CELIA DAGGY

Celia Daggy has been hailed as a “glittering violist” by The Boston Musical Intelligencer, and her playing has been praised as “beautiful and memorable” by Sequenza 21.

Raised in a musical family in Los Angeles, Daggy studied piano from age three, eventually picking up the violin, then the viola as a teenager. In high school, as a member of the American Youth Symphony, she performed at the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award ceremony for John Williams with conductor Gustavo Dudamel. She was a quarterfinalist in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and toured China with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America.

After moving to Boston in 2016, Daggy became an active musical presence in New England as an orchestral performer, chamber musician, and soloist. She was a Tanglewood Music Center fellow for three years, having won their annual mock-audition in 2017. During her second summer, she was invited to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in the Leonard Bernstein Centennial Gala Concert at Tanglewood, broadcast nationally on PBS. She also attended the New York String Orchestra Seminar and the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. She graduated in 2020 summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in music from Boston University, where she studied with BSO principal Steven Ansell.

As a chamber musician, Daggy has performed with the Grammy Award-winning Muir String Quartet at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute’s faculty recital series, the Newton Chamber Music Society, and the Fall Foliage Chamber Music Festival in Rockport, Maine. In 2018, she gave the world premiere of Stephen Baillargeon’s viola concerto, written for her, as a benefit for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Prior to joining the North Carolina Symphony in January 2022, Daggy held a principal position with The Orchestra Now, a graduate ensemble based at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. When not playing viola, she enjoys exercising, baseball, and exploring the local craft beer scene.