This Peekskill Musician Is Awakening the Valley’s Youth

Calling Daisy Jopling a violinist is like calling a Stradivarius violin a fiddle — it’s technically true, but you’re not getting the full picture. The British virtuoso, now a Peekskill resident, has performed several genres in more than 50 countries — in venues ranging from Royal Albert Hall in London (at age 14!) and New York’s Carnegie Hall to small Hudson Valley jewelry shops — and championed the nonprofit Daisy Jopling Foundation to spread the joy of music to Valley youths. “There are many ways to bring light and joy into the world through music,” Jopling says.

The Royal College of Music graduate’s road to Peekskill began six years ago, when she was living in New York City and invited by a friend to see George Benson at the Paramount Hudson Valley. “I ended up sitting in a seat across the aisle from my future husband [technology consultant Joe Brown]. We were both dancing and having fun, and he invited me to the after-concert reception. Four months later, I moved to Peekskill to live with him!”

​Jopling founded the Daisy Jopling Foundation in 2012 after noticing a decline in school music programs. With its mission “to enrich and transform lives through music, creating empowered citizens, a healthy community and a more vibrant world,” the foundation provides opportunities for local schoolchildren to perform alongside professional musicians and attend world-class concerts. Her “String Pulse Experience” program was featured in a documentary by filmmaker Diana Frank.

Last September at Paramount Hudson Valley, Jopling debuted songs from her newest album, Awakening, with a “side-by-side orchestra” made up of students and professional mentors from across the state. “Through that experience,” Jopling says, “I realized that children’s lives could be deeply empowered by being given an opportunity to perform on a wonderful stage with world-class musicians.”

Awakening, released this month on the Fleus de Sons  label, is her first album with all original tracks, written with her musical friends Michael Feigenbaum and Brian Delma Taylor. It features vocalist Rob Evan of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra as well as the young talents of the Hendrick Hudson High School Treble Makers Chorus. And the songs, like Jopling, are unbound by genre; expect tracks with flavors from “pop to reggae, funk to Latin, Irish folk to gospel, country music to jazz.”