Conductor Alan Heatherington gets around. Not only is he a fixture in northwest suburban music and known elsewhere in the Chicago area as a maestro on the move, but he also recently returned from Europe after a tour with The New Oratorio Singers of Barrington, a chorus he has directed since 1989.
“The tour was a sensational success, with capacity crowds and standing ovations,” he said. “Highlights were an exceptional performance for a standing-room-only audience in Vienna and an equally brilliant concert at the South Bohemia Music Festival in Tabor (in the Czech Republic).” About half of the chorus’ 120 members went on the tour. “With the organizational assistance of Music Celebrations International (U.S. tour agent), we sang in the finest venues in Prague, Vienna and Budapest. . . .”
But Heatherington, 51, of Skokie can rack up the miles without ever leaving metropolitan Chicago. He budgets his time among rehearsing and directing his best known groups: The New Oratorio Singers, his Ars Viva orchestra, the choir at 1st Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest and Chicago’s Anshe Emet Synagogue professional choir. Plus there are his special projects, such as his string quartet’s concerts for shut-ins, which started last fall and just concluded a series of 24 concerts at senior residences across the Chicago area.
“Alan is no egomaniac,” said Steven Houser of Chicago, an Ars Viva cellist who also plays with the Lake Forest and Grant Park Symphonies. “He loves to make music with people, and I love playing cello with Alan.”
Added another Chicago cellist with Ars Viva, Elizabeth Anderson: “Alan is one of the best conductors around here, and his stick technique is easy to follow. He’s studied conducting seriously, which is not always the case (with conductors).” Anderson also plays in other local orchestras and classical groups.
Michael Buckwalter, Anderson’s husband and principal horn for Ars Viva, said, “He’s one of the best prepared conductors and even knows the soloists’ parts so well that he can help everyone make up for any deviations from the score, intentional or otherwise.”
Certainly, Heatherington can be a charmer or a taskmaster; such are the dual qualities of the better conductors. But the bottom line is that he is able to coax beauty from professionals and amateurs alike.
“It’s one thing to gather 48 of the area’s best orchestral musicians on one stage, quite another to get them to play Beethoven and Brahms like the big boys downtown.” That was from a John von Rhein review in The Tribune of an Ars Viva concert last year.
That kind of payoff doesn’t come from halfhearted effort. In Heatherington’s case, it qualifies as zeal, fervor, religion. And there are reasons for this depth of soul in the maestro.
For one thing, music and spirituality have long been intermingled for him. After earning a bachelor’s degree in music from Houghton College in his native New York state in 1967, he spent three years in graduate study of theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Bannockburn. He also taught theology and music at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago from 1968 to 1979 while also conducting the orchestra and chorus there.
“My faith is a central part of my entire life as a musician, as a family member or in whatever my activities may be,” explained Heatherington, an Episcopalian.
But as a career, music would win out.
His first long-term Chicago area professional music post was with violin, not voice, as concertmaster with the Lake Forest Symphony Orchestra (1972-79) under Victor Aitay, now concertmaster emeritus of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
During his Lake Forest Symphony years, Heatherington was completing a master of music degree at Northwestern University, studying under Samuel Magad, present CSO concertmaster and director of the Northbrook Symphony Orchestra.
Heatherington won highest performance honors from Northwestern in 1975 and was violin soloist with the University Symphony and was elected to Pi Kappa Lambda, the national music honor society.
In 1979 he founded the Chicago String Ensemble, serving as its music director until 1995, when he created Ars Viva. “Ars Viva is an extension of what I started at CSE, combining the old and the new,” he said. ” `Ars’ (in Latin) stands for the tested past treasures of music, and `Viva’ refers to fresh creative works by living composers.”
Heatherington likes to blend the Ars Viva orchestra with choral voices, such as the “Requiem” by John Rutter performed May 17 at 1st Presbyterian in Lake Forest and sung by the church’s adult choir.
Charles Fry of Lake Forest, a board member of the Lake Forest Symphony, described it as “a spectacular, inspiring musical event.”
Too, Heatherington is able to draw top-notch players to Ars Viva. The orchestra’s May 31 benefit concert included 13 from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and seven from the Lyric Opera Orchestra among the 52 professional musicians.
