Keyboard Department Chair, Piano and Organ

Mrs. Nevilla E. Ottley-Adjahoe, M.Mus.

Nevilla E. Ottley-Adjahoe has been teaching piano since she was a teenager back in the 1960s, when some students were in elementary school and others were in college. Since then she has gone on to get her own Music Education Bachelor's degree with in piano as her main instrument, and a Master of Arts with organ as her main instrument, and a Master of Music degree in conducting. Her earliest students are now all over the world in careers 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.

Over the past 49 years, her piano, organ and voice students have taken (and are still taking) places of responsibility in the music world and other fields internationally. Most of them have gone on to colleges and universities around the world as students and professors, such as Johns Hopkins University, Andrews University, Loma Linda University, Western Michigan University, University of Maryland, Oakwood College, Duke University, Howard University, Berkelee School of Music, Morgan State University, Bethune Cookman College, Mannes College, Princeton, Northern Caribbean University, University of the Southern Caribbean, Bowie State University and others.

Mrs. Ottley-Adjahoe makes sure her students learn the techniques, literature, ear-training and theory, and they participate in monthly recitals. Those who are more advanced are invited to perform in the quarterly concerts presented by Ottley Music School, and they also are given opportunity to serve in church services of various Christian denominations. Many of Mrs. Ottley's students stay under the care of the Ottley Music School till they graduate from high school and move away to college. Then they or their chldren or parents later return to study.

She encourages all parents to enroll their children in a music lesson wherever you are in the world, because it is music lessons, especially piano, that is one of the large factors in enhancing the development of children's brains, giving them more facility in achieving top grades in the subjects that they study. It is a proven fact that those who study music attain at least 40% higher scores on standardized tests in all subjects.

PIANO (Classical)

Anton Martinez, B.A.

ANTON MARTINEZ, B.A., came to the Ottley Music School in August, 2000, a wonderful, experienced, young piano performer, having had just a little experience teaching, but with a lot of piano performance training and experience, and with a strong desire to learn how to teach. Over the years he has been with the OMS, he has not only taken well to his teacher training and experience, but also has grown into a fine teacher, as can be attested by the results of his students many of whom test with high marks in the annual National Guild of Piano Teachers auditions.

Mr. Martinez began studying piano as a child with Emilio del Rosario at the North Shore Music School in Illinois. He then studied for 4 years under Theodore Edel at the University of Illinois in Chicago, then went to study with Madame Larisa Dedova at the Moscow State Conservatory for two years, then was again her student at the University of Maryland. He has done his 4 years as a piano student at the U.Md., and switched to Pre-law there.  From 1991-1996, Mr. Martinez won the 1st prize at the annual Judson College Piano Competition for 6 consecutive years. He constantly brings a fresh, youthful yet serious enthusiasm to the OMS and to his students, and his students score high on the National Guild auditions.

He is presently a full-time law student, as well as a sought-after teacher at Ottley Music School, the Choir Accompanist for Takoma Park Seventh-day Adventist Church, and a performing solo artist on the piano.

PIANO (Classical and Gospel), ORGAN (Classical)

ANWAR GABRIEL MYRON OTTLEY, M. Mus.

ANWAR GABRIEL MYRON OTTLEY, B. Mus., M. Mus., Pianist, Organist and conductor is a product of the Ottley Music School where he took piano lessons and theory with his aunt, Nevilla Ottley since he was in elementary school. In his senior year of high school, after conducting successfully the Takoma Academy Gospel Choir (a talent he inherited from his father, Dr. Myron Ottley and his aunt), he was transferred as a scholarship student for his senior year to Pine Forge Academy where he studied piano under Toni Hall and conducting with Jason Ferdinand. He was a four-year scholarship student at Columbia Union College, where for the first two years he focused on Music Education, then switched to organ performance, graduating in May 2007. He also sang with the world-traveled Pro Musica of CUC under Dr. James Bingham. In the meantime, for four years, he conducted the 35-voice Black Student Union Chorale in command performances of music of Black Composers from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic to the present day, a cappella or with symphony orchestra and/or with band.

He also serves as assistant conductor and accompanist to the world-traveled MetroSingers of Metropolitan Seventh-day Adventist Church (Kenya, Holland, England and around the USA) which besides 3 CDs and a DVD have recorded a concert with the satellite station, 3ABN (3 Angels Broadcast Network). Mr. Ottley graduated with his Master of Music degree in conducting from Andrews University in Michigan in May 2009.  He is presently the minister of music at Takoma Park Seventh-day Adventist Church, in Takoma Park, MD/DC. Photo by Nevilla E. Ottley (2005). 

He has taught steel drums since 2004 and now piano and voice with Ottley Music School.

Naoko Maeda, B. Mus., Classical and Jazz pianist 

Click here for her YouTube and here for her Blog.

Naoko Maeda, B.A., is a composer and concert pianist who hails from Japan, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1994 from the Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo.  She is an award-winning pinist, accompanist,and composer, having received at least 8 awards.  She has served as a composer for the National Cherry Blossom Festival at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.   She has also served as an accompanist for the National Association of the Teachers of Singing Maryland/D.C. Adjudications, as well as for instrumental and choral ensembles.

Mrs. Maeda has appeared as solo pianist at several Washington area venues besides the Kennedy Center, such as Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in Maryland, the National Building of the Smithsonian Museum, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, and many churches.  She is a member of the Trio Sakura.

Mrs. Maeda has been a piano teacher of children and adults at the Ottley Music School since the beginning of 2009.  She also teaches the Pre-School "Music for Little Mozarts" class.  As a composer, she has been commissioned two pieces for performance in February and April 2009 at OMS Concerts, performed at the Southern Asian Seventh-day Adventist Church of Silver Spring, MD., and at the First United Methodist Church of Hyattsville, MD.  She appears on the Ottley Music School's "Piano Masters" DVD, soon to be released.

PIANO (Jazz)

CLIFTON BROCKINGTON, B. Mus.

CLIFTON BROCKINGTON, B.Mus., Jazz Pianist and Trumpeter received a Bachelors of Music from Howard University with a concentration in jazz. He has recorded with gospel artists such as Donnie McClurkin, Fred Hammond, Andre Crouch, Richard Smallwood, and Israel with Mo' Horns. In addition to performing in over 30 cities in the United States, the native Washingtonian has traveled to the Japan, London, St. Croix, and recently to the Republic of Georgia playing jazz, R&B, and gospel music. 

Mr. Brockington joined the faculty of Ottley Music School in the winter of 2004-2005 as a piano and jazz piano teacher, as well as trumpet. In the fall of 2006 he re-established the OMS Jazz Ensemble that that been initially formed by Tom Newman in 2001. As a singer/songwriter, Clifton has written several compositions: "Life's Longings" and "Journey for Strathmore's own City Dance", and as Music Director co-wrote music to the play Roll On! Primarily known as a trumpeter, Clifton has given solo piano performance at the Kennedy Center. For the past two years, he has spent time at the piano trying to master Latin music with local groups such as: Milagro, La Leyenda and Joe Falero and the D.C. Latin Jazz All-Star. In addition to completing his first CD featuring him as a solo artist, Clifton is working to a jazz adaptation of Peter and the Wolf. One album he was featured on as a trumpet received rave reviews from the Washington Post, where Mike Joyce noted that "trumpeter Clifton Brockington displays a knack for recalling Miles Davis's soulful lyricism on "Ah Jua," "Sunlight Underwater" and other tracks."