Active as a guest conductor, pianist, lecturer, and composer, Wiley regularly conducts professional orchestras throughout the U.S and abroad. He has guest conducted in over forty U.S. states, including the symphonies of San Francisco, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Minnesota, Saint Louis, Atlanta, Oregon, Honolulu, Utah, and Buffalo, to name but a few. David Wiley's growing career has taken him to dozens of countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The current season includes conducting debuts and two performances with the Symphony Orchestra of Bari in Italy, trips to Prague, Boise (ID), Lansing (MI), and West Virginia in addition to his busy schedules as Music Director in New York and Virginia.
David Wiley became only the fourth Music Director of the Long Island Philharmonic in 2001, after an international conductor search drew hundreds of applicants from around the world. Since then, Wiley is credited with bringing continued artistic growth, energy, and excitement to the Long Island Philharmonic and Chorus. To better serve Long Island's 100+ school districts, the orchestra has more than quadrupled its educational offerings in the past few seasons under the title "music LIvz". He has conducted side-by-side and youth concerts with the LIP and led top youth orchestras on Long Island. Wiley has been a visible and energetic leader for the Philharmonic 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 increased financial stability, critical acclaim, and growing audiences and revenues. The 2007 LIP New Year's Eve concert was a popular sell-out, and the orchestra and chorus are expanding into venues including Patchogue and Garden City. He leads summer parks concerts, musical residencies, and in-home events. Wiley will collaborate this current LI Philharmonic season with acclaimed soloists Sir James Galway, David Kim, Andre Watts, and a tribute to Billy Joel at the LIP's 30th Anniversary Gala.
David Wiley's tenure with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra continues to be a remarkable success story. Since his arrival, Wiley has demonstrated his ability to steadily build the orchestra, generating deep and lasting community support and enthusiasm. Under his artistic leadership, the RSO budget has grown from $750,000 ten years ago to a balanced budget of almost $2 million dollars, and dramatically increased artistic quality, community excitement, and ticket sales. The 2007-08 season saw a healthy 14% increase in classical subscription sales, sold-out concerts in a renovated Shaftman Performance Hall, a 25% growth in pops revenue, and a significant increase in the RSO's endowment. Wiley remains an active partner with schools and civic organizations throughout the region, and innovative events like "Rock, Symphony, Circus" have re-defined what a symphony concert event can be. The RSO has expanded its partnership with Virginia public radio WVTF, which broadcasts RSO subscription concerts live. The RSO added two new evening subscription concerts this past season, premiered several American orchestral/choral works, added a third Holiday Pops performance, as well as other new events. Last season, Wiley created and led an acclaimed leadership event with business executives and musicians on stage together titled "Conducting Change." 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.
Under Wiley's baton, the Roanoke Symphony has recorded four professional CDs: an album of French cello concerti with Zuill Bailey on Delos International, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 "Choral" and American Piano Concertos with Norman Krieger on Artisie 4, and, most recently, "David Wiley & Friends: Classical Jazz", with Wiley at the piano, performing both Suites for Flute & Jazz Piano Trio by Claude Bolling. Other recording highlights apart from the RSO include "American Trumpet Concertos" with the Slovak Radio Symphony and Paul Neebe recorded in Bratislava, Slovakia, "Jazz Meets Classical" from Wintergreen Performing Arts, and a debut recording of American contemporary music with the IU New Music Ensemble.
David Wiley has collaborated with a diverse list of top artists in the Classical and Pops world, including Jessye Norman, Midori, Lynn Harrell, John Williams, Pip Clarke, David Kim, Elmar Oliveira, 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.
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 Wintergreen 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 "Jazz meets Classical." His highly successful tenure at Wintergreen witnessed a doubling of festival concert attendance, as well as recognition for innovative programming, new commissioned works by American composers, community outreach and education, and increased financial stability for a growing festival.
David Wiley first came to national attention as a young American conductor in 1993 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 four degrees: a Doctor of Music in Conducting from Indiana University, where he had also received his Master of Music degree, and holds 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 and received several top academic awards.
Wiley made his debut as pianist and composer 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 established an excellent reputation. He has performed with numerous major orchestras throughout the United States including Minnesota, Indianapolis, Oregon, Honolulu, Wheeling, and summer festivals including Aspen, Garth Newel, Wintergreen, and Prince Albert in Hawaii. During the 2007-08 season he performed Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue as both pianist and conductor with several orchestras in the U.S. as well as several keyboard concerti by J.S. Bach with orchestras in New York and Virginia. 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.
David Wiley is married to actress/soprano Leah Marer Wiley. David and Leah have two musical children, a son and a daughter.