Piano, Voice, Little Mozarts, Music History

Nevilla E. Ottley-Adjahoe has been teaching piano since she was a teenager back in the 1960s, to elementary through college students has earned Music Education Bachelor’s degree in piano as her main instrument, and a Master of Arts in organ and Music History at Andrews University in Michigan, and a Master of Music degree in conducting at The Catholic University of America (CUA) in D. C.. Her students are careers worldwide from teaching to law to medicine, engineering, ministry and various other careers including music performance. Her piano 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. In 1996 she added the Music for Little Mozarts program for preschool and Kindergarten aged students. This important curriculum starts the brains working for children who end up attending college, mostly on “Free Ride.”

MUSIC HISTORY
She adds to all her curricula for all her students, especially about the classical music of Black composers from the Renaissance through the present day, which is not usually taught to children nor even college students. This is as a result of a class she took at CUA taught by Dr. Evelyn Davidson White of Howard U., as well as information from professors Dr. Laura Jeanette Wells of CUA and Dr. Virginia Gene Rittenhouse of WAU, Ottley produced and hosted “Classics of Ebony” a one-hour weekly show on WGTS 91.9 from 1976-1997. She makes sure her OMS students perform this music as well as music of the well known masters. Ottley is the author of 5 books, 4 on Black composers and performers and one co-authored by Mayme Wilkins Holt on her son, baritone opera singer, Ben Holt.

Organ

Organ and Music History, and conducting, has been playing the organ since she was 17 years old, studying at first with Professor Alan Carr (B.Mus. 1931 from the CUNY) organist at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Independence Square, Port-of-Spain Trinidad and Tobago. The organ was a 2 manual-3 division tracker action organ that was probably over 100 years old, for it still had the bellow pump levers on it, even though motor had been added to pump the air through the bellows. When she returned to the USA in 1967, she studied organ with Dr. C. Warren Becker, professor at Andrews University. The organ was a 3-manual, 4 division 75-rank Casavant. She studied organ with the great French organist, Daniel Roth at Catholic University of America.  She also taught organ as a graduate assistant at Andrews University, teaches organ at Ottley Music School. She uses the Harold Gleason and the John Stainer organ method books.

She has served as a church organist for over 60 years, including at several Seventh-day Adventist Churches, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, AME Zion and Congregational various places such as in Michigan, Trinidad & Tobago, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, DC., she served  Minister of Music and organist at John Wesley AME Zion Church for 3 years, Simpson Hamline UMC for 4 years, at Metropolitan SDA in those capacities for over 40 years, at Albright Methodist for 15 years, and as organist at Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel at Howard University for 5 years. From September 2013 to May 2016 (when OMS expanded its teaching to the Monroe School at the Nannie Helen Burroughs School), she served as organist and choir director of two choirs at the historically (Black) Asbury United Methodist Church of Annapolis, Maryland.  She still serves as organist at Metropolitan Seventh-day Adventist Church, and at St. Stephen Lutheran Church, and substitute at Takoma Park Seventh-day Adventist church–all three in Maryland.  She had the privilege of playing the 206-rank organ at the Mormon Tabernacle Easter Monday, 2016, courtesy of Dr. Jerold Don Ottley and organist Clay Christiansen.

Voice & Drama

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. 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 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. For more information on the development of her school and other work, see the Principal page above.

Nevilla, as a child of two Trinidadian singing parents, began her musical career as a singer at the age of 3, singing at what is now Andrews University. By the time she was almost 5, she had sung on the pilot radio show produced by Uncle Dan and Aunt Sue, known to children nationwide as “Your Story Hour.” As an elementary child with two singing parents, Neville as a tenor, and Myra as a contralto, she sang all over Southern California and later in Trinidad with her siblings in the Ottley Trio. As a teenager she formed a ladies sextette called the Valley Echoes, which sang all over Trinidad. When she returned to the USA, she continued her college education at Andrews, singing in the University Chorale, taking voice lessons, and playing for voice lessons. When she came to the Washington, DC area, she coached and accompanied many singers in the church scene until she added voice lessons to the Ottley Music School ca 1989, with vocal students Anika Sampson, Porsche and Shalisha Vanderhorst at George E. Peters SDA Elementary School.

