About

West Philadelphia native Davey Hiester (b. 2000) enjoys a multi-faceted life in music, as a bassoonist, orchestrator, conductor, and educator. Growing up with a piano in the house, he began taking lessons at the age of six, and decided to pursue music shortly thereafter when he saw a movie about J.S. Bach. Heavily invested in innovative programming, concert curation, storytelling, local collaboration, and community focus, Hiester is the Music Director and President of the Center City Chamber Orchestra, which he founded in Philadelphia in 2018. The CCCO is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which concertizes with up to 50 musicians at a time, and has given five world premieres, one American premiere, and two Philadelphia premieres since 2022. He also serves as the current Music Director of Lab Orchestra at The University of Texas at Austin, bringing together the Butler School of Music together in the Chamber Orchestra setting, with commitment to performing works by UT Composers. This fall at UT, Hiester will begin his fifth year of undergraduate study, in Bassoon Performance with Professor Kristin Wolfe Jensen and Conducting with Professor Douglas Kinney Frost, while serving as Teaching Assistant to Professor Sam Lipman. As a bassoonist and contrabassoonist he has appeared with the Lubbock Symphony, Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra UNCHAMBERED Series, US Air Force Band of the West (San Antonio), Temple Symphony Orchestra, Reading Symphony Orchestra, Berks Sinfonietta, Johnson City Symphony, Symphony in C, and Density512—where he now serves as a producer. Summertime performance engagements include Fellowships and Teaching Assistantships at Miami Music Festival, National Symphony Orchestra Summer Music Institute, The University of Texas Conducting Workshop, with the Trinity Laban Symphony Orchestra in London, and most recently at Brevard Music Center, where he won the 2023 Jan & Beattie Wood Concerto Competition. Prior to college, his bassoon mentors include Holly Blake and Mark Gigliotti of the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as Colleen Hood and Emeline Chong.

With a passion for enriching the lives of the youth through music and educating the next generations of bassoonists, Hiester teaches private lessons in the Austin area, and is currently accepting students of the beginning, middle school, high school, and adult student levels. Previously, he has served on summer faculty and coached youth chamber music at The Music School of Delaware. Hiester is an alumnus of Girard Academic Music Program Middle School and Central High School’s 277th Class, where he was in the inaugural cohort of the Philadelphia Orchestra All-City Fellowship. During his middle- and high-school years, Hiester participated in the Philadelphia All-City Orchestra, Project 440, Settlement Music School, Community Music Scholars Program, Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, and Philadelphia Musical Alliance for Youth. He has studied Composition with Benjamin C. S. Boyle and Russell Podgorsek, and Orchestration with Yevgeniy Sharlat and Donald Grantham. Other accolades include national recognition from the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, designation as an Emerging Composer by TriBeCa New Music, and a composition prize from the National Federation of Music Clubs. His compositions have been performed across the country by musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and International Contemporary Ensemble. In 2022 and 2023, Hiester has had premieres of his orchestrations of music by E. A. Alexander, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arnold Schönberg, and Kevin Charoensri.

Hiester founded 215512BBQ as Pitmaster and Executive Chef in 2021, has grown to recognition in Philadelphia and Austin for his barbecue, which exists largely within the Central Texas idiom but incorporates other influences, namely from Philadelphia, South Texas, Colombia, and Mexico. When not doing long tones or pondering orchestration techniques, Hiester can be found playing basketball and pickleball, spending time with family and friends, and watching sports. He extends gratitude to his family, friends, mentors, colleagues, neighbors, and all who bring inspiration.