Faculty: World Music

Steel Drums of Trinidad and Tobago, African Drums

KEITH PREDDIE

Education: Tunapuna Boys' EC School, Nelson Street Boys' RC School, Richmond Street Boys' EC School, Queen's Royal College, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA (B.S. in Electrical Engineering,
1966)

Steel Bands: Mexitones, Invaders, Symphonettes, The Trinidad Steelband of Washington, DC

Specialties:  Player (Tenor, Double-Tenor), Arranger

Career: Preddie left Trinidad for Howard University in 1961 and immediately began managing and arranging for the Trinidad Steelband in Washington, DC. Shortly after his arrival, the band landed the sponsorship of the Texaco Oil Company and players enrolled at Howard University had their tuition paid by the company. In January 1969, the band took part in the Inaugural Parade for President Richard Nixon by providing the music for the U.S. Virgin Islands contingent. The band also appeared at functions that included performances by U.S. entertainers such as Jimmy Durante and the Count
Basie Band. Over the years, the band played at numerous functions attended by
U.S. senators and congressmen. As Carnival celebrations expanded all over North
America, Preddie arranged for several steelbands in various Panorama
competitions in New York and Washington, DC. In 1998, he returned to Trinidad to
arrange the Panorama tune for the Tunapuna All Stars. He began making solo
appearances in the 1990s, but continued to play with the Trinidad Steelband in
the Washington, DC, metropolitan area into the early 2000s.

African Drumming

AMADOU KOUYATE joins the Ottley Music School teachers.  He brings youthful, knowledgable experience, and a heritage of several generations of drummers to our school family.  Born in the Washington, DC, Amadou Kouyate is the 150th generation of the Kouyate lineage and has studied and performed Manding music since the age of three years old. Amadou is a dynamic djembe and koutiro drummer. He also plays the 21-string kora, which he learned first with his father, Djimo Kouyate and other master griots of West Africa.

He has performed with Mamaya African Jazz and the African American Dance Ensemble. Currently, Amadou performs as a solo artist and as a member of Farafina Kan, the Wato Sita Project/World Music Ensemble, the Manding Griot Ensemble, the Kouyate Family, Urban Afrikan, Memory of African Culture Performing Company, Dono Percussion Ensemble and the Hueman Prophets. His credits include performances at The Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institution, Lowell, East-Lansing and Dayton National Folk Festivals, DanceAfrica DC and Chicago as well as with The National Symphony Orchestra, Images of Cultural Artistry Performing Company, the production "Soul Possessed," directed by Debbie Allen and in Sweet Honey in The Rocks premiere performance of INDABA, with the WPAS Men and Women of the Gospel.

His musical talents have earned him many accolades that include artists-in-residence awards from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities grant award, a Special Talents Scholarship at Howard University, and a Musical Theatre scholarship at the Levine School of the Arts. Amadou has studied in Mali and Senegal, West Africa with master musicians of the Diali tradition including Toumani Diabate. Currently, Amadou Kouyate is an Adjunct Lecturer of African Music and Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland School of Music and attends Howard University.

For more information please click on his name. 

STEEL DRUMS

ANWAR GABRIEL MYRON OTTLEY, M.Mus., Steel Drums, is a product of the Ottley Music School where he took piano lessons with his aunt, Nevilla Ottley since he was in elementary school. For four years, he conducted the 35-voice Black Student Union Chorale of Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, MD 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. His degree is in organ performance, after switching from Music Education.

Anwar Ottley joined the Ottley Music School faculty in the summer of 2004, teaching steel drums, after having taught it for two years before at Metropolitan Seventh-day Adventist Church, in the MSSO II. His effective work with the youth and adults of the Ottley Music School camps has produced students who are excited about studying it privately in the school year. The summer 2006 voice, drama and dance camp students pans played for the opening of the University Town Center Towers, with the present and former governors of the State of Maryland in attendance, as well as the Mayor of Hyattsville, and the County Executive of Prince George’s County. He was the teacher of the pilot program in Prince George's County Public Schools, teaching the students of Paint Branch Elementary School in College Park at OMS. They now have incorporated that program as part of their core curriculum, being the first and to date, May 2008, the only school in the Prince George's Public School System to have the pans in their school. Besides teaching steel drums at the OMS, he has established an Ottley Music School Steel Ensemble that performed locally. Mr. Ottley is working on his masters at Andrews University.

Timpani, Marimba, Snare Drums, Drum Set, Steel Drums

JOSEPH "JOE" VIVIANO, B.M.A. and M.Mus., percussion performance in graduated Magna Cum Laude from Vanderbilt University in 2006 and from Belmont University in 2008. In school and after, he has had experience in several organizations:

• currently one of the 300-members of the Baltimore Raven's Football team band, the largest in the NFL
• 4 years performing in Vanderbilt Orchestra, Wind Ensemble and Chamber Orchestra
• 3 years performing in the anderbilt Percussion Ensemble
• 2 years performing in the Vanderbilt Steel Band (double seconds)
• 2 years in Belmont Percussion Ensemble, including 2 performances with the nationally televised "Christmas at Belmont" concert
• Paducah Symphony Orchestra Concert, sub. percussionist 2006
• Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Huntsville and Nashville Symphony Orchestras
• Colts Drum and Bugle Corps, Music City Mystique Indoor Drum Line, and Nashville Pipe and Drum Corps.
• Over 2 years drumset (electronic and acoustic) performances with churches
• Drummer and/or percussionist with several student and community Broadway shows

As a teacher, he has taught classes in Music Theory and Percussion at Belmont. He has taught College, middle, and 3 high schools including where he presently is teaching at Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring, Maryland. He teaches both modern American rudimental playing and the modern Scottish syle of snare drum playing. He also teaches theory and ear-training.

Mr. Viviano bring to Ottley Music School his talents in playing Timpani, Marimba, Snare drums, and Steel Drums. We welcome him to the faculty.