growing career has taken him to dozens of countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa — most recently to Italy, Germany, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
Long Island Philharmonic
David Stewart Wiley became the fourth Music Director of the Long Island Philharmonic (LIP) in 2001. Wiley is credited with bringing significant artistic growth, energy, and excitement to the Long Island Philharmonic and Chorus, with double-digit ticket sales increases each year over the past few seasons. Wiley has been a visible and energetic leader for the LIP while building subscription audiences with his popular pre-concert conversations. He has created and hosted TV shows promoting Long Island and the LIP, and the orchestra is seeing growing audiences and revenues, increased financial stability, and critical acclaim in a competitive NY market. The annual New Year’s Eve concert is now a popular sell-out, and the orchestra and chorus are expanding into new venues. To better serve Long Island, the LIP has tripled its “side-by-side” and youth concerts and other educational offerings in recent years. He leads summer parks concerts, musical residencies, and in-home events, and the orchestra is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary season with expanded classical and pops programs.
Roanoke Symphony Orchestra
Wiley’s tenure with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra continues to be a remarkable story. Since his arrival, Wiley has steadily built the orchestra, generating deep and lasting community enthusiasm and support. Under his artistic leadership, the RSO balanced budget has almost tripled, with dramatically increased artistic quality, community excitement, endowment growth, and ticket sales. Wiley partners with schools and civic organizations throughout the region, and innovative events like “Rock, Symphony, Circus” have broadened what a symphony concert event can be. The RSO partners with Virginia public radio WVTF to broadcast RSO subscription concerts live. The RSO added new concerts this past season, and this season will present three new American orchestral works and add a fourth Holiday Pops performance.
In The Community
Wiley created and led an acclaimed event with business executives and musicians together on stage titled “Conducting Change” which helped executives to model leadership skills in a fun and engaging atmosphere. For his continuing activities promoting the arts and education throughout Virginia, David Wiley has received the Perry F. Kendig Award for Service to the Arts. Wiley will be honored this season by the Roanoke region NAACP in its 11th annual awards ceremony as Citizen of the Year in the Arts — a testament to the RSO and Wiley’s deep and lasting involvement with the African American community.
Recordings
Under Wiley’s baton, the RSO has recorded four professional CDs: an album of French cello concerti with Zuill Bailey on Delos International, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral”, American Piano Concertos with Norman Krieger on Artisie 4, and, most recently, ”David Wiley & Friends: Classical Jazz”, with Wiley at the piano. Other recording highlights apart from the RSO include “American Trumpet Concertos” with the Slovak Radio Symphony/Neebe recorded in Bratislava, Slovakia, and a debut recording of American contemporary music with the Indiana University New Music Ensemble.
Career Timeline
From 1999 until the summer of 2006, Wiley was the Artistic Director & Conductor of the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival in Virginia. At Wintergreen, Wiley founded the 60-member Festival Orchestra and conducted and played over 100 orchestra and chamber performances. He also helped found the Wintergreen Performance Academy for pre-professional student musicians, created and planned an annual faculty chamber music series, programmed and performed as pianist at in-home concerts, and produced the festival’s first CD. His successful tenure at Wintergreen witnessed a doubling of festival concert attendance, as well as recognition for innovative programming, new commissioned works by American composers for full orchestra, enhanced community outreach and education, and growth and increased financial stability for the festival.
David Stewart Wiley first came to national attention as a conductor when he won the prestigious Aspen Conducting Prize, which led to his engagement as Assistant Conductor for the 1994 Aspen Music Festival. In 1995, after being invited to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, he was awarded a Conducting Fellowship at Tanglewood, where he conducted several performances. Wiley holds a Doctor of Music in Conducting from Indiana University, where he had also received his Master of Music degree, 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, where he co-founded the Tufts Amalgamates.
Wiley made his debut as pianist and composer in 1977 at age ten with Boston’s professional Adventures in Music Orchestra, in the premiere performance of his first piano concerto. Having continued to compose, he has performed his three piano concerti, written numerous choral, chamber, and orchestral compositions, and created special arrangements for pops artists. 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, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Bulgaria.
Wiley has collaborated with a diversity of acclaimed solo artists and groups in the Classical and Pops world, including Jessye Norman, Midori, Lynn Harrell, John Williams, Andre Watts, Sir James Galway, Billy Joel, Pip Clarke, David Kim, Elmar Oliveira, Erica Kiesewetter, Julie Albers, 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, Michael McDonald, Art Garfunkel, the Pointer Sisters, Ben Vereen, Kool & the Gang, Cirque, and the Sounds of Blackness.
David and his wife Leah have a son and a daughter. Together, they enjoy travelling, hiking and mountain biking, and family music time. Wiley’s website is www.DavidStewartWiley.com.