Steve Heitzeg

American composer, born 1959

Steve Heitzeg (born October 15, 1959) is an American composer whose works include compositions for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensemble, ballet, and film. He is well known for themes of environmentalism and social justice in his work, and A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz.

Heitzeg was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and grew up on a dairy farm near the small town of Kiester. In high school, he played trombone in marching band, guitar in jazz band, and sang in the choir. He also wrote a rock opera, P. S., based on the story of the prodigal son, during his senior year. After graduating from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, in 1982, he earned his PhD in musical composition at the University of Minnesota in 1986, studying under Dominick Argento and Eric Stokes. His doctoral work was the 1985 composition Nine Surrealist Studies (After Salvador Dali), inspired by the Spanish surrealist painter, which was premiered in 1987 by the Florida Orchestra. Kurt Loft of the Tampa Tribune praised the work, calling Heitzeg "a serious composer with much to say" and adding that Nine Surrealist Studies "suggests the enigma of time and the irrational dream world that so fascinated the famed Spanish painter."

Writing about Heitzeg's career, Kurt Loft of the Tampa Tribune wrote that "Heitzeg is remarkably prolific. His body of work includes significant orchestra and chamber pieces, opera, works for chorus and film scores. His compositions reflect a concern for environmental issues, history, art and literature." Heitzeg's belief in environmentalism and pacifism is a fundamental cornerstone of his work, with themes of social justice, ecology, and the interconnectedness of humans and the Earth interweaving in almost all his more than 150 creations. Each ecoscore is hand drawn on recycled paper. Two ecoscores, Peace March for Paul and Sheila Wellstone and American Symphony (Unfinished), are in the permanent collection of the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. Ecology Symphony, written for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day in 2010, dedicated each of its movements to a different endangered species including the leatherback turtle, Javan rhinoceros, and mountain gorilla.

Heitzeg's work has been positively reviewed by many critics. Nicholas Tawa, author of the 2009 book The Great American Symphony, singled out Heitzeg as part of "a new crop of American composers who find value in writing symphonies." Bruce Hodges of MusicWeb International called the 2004 VocalEssence performance of Heitzeg's Nobel Symphony one of the best concerts of that year, calling it "a work that continues to linger in the mind" and praising its "eloquent reimagining" of a text by Chilean poet diplomat Pablo Neruda. Michael Fleming of the St. Paul Pioneer Press said that "Heitzeg's compositions, whether for orchestra, solo instrument or voice, are colorful and superbly crafted. Behind each lies a story or idea, but the music stands by itself."

In 1988, Heitzeg's three movement orchestral tribute to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, A Voice Remembered, was performed by the Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis; WCCO TV newscaster Dave Moore read from Humphrey's speeches and writing. Endangered (Written in Honor of All Turtles and Tortoises), a 10 minute work for solo cello, debuted in Minneapolis in 1990. The piece uses a repeated theme around the notes E D A G, shorthand for "endangered", and was inspired by the similar shapes of a cello and Galapagos tortoise. The Star Tribune's Michael Anthony called it "an odd and touching work in nine brief movements held together by a lush, elegiac theme." The Dale Warland Singers premiered Heitzeg's Christmas choral work little tree, based on the poem by e. e. cummings, in 1990. The company later recorded the song for their 1995 album December Stillness. little tree has become one of Heitzeg's most frequently performed works. Two compositions by Heitzeg, Flower of the Earth and Endangered, were used as the score for the 1991 PBS American Playhouse film A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, starring Jane Alexander and Christopher Plummer. Flower of the Earth was originally written in 1987 in homage to O'Keeffe, and devoted each of its four movements to a different O'Keeffe painting. Alexander, who co produced the film, chose Heitzeg to create its score, and would work with him again repeatedly. Heitzeg's choral work Litanies for the Living was premiered in 1992 in Minneapolis by the Westminster Festival Chorus and Minnetonka Choral Society. A meditation on peace between humans and nature, Litanies is set to text by poets Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. Michael Anthony of the Star Tribune called it "effectively and skillfully composed" and "evocative with a tone of reverence and loss." Makhato Wakpa (Blue Earth River) was premiered in October 1992 by the Mankato Symphony Orchestra. The piece is inspired by the geography and history of the Blue Earth River, including the mass execution of 38 Native Americans after the Dakota War of 1862. The Arizona Daily Star lauded it as "a work that fully integrates Heitzeg's ecological and cultural interests". The 1995 orchestral work Mustang (in Tribute to Wild Horses and Burros) paid tribute to the role of horses in American mythology, as well as their automotive descendants; instrumentation included Ford Mustang hubcaps and horseshoes used as percussive elements. Reviewer Todd Epp of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Argus Leader, reviewing a performance of the work by the South Dakota Symphony, said it "painted a vivid sound portrait of freedom, power, and the American West," and wrote that the hubcaps simultaneously served as "both a cymbal and a symbol." In 1995, Heitzeg wrote the symphony On the Day You Were Born to accompany the bestselling children's book by Debra Frasier. The work was debuted by the Minnesota Orchestra, with actress Jane Alexander as narrator, and subsequently released by the orchestra as an animated children's video on the NotesAlive! label. The symphony has been performed frequently by orchestras across the U. S. On the Day You Were Born won the American Library Association's Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children's Video in 1997. Heitzeg was commissioned in 1997 by Gustavus Adolphus College to write Blessed are the Peacemakers, a work for alto soloist, chorus and orchestra which honored the 25th anniversary of the college's annual student performed "Christmas in Christ Chapel" program. The work also honored five historic peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Hildegard von Bingen, St. Francis, Dag Hammarskjöld and Raoul Wallenberg. Heitzeg's debut album, Earthworks: Music in Honor of Nature, was released in 1998 on Innova Recordings. A collection of his chamber works, the album includes performances by flutist Julia Bogorad, soprano Maria Jette, cellist Laura Sewell, the House of Hope Children's Choir and Zeitgeist. Aqua (Hommage a Jacques Yves Cousteau), a tribute to the oceans and the influential French explorer and environmentalist, was debuted in 1999 by the Virginia Symphony. In 2000, the game show Jeopardy! featured Heitzeg and Aqua as the subject of a Final Jeopardy question.