Mrs. Ottley makes sure that when students are prepared, she gives them the opportunity to sing not only in the monthly recitals at Ottley Music School, but also for churches, other community events, and Ottley Music School productions. Over the past few years the Summer Voice, Drama and Dance Camps/Institutes have immersed the students in The Sound of Music, Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha (for several years including 2013), in A Century of Broadway, The Wiz, High School Musical II, Sister Act II, The King and I, and Les Miserables. The 2004 fall production was Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, 2005 was Mozart’s The Empresario, 2006 was Amahl and A Miracle (excerpts from both Menotti’s and Mark Fax’s christmas operas), and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus which they performed with orchestra on W*USA Channel 9 in the Washington D. C. area. In 2007 they performed and recorded Elijah and Messiah scenes from the oratorios of Mendelssohn and Handel with the Hyattsville Symphony. Some of them were priveleged to go to Trinidad and to sing (and play) there in the summer of 2007 under the auspicies of the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Culture, Youth Development and Gender Affairs.

Some of her piano and voice students who have done well as vocalists include Barbara-Gene Brown, and Hazel Thorpe. In the fall of 2019 several of her students have left for college, mostly on full scholarship,

• Adaugo Ejekwu, soprano to Shenandoah Conservatory, VA
• Abigail Cohen, soprano to Roosevelt Conservatory, Chicago, IL
• Amber Rogers, soprano to Oberlin Conservatory, OH
• Alysia Mitchell, mezzo-soprano to Howard Community College, MD, feeder to Shenandoah.
• Candace Imani Williams, soprano, left 2018, in graduate school in opera performance at the University of Kentucky

Some of her former vocal students from Ottley Music School doing well include

• Anika Sampson Anderson (former voice student), Soprano soloist, opera singer, member of Tre Voce
• Julia Soraya Dennis (former voice/piano student),  Mezzo-soprano soloist, teacher in Panama City, FL
• Anika Tene (former voice/piano student), Soprano soloist, principal of Living Waters School
• Nicole Butler (former voice student), soprano opera singer in the USA and Europe
• Jasmine Murrell Brann (former voice/piano student), soprano soloist, minister of music, Metropolitan SDA Church, Director of the Languages Depart, D.C. Public Schools.
• Porsche Vanderhorst (former voice/piano student), soprano, Minister of Music at Emmanuel Brinklow SDA Church
• Shalisha Vanderhorst, MSW (former voice/piano student), soprano, social worker

• Chelsey Henderson, MSW (former piano and voice student), soprano, social worker

• Nichelle Anderson (former voice/piano student), coloratura soprano and Neo-Natal Registered Nurse, Holy Cross Hospital.
• David Griffiths (former piano student), bass/baritone recording artists, Minister of Music at Nineteenth Street Baptist Church (where President and Mrs. Obama and family occasionally attend), teacher in Howard County, MD
• Anwar G. M. Ottley (former piano/conducting student), DMA (2020), Tenor, former teacher of music of John Nevins Andrews SDA School,  Pastor of Worship and Minister of Music at Takoma Park SDA Church, and professor, director of the Choral Activities at Washington Adventist University, composer and arranger of choral and orchestral music, GIA Publications.
• Victoria Alma Castello, Soprano, (former piano student), piano professor at Duke Ellington School of the Arts (DC),
•  Imani Musa (former voice student), special education teacher.
• Edwina Findley-Dickerson (former piano student), actress in Tyler Perry’s TV series, “If Loving You Is Wrong” on OWN, Brothers and Sisters on ABC and other TV series,
• Rhonda Tsoi-a-Fatt (former piano student), President at The Moriah Group and Senior Fellow at the Center for Law and Social Policy, and Senior Advisor on the President Obama’s Education program for African Americans,

Most of her former voice students have gone on to colleges and universities around the world as students and professors, such as Johns Hopkins University, Andrews University, Washington Adventist University, Loma Linda University, Carnegie Mellon, Western Michigan University, University of Maryland, Oakwood University, Duke University, Howard University, Berklee School of Music, Morgan State University, Spelman, Ithaca, Bethune Cookman College, Mannes College, Princeton, Northern Caribbean University, University of the Southern Caribbean, Bowie State University and other