David Taylor, the CSO’s full-time assistant concertmaster, has served Ars Viva as concertmaster since 1996. “Alan as a violinist knows more about string playing in a hands-on way, which puts him in an advantageous position. . . . He knows how to get what he wants and has a good sense of humor in rehearsals,” Taylor said.
And it is that good sense of humor that makes his professional drive work with an amateur chorus. (He prefers the term “volunteer” to “amateur,” so as not to denigrate the talent.)
As The New Oratorio Singers enter its 20th season, the Barrington-based group continues to grow under Heatherington, regularly drawing praise.
The chorus singers come from all walks of life and more than 30 communities, according to Heatherington, and all have a passion for choral music by the great masters. “All must audition,” he said, “and many are degreed music majors, some even being school or church choral directors themselves.”
Wesley and Marie Ann Vos of Crystal Lake are members who both have doctoral degrees in musicology from Washington University in St. Louis.
Wesley is on the faculty of De Paul University’s School of Music and has sung with the chorus for six years. “It’s wonderful,” he said. “It’s our musical recreation. Alan is the best choral conductor I’ve ever worked with.”
Marie Ann, executive director of the McHenry County Youth Orchestra and the Crystal Lake Community Art Center, explained that Heatherington “has a great capacity for personal compassion and empathy with his musicians, which is unusual in the music profession. His great humanity provides the ideal balance with his ability to musically challenge the wide variety of singers in our group. As a conductor myself, I learn from his example.”
But Heatherington’s depth of feeling comes from more than any musical or religious fervor. He has faced some emotional trials, the greatest of which was the death of his 12-year-old daughter, Rebecca, on May 5, 1990. She had fought cancer for years. “It was extremely heartbreaking and life altering,” he said.
The conductor has three other daughters, two of whom are married and have children. “All my daughters have been musical, but none has so far pursued a career in music,” he said. “Colleen, the youngest at 14, studies percussion and is probably the most musically gifted of all but not terribly serious about it at this point. That could change.”
Heatherington himself started young, studying conducting as early as high school in Rochester, N.Y. By then he had been taking lessons in piano since age 5 and violin since age 8.
He and his sister were given encouragement in their musical interests by their parents. “My mother taught piano for a while, and she still plays,” Heatherington recalled. His late father was a trombone player, baritone horn player and baritone singer. “They gave us the best teachers,” he said.
From 1959 to 1964, Heatherington studied violin privately at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., under three master players and began auditing master classes in conducting.
He recalled that he wanted to be a voice major in college but instead chose violin at the suggestion of teachers along the way, who pointed out that there are more singers than there are violinists. But he asserted that “my favorite instrument is the human voice,” accounting for his dual focus as a choral and orchestral conductor. “I love the mix. It’s very fulfilling for me.”
Nevertheless, putting aside the baton and sitting down with his quartet to play for seniors brings its own reward. “These people can’t go out for entertainment without great difficulty,” he said.
Funded by the Rothschild Foundation of Chicago, his outreach program involves him and various Ars Viva string players and New Oratorio singers. He hopes to acquire more funding for another round of concerts.
But as he said, voice has a special place with him, and one particular voice has a very special place: Gayle, his wife, sings in every choral group he conducts. They met through The New Oratorio Singers and married in 1994. She is his third wife.
Beyond music, they share an interest in exotic fish, maintaining a supply in aquariums throughout their home. And like any self-respecting sports fan in the Chicago area, Heatherington taped the Bulls games when music commitments kept him away from the television during the various championship runs.
Maybe that is what all the sports fans in the audience did when Heatherington’s Ars Viva packed the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie on the night of a crucial Bulls playoff game in May, during the orchestra’s season finale.
“The schedule is crazy busy but very rewarding,” Gayle said. “There’s a lot going on in many different directions, and we stay very busy and feel very satisfied, because we do most things together.”
It’s no surprise that leisure would be difficult for Heatherington to schedule. Despite all his existing commitments, his guest-conducting career has taken off too. Past slots included the Chicago Civic Orchestra (training orchestra for the CSO), the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Northwest Indiana Symphony Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Light Opera Works and the North Suburban Symphony.
He also will be guest conductor at Northbrook Symphony Orchestra concerts Dec. 20, 1998, and May 16, 1999.
All that remains in Heatherington’s own vision is to gain a permanent, part-time guest conductor appointment overseas.
He does get around.