Heitzeg wrote the words and music for What the River Says, a 15 minute work for chorus, piano and percussion in three movements, which was inspired by the 1997 Red River flood that devastated North Dakota and commissioned by the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts. It was premiered by the Grand Forks Master Chorale in 2000. Heitzeg used stones and driftwood he gathered from the Red River banks as natural instrumentation. The title was taken from a poem by William Stafford. Heitzeg's score for the PBS documentary Death of the Dream: Farmhouses in the Heartland won an Upper Midwest Emmy in 2000 from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Voice of the Everglades (A Tribute to Marjory Stoneman Douglas) was commissioned by Florida's Naples Philharmonic Orchestra in honor of conservationist Stoneman Douglas, and premiered in November 2000. To create the work, Heitzeg spent time in Florida's Everglades and Ten Thousand Islands collecting audio recordings and found objects later used in the final piece, including manatee vocalizations, coral, river stones, sawgrass bundles and manatee bones. The premiere performance was accompanied by large scale projection of images of the Everglades by nature photographer Clyde Butcher, who also narrated excerpts from Stoneman Douglas' writings. Cathy Chestnut of the Fort Myers, Florida News Press called it "a celebration of Douglas' life and the land she fought to protect, and an elegy for the endangered manatee." The Czech Republic's Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra's recording of Voice of the Everglades was released on the label Stone Circle Music in 2005. Reviewer John Leeman of MusicWeb International called it "heartening" and likened it to "a spoken documentary set to music. You could perhaps think of it as a kind of conservationist Peter and the Wolf." Heitzeg's 2001 Nobel Symphony celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize, and was commissioned by Gustavus Adolphus College, which hosted the 33rd annual Nobel Conference that year. The 75 minute symphony was the largest work of Heitzeg's career up to that point, involving 400 musicians from the Gustavus Orchestra and five separate choirs. Each of its six movements is dedicated to a particular category of Nobel Prize—Peace, Literature, Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, and Economics—and includes writings from Nobel laureates such as Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Rigoberta Menchú. Heitzeg's use of unconventional instruments continues here, with percussionists playing plowshares, olive branches, Tibetan singing bowls, African drums, empty soup cans (representing hunger) and hollow prosthetic legs (representing the folly of war). Kay Miller of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote that the work's focus on the need for world peace took on added significance given the political circumstances at the time, with its debut performance coming only two weeks after the September 11 attacks. Symphony to the Prairie Farm, a 20 minute work in four movements, was first performed in 2002 by the Des Moines Symphony. Robert C. Fuller of the Des Moines Register called it "an eclogue to Midwestern agrarianism", and praised the use of squeaky toys to mimic prairie dogs "strangely evocative and effective." Ghosts of the Grasslands, the first movement of the symphony, was performed by the Boulder Philharmonic, with Michael Butterman conducting, in 2017