Father and daughter to unite on the Tanglewood stage
Keila Wakao made her first Symphony Hall appearance at a younger age than most. Wearing a ruffled powder-blue dress with a matching headband, 5-year-old Keila toddled on stage in 2011 to hand a bouquet of flowers to her father, oboist Keisuke Wakao, after he premiered John Williams’s Concerto for Oboe with the Boston Pops. “To be honest, I don’t remember the concert, but I remember going up to the stage,” she said.
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Just over a decade later, it was her turn in the same spotlight. As the winner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s annual concerto competition in 2023, she performed a movement from Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 at a family concert. Then she was invited to perform at the orchestra’s opening gala. Now, she’s preparing for her biggest BSO audience yet. She makes her Tanglewood debut this Friday as soloist in Barber’s Violin Concerto, under the baton of BSO music director Andris Nelsons. Her father, who is retiring from the orchestra at the end of the current Tanglewood season, will be proudly supporting her from his usual seat in the woodwinds section.
Keila’s interest in music sparked in her preschool days, when she saw some other children performing at a house party thrown by one of her father’s BSO colleagues, and she wanted in. “I told my parents … ‘I want to do that, too.’ Immediately — literally the week after — I had a violin and a violin teacher,” Keila said in a joint Zoom interview with her father from the family’s home in the Berkshires, as the family’s chatty cat Momo (a frequent guest in Keila’s Instagram videos) romped in the background.
But it was never her parents’ dream that those childhood lessons would lead to a career in music. “We felt [music] was good for her education,” said Keisuke, a native of Tokyo who was appointed assistant principal oboe of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal of the Boston Pops in 1990. “I always thought, if she’s happy playing music, that’s good enough for me.”
That supportive but laissez-faire approach helped Keila have a “great relationship with music growing up,” she said. “My parents, especially my dad, made sure to steer me in a way where music was never something that had to feel like work.” Her childhood teacher, former BSO concertmaster Joseph Silverstein, also played a vital role. “I look back and I watch videos, and he’s so kind and patient, but he gets his point across,” she said.
Silverstein often ended Keila’s lessons by encouraging her to play for his wife, Keisuke said. “He was like a grandfather.”
Keila just finished her second year as an undergraduate at New England Conservatory, where she studies with Miriam Fried. Earlier this year, she received an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a by-recommendation-only award given to young musicians with potential for careers as soloists. Previous violinist recipients of that grant include Sarah Chang and Augustin Hadelich.
Being a soloist is indeed the dream for her. “I mean, first I have to establish myself as a soloist,” she said. “And doing more outreach and charity, and concerts for specific causes. The majority of the time, when I’m not on stage, I’m in the practice room, practicing. Doing events for a cause is a way to give back to people.”
Cancer research is one such cause with profound personal meaning for the Wakaos. After Keisuke was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017, he and his doctors initially thought his performance career was sunk, as the radiation treatments that could excise the cancer would also weaken his soft palate. However, a few weeks after the treatments were done, his doctors asked him to try playing a little bit for them, and they were shocked when they heard sound come out of the oboe, he said.
“They said, ‘You have an elephant’s soft palate,” he recalled. He was in too much pain to care at the time. “I said, ‘Doctor, can I just stop now?”
But 14 months later, Keisuke was back on the job at the BSO, and he partially credits his recovery to hearing Keila play while he was healing. “I heard her practicing every day from my bed,” he said.
Now, with a cancer-free Keisuke’s retirement and Keila’s Tanglewood debut all during the same summer, the Wakaos are celebrating the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. “The Barber concerto has a huge oboe solo in the second movement,” Keisuke enthused. “So it’s a nice piece to, not end, but, you know.” He’s “a little bit sad to leave,” especially knowing he won’t be working with Nelsons. “I like the way he speaks, I love the way he conducts … and he was the person who asked Keila to perform.”
“And after the gala …” Keila started.
“Right away, it was ‘let’s do Tanglewood,’” Keisuke finished the sentence.
Keila is only getting busier. In August, she’s on the books with the Tokyo Philharmonic. Later this fall, she’ll be back in Japan with her frequent collaborator, pianist Janice Lu; the two musicians caught the ear of Yo-Yo Ma when they performed at last summer’s Seiji Ozawa sculpture unveiling ceremony at Tanglewood, and the world-famous cellist invited the two on tour for Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2.
So what might Keisuke do with his newly found free time, besides being Keila Wakao fan No. 1? “I want to conduct a little bit,” he said. “Like, I’m not going to be music director of the Boston Symphony, but I’d like to conduct an orchestra. My small dream is maybe when I’m 82, if I’m still alive, I can conduct one concert of the Boston Symphony. Why not? Why not?”
The next generation of Wakao musicians shot him a knowing glance. “There are many reasons why not.”
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Conducted by Andris Nelsons. Featuring Keila Wakao in Barber’s Violin Concerto, and Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson in excerpts from Adams’s “Nixon in China.” July 17, 8 p.m. Tanglewood, Lenox.
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