Nevilla E. Ottley, M.A, M.Mus.

Nevilla Ottley,
Founder of OMS and Executive Secretary of the Board.

Nevilla E. Ottley is the founder of the Ottley Music School (OMS), established in 1973, eighteen months after she graduated with her Master of Arts in organ performance and music history from Andrews University in Michigan, where she had earned her Bachelor of Music in Music Education and Piano Performance. She came to Maryland after spending time in New York (accompanying the fledgling Boys Choir of Harlem) and New Jersey (teaching piano and organ at Garden State Academy) where she accompanied the now internationally known bass-baritone, Wintley Phipps, at age 17 at the beginning of his career. 

The Ottley Music Studio existed at first out of her home in Maryland, while she taught piano and theory, and later added other piano teachers, violin, voice, and clarinet teachers. Now it is a 501(c)(3) non-profit school which was 50 years old on January 17, 2023, with a dozen teachers.  She adds into the curricula for all her students (from preschoolers to adults), information about the classical music of Black composers from the Renaissance through the present day, which is not usually taught to children, teens, nor even college students. She makes sure her OMS students perform this music as well as that of the well-known masters.

This is a result of a class she took at the Catholic University of America (CUA) taught by Dr. Evelyn Davidson White of Howard University on “Choral Music of Black Composers”, as well as information from professors Dr. Laura Jeanette Wells of CUA and Dr. Virginia Gene Rittenhouse of Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, MD.   Ottley produced and hosted “Classics of Ebony” a one-hour weekly show on WGTS 91.9 FM from 1976-1997 on classical music composed by Black composers, and also music performed by Black artists in the classical styles. 

Ottley with a friend, Dr. Ellen Bunyan, founded the Takoma Park Symphony (1987-1995) which also performed the music of Black composers, and was part of the Washington Post’s “Critics Pick” in February 1990. “Takoma Park Symphony Orchestra, presenting orchestral music of black composers, Sunday afternoon in the Takoma Park Seventh-Day Adventist Church.”

Ottley has also done seminars at various universities on the topic, Oakwood (Huntsville, AL), and Columbia Union College—now renamed as Washington Adventist University (Takoma Park, MD), back in the 1990s.  She also presented a seminar on the orchestral music of Black Composers at the University of Nairobi to 26 conductors, and one on choral music of Black composers at Central Nairobi Seventh-day Adventist Church in Kenya back in 2006.  She taught a weekly Zoom class for the Encore Creativity University (choral) on Black composers in 2021 with 85 students and is a regular speaker on the Coalition for African American in the Performing Arts (CAAPA) in the DMV.  

Ottley is the author of several books on Black composers and performers, and one co-authored by Mayme Wilkins Holt on her son, baritone opera singer, Ben Holt. Still’s Life in Pictures was written for the Centennial Celebration of William Grant Still she instigated in May 1995 in the Washington D.C. area. She has the outline of at least 6 more books on various aspects of this subject of Black Composers and Performers of Classical Music. Here are pictures of the books already released.