Marshall Family Principal Viola Chair

Hailed as “glittering, beautiful and memorable”, Celia Daggy joined the VSO as Principal Viola in 2022 at the age of 24, making her one of the youngest principal violists in an American orchestra.

Raised in a musical family in sunny Santa Monica, California, she studied piano and violin, eventually picking up the viola as a teenager. In high school, Ms. Daggy performed for John Williams with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the American Youth Symphony, competed in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and toured China with the National Youth Orchestra of the USA.

She completed her undergraduate in 2020 summa cum laude from Boston University, where she studied with Boston Symphony principal Steven Ansell. She was a Tanglewood Music Center fellow for three years, during which she won their annual mock-audition, and was a guest of the Boston Symphony in the Leonard Bernstein Centennial Gala Concert. She also attended the New York String Orchestra Seminar and Spoleto Festival USA. Throughout her college years, she was a guest of numerous New England chamber music societies, performing from Rhode Island up to 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.

Frequently traveling around the United States, Ms. Daggy has performed with the Boston, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and North Carolina Symphonies. She has toured New England with the Boston Pops, and also joined the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in Los Angeles for a PBS broadcasted event celebrating Henri Mancini’s 100th Birthday. She can be heard around Hampton Roads in the internationally-renowned Candlelight quartet series. In the summer, she is the Assistant Principal Violist of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra, and participates in the Wintergreen Music Festival in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Prior to joining the Virginia Symphony, she was an acting member of the North Carolina Symphony during the ‘21-’22 season. She was also a principal fellow of The Orchestra Now at Bard College, where she can be heard on an album released by Bridge Records playing extensive solos in George Bristow’s Symphony No. 4 “Arcadian”.

She plays on a 2016 viola made by Andranik Gaybaryan in Northampton, Massachusetts. Outside of the musical world she enjoys running, learning about fine wines, and is an avid Los Angeles Dodgers fan. She currently lives in Chesapeake.