ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610180082
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
IT'S NEARLY SHOW TIME. And Roanoke Symphony Orchestra Conductor David Wiley - the painstakingly chosen successor to Victoria Bond - ought to be ready.
Wiley, whose first season opens in Roanoke on Monday night, has spent the months since he was hired by the RSO last spring preparing to make music. But he also has been clearing his plate.
Wiley finished his doctorate, for one. And he and his wife, soprano Leah Marer, bought a home here.
The new conductor even quit his second job.
Wiley - who has spent the last few months in endless motion - was previously assistant conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra. He considered keeping that post, which involved community outreach and occasional conducting responsibilities, in addition to his Roanoke duties.
It proved too much. "I've closed that chapter," said Wiley, whose resignation took effect at the end of the summer. Although he will continue to guest conduct in Minnesota from time to time, Wiley said, "I really wanted to demonstrate my commitment to the [Roanoke] community."
"He felt like this job is so big down here it demands his full attention," said RSO Board President Frank Martin III. "I completely agree. I personally could not be more pleased with the way he has come to Roanoke and jumped in and become a major player in the arts community early on."
And so it begins.
Wiley - who lists softball and Bruce Hornsby songs among life's pleasures, but who, say those who know him, is first and last a serious musician - takes over the podium at the Roanoke Civic Center on Monday at 8 p.m.
He will lead his orchestra through a Verdi overture, a Tchaikovsky piano concerto with pianist Norman Krieger and Brahms' Symphony No. 1.
His performance will be closely watched and analyzed.
But in the end, the new music director's tenure will be measured by his success or failure in achieving long-term goals. Wiley must start a fire under an orchestra whose funding base has dwindled, and whose once meteoric improvement under Bond, critics say, leveled off years ago.
If his supporters are correct - and at this point Wiley seems to have nothing but supporters - he is well-suited to the job. Wiley, they say, combines immense personal charm with a level of musicianship that eclipses Bond's.
A year and a half ago, concertmaster and search committee member James Glazebrook said the RSO needed "someone who brings great authority to the position The orchestra needs a maestro."
Many believe that in the 30-year-old Wiley - his youth, his toothy grin, his goofy TV commercials all notwithstanding - it got one.
"He's an absolutely sincere musician, whose primary goal is music, music, music," said Thomas Baldner, head of the instrumental conducting department at Indiana University. Wiley was awarded his doctorate in musical arts there on Oct. 7.
"He has made a rather rapid career, I would say, starting out from here," Baldner said. "He is a person of great integrity, which I have come to cherish. You can be quite pleased to have him."
A full 20 years younger than Bond, Wiley also holds bachelor's degrees in religion, from Tufts University, and piano performance, from the New England Conservatory of Music.
He has served as assistant conductor with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, a post created there just for him, and with the Minnesota Orchestra.
He has written three piano concertos - he completed the first at age 10 - as well as choral music and musical accompaniments for stage productions.
There were others on the conducting short list whose accomplishments may have rivaled Wiley's, some search committee members said - but none who did it all so quickly.
"Of all the people we looked at, my feeling was he had the most promising career before him," said Glazebrook, the concertmaster. "We picked a candidate based on that premise."
Others are reserving judgment. But even some who were critical of the orchestra under Bond say the early signs are promising.
Benedict Goodfriend, a violinist with the locally based Kandinsky Trio who has soloed with the RSO, was out of town when Wiley conducted the orchestra in last year's audition season. But he has since watched video tapes of the performance.
"He's a quantum leap from what they had before," Goodfriend said. "Just a much better musician with much better control as a conductor than Victoria. I'm really looking forward to seeing what he can do here."
Wiley in turn attended a performance of the Kandinsky Trio - where, said Kandinsky cellist Alan Weinstein, he spoke of their interpretation of Beethoven in a way that spoke volumes about his musical knowledge.
"This guy's a real musician," Weinstein said.
Dave's Top 10 List
Wiley was born in Boston. His parents now live in Floyd County. His father, Wiley said, is "in the process of retiring" from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thus the new conductor and his wife had visited the region even before he won the RSO job - and had enjoyed such popular Floyd attractions as the Friday Night Jamboree at Cockram's General Store.
"Leah and I learned to flatfoot up there," Wiley said.
Even as a student conductor back at Indiana University, Wiley showed promise, say those who knew him there. He won a conducting fellowship with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1992.
In the third year of his fellowship, Wiley was given the title of assistant conductor - a post that had not existed before, said ISO spokesman Tom Akins.
"He made a very positive impression, to the point where we decided to give him the title," said Akins - who, incidentally, is a '61 graduate of William Fleming High School and a timpanist with the RSO in the 1950s. "We felt he had earned it," he said of Wiley's title.
Wiley went on to serve as assistant conductor with the Minnesota Orchestra, where he was the third conductor behind Maestro Eiji Oue and an associate. He was chosen music director in Roanoke during his first year there.
He apparently leaves behind no hard feelings.
"David Wiley is one of the most promising conductors of his generation," said Oue. "The Minnesota Orchestra's great loss is Roanoke's gain." Karl Reichert, the Minnesota Orchestra's director of public relations, said no one blamed Wiley for leaving, even though most assistant conductorships there last two or three years. Music directorships with symphony orchestras are much sought after in America - as the rest of the 200 or so applicants for the Roanoke job can attest.
"I think we all understand a great opportunity when it comes along," Reichert said.
Wiley may be driven. He may even be, as his most ardent fans believe, on the road to greatness. But he isn't above poking fun at himself. That was clear even before his corny "Dave's Top 10 List" commercials on WDBJ-7 - a David Letterman spoof in which Wiley gives whimsical reasons for buying RSO season tickets. (``Reason #7. Elvis was spotted in the viola section.'')
Before he conducted the RSO in last year's audition season, Wiley answered a number of irreverent questions for a newspaper profile. He confessed then that he often "channel-surfed" through radio stations while driving, and had a weakness for the music of rock song writer and piano player Bruce Hornsby.
Wiley is a pianist himself who performed with the orchestra in Indianapolis, and will play Beethoven's Choral Fantasy with the RSO during its second concert Nov. 18.
He also talked of his affection for West African drumming, Irish fiddle-playing and guinea pigs.
"I think it's very important for kids to realize conductors are not old, stuffy people," Wiley said recently. He also said bringing the 20- to 40-year-old crowd to performances is a goal. "We're trying to make our concerts fun and exciting.
"There's an initial excitement with the new era," Wiley said. "Then it's very important the conductor continue to challenge and inspire the orchestra and keep that excitement alive. What will be important is the long-term building and commitment."
The new conductor said he hopes to raise the orchestra's profile in the community. He has been visiting area schools.
And in a move bound to please those concertgoers who found Bond's later emphasis on modern music annoying, Wiley has packed his first season with orchestral classics. It begins with a Brahms symphony and Tchaikovsky piano concerto, and ends April 28 with one of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.
Wiley said he may branch out in the future - but "the community response is what's important. Whatever piece or pieces I choose, I have to be completely convinced that it's a great piece of music."
He said he hopes to add to the RSO's sound "more beauty and rhythmic precision." And he hinted musicians' pay - in the $45-$65 per concert range, plus paid rehearsals - may not zoom upward anytime soon. RSO pay already is "on par with other regional orchestras," he said. "We want to be sure we keep pace with, if not stay ahead of the norm."
Wiley said the welcome he and Leah have received has been touching and unexpected. He said neighbors have brought flowers and banana bread.
He declined to speculate about life after Roanoke, allowing only that "conducting is a lifelong process."
Said Wiley: "I prefer to focus on the here and now."
High expectations
Call it a honeymoon, if you like.
But in more than a dozen interviews with RSO musicians and supporters, and with Wiley's peers in the arts community, praise for the new maestro fell like April raindrops.
"I like his philosophy. It sounds like he has a strong regional and community commitment," said Mill Mountain Theatre Director Jere Lee Hodgin. "I think what's he going to bring to the job is a tremendous amount of substance."
"He's clearly a very gifted musician," said Linda Burian Plaut, RSO violinist and associate concertmaster. "He's already displayed his great personableness. He's very quick at learning people's names, remembering things about people."
"As far as I know, wherever he's shown up people have really taken to him," said Heidi Krisch, an RSO patron and ex-symphony board president.
Krisch, who served on the search committee, recalled a letter of reference from one of Wiley's teachers. "It said something of the sort, 'David Wiley is not only an incredibly talented musician, but he has something nobody can teach - true flair.'
"He's really got it," Krisch agreed.
"You could say the jury's still out, of course," said James Sochinski, RSO bass trombonist and a composer whose works were performed by the orchestra under Bond. "I think most musicians, including myself, were impressed with his audition [in 1995], the way he used rehearsal time. His conducting technique is clear. It's also compelling.
"I think Victoria Bond did the orchestra a great service by cleaning up a lot of the mess and making the details happen. Now David Wiley can focus on the big picture," Sochinski said.
With high praise come high expectations. In the months ahead Wiley will be measured against his first impression in many ways, including the one that probably matters most - donations. Funding dwindled at the end of Bond's nine-year tenure, from a peak of more than $1 million to $800,000 in 1994-95, her last year.
Gifts to the orchestra have edged upward amid the excitement over Wiley's arrival, as have ticket sales, say RSO officials. But the final results are not in.
Perhaps on the eve of Wiley's RSO career, it was Krisch who summed the mood up best:
"We'll see what happens next Monday," she said. "But I've got great hopes."
LENGTH: Long : 210 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON STAFF David Wiley conducts the Roanokeby CNBSymphony Orchestra on Monday night. Why should you care? ``So your
kids don't think the `3 Bs' ... include Beavis.'' color
2. File 1996 David Wiley, shown here with his wife, Leah, says,
"I've never experienced a welcome like I've received in Roanoke. It
convinced me that we made the right decision to come here." color KEYWORDS: PROFILE