A gourmet chef, violinist, and vocalist, Stephanie Dailey is as comfortable in the kitchen as she is on her violin. The daughter of military parents, Stephanie was born in Kyota, Japan, but grew up in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, CA, from age 3. Her mother played the piano (she read music but also played by ear), and her father had a good voice and loved to sing. Her two brothers were also musical. One played the guitar, and one played the flute. Stephanie played both the piano and the violin and started private lessons at age 7 on the piano and age 8 on the violin. Her voice lessons started much later in life when she was in her 40s.
Stephanie’s love of music came naturally. As a child, she would wake up singing, and when she was age 4 or 5, she saw a TV commercial advertising a violin for children and said to her parents, “I want that!” They bought a violin for her from Montgomery Ward thinking that it was a toy. When it arrived however, it turned out to be a real one. Her parents then put it away for safekeeping until she was ready to start violin lessons at age 8, and she continued playing through 12th grade. Stephanie played violin in the school orchestra and also sang in the chorus at her elementary school in Los Angeles. She remembers the loving guidance of her Hungarian music teacher, Mrs. Kevorkian, who made sure that the children’s choir excelled. Mrs. Kevorkian was instrumental in Stephanie’s musical development and encouraged her to play solo violin recitals at school assemblies. As a teenager, Stephanie also performed recitals at weekend competitions with other students from her school and played in Palo Alto’s All City Orchestra.
Stephanie stopped playing during her college years, but she returned to the violin as an adult in 1990 and was strongly influenced by her teacher, Linda Smith, who held quarterly recitals for her students in private homes. Stephanie enjoyed these recitals, and it was the memory of those performances that prompted her to join the AMSF in 2024. She had played a lot of orchestral music, but she now wanted the opportunity to improve her skill in solo performance. She was introduced to the organization by AMSF member Kit Chan, whom she met at a Chamber music activity in 2023. On Kit’s recommendation, Stephanie immediately examined the website and found the AMSF to be a perfect fit. Though she is a new member, she has been very active from the start and performs regularly. She particularly likes the Community Outreach recitals because she says, “It’s an audience that I had performed for in the past, and I enjoy the vibe there.”
Apart from the AMSF, Stephanie’s music activities include performing with the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra and the Levine Noontime Chamber Orchestra. She still takes private violin lessons from Paula Fishman, a teacher at Levine, as well as online violin lessons from Sage Music in Texas. She has also played with the NIH Orchestra, which she joined in 2008 while working at the National Institute of Health. In addition, she performs one-woman musical shows in retirement homes across the DC metro area. She sings show tunes, jazz songs, and songs from the Great American Songbook. Periodically, she also sings at other venues including open mics. Because of this experience, Stephanie’s repertoire is comprised mainly of modern music, and she favors 20th Century composers like George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Norman Whitfield, Holland-Dozier Holland, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein.
Stephanie retired in 2019 after an illustrious career that was as varied as her musical talents. In college, she majored in French as an undergrad at UCLA and then got her Masters in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language). At the age of 22, she was recruited by the State Department to work as an escort interpreter (French to English). It was that job, along with her continuing studies at Georgetown University’s interpretation-translation program, that brought her from California to DC. She then moved on to Public Television with WETA TV, followed by a job as an ESL and French translation adjunct instructor at three universities (Howard, Georgetown, and American). Her final job, from which she retired, was at the NIH where she worked as a Public Affairs Specialist in the National Institute of Aging (NIA) from 1998 to 2019.
Stephanie’s first major project at the NIA lasted 17 years and involved managing the NIHSeniorHealth.gov website, which offered health information for older adults. In collaboration with the National Library of Medicine (NLM), she helped develop the world’s first senior-friendly website. The NIH Senior Health project was unique in that its website was research-based and especially tailored to the learning and visual needs of people 60 and older. Her second and final project lasted three years where she was head of NIA’s Go4Life campaign which focused on getting older adults to incorporate regular exercise into their lives. The NIA-funded research determined that there were four different types of exercise important for seniors. They were endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance, hence the “4” in the name Go4Life. The campaign partnered with groups around the country to raise awareness and to help disseminate print materials and exercise DVDs to the public. Stephanie also organized community workshops in senior centers throughout the DMV to promote exercise among older adults. Without a doubt, Stephanie has reason to be proud of her outstanding contribution to ensuring the health of seniors during her 20 years of service at the NIH.
After retiring, Stephanie’s focus turned back to her music, and she became involved in as many activities as she could handle. To encourage aspiring musicians, Stephanie says, “If you are fortunate enough to learn to play an instrument or to sing at a young age, stick with it. Even if you let go, you can always come back to it, like I did. After playing all the way through elementary school and high school, I let the violin go when I went to college and didn’t play for another 25 years! But when I picked it up again, it all came back to me. Now in retirement, it plays a big role in my everyday life. Not a day goes by that I don’t practice or play. I’m so glad my parents introduced me to music and that the schools had the resources to offer classes and free instruments, enabling me to reap the benefits, first as a young person and now as a retiree. I never wanted to become a professional musician, but as an amateur, I have had the opportunity to enjoy music as a very enriching hobby!”