John Ilika
PRINCIPAL
The Thomas Warwick Steed, Jr. Family Chair
John Ilika became Principal Trombone with the North Carolina Symphony in January 2001. Prior to that, he held principal trombone positions with numerous organizations including the Pennsylvania Ballet, Delaware Symphony, Opera Delaware, Florida Music Festival, and the Philadelphia Brass (quintet).
Ilika has been featured as a soloist with the North Carolina Symphony numerous times over the last 24 years, including the Jennifer Higdon Low Brass Concerto in 2022 and the Tomasi Trombone Concerto in 2005. In 1992, with the Delaware Symphony, he commissioned and premiered the Trombone Concerto by Kile Smith, Curator of the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Upon graduation in 1981 from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where he earned a music education degree, he played for three years with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Maracaibo in Venezuela. Shortly after the economy crashed in Venezuela in 1983, he left to study with Charles Vernon, formerly of The Philadelphia Orchestra, at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts (now the University of the Arts). He has played and recorded with The Philadelphia Orchestra as a substitute since 1989 and worked with every important musical organization in the Philadelphia area during his 15 years of free-lancing there.
Ilika has been on the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts since 2010. Former teaching posts include the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, beginning in 1994, as well as Lehigh University; Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Community College of Philadelphia; West Chester University (PA); University of Delaware; and the Orquesta Juvenil in Caracas and Coro, Venezuela. Other principal teachers were Eric Carlson, Fred Nyline, and Joseph Alessi.
Ilika lives in Garner, North Carolina with his violinist wife, Ariadna; their two children, Tristan and Zofia; and too many cats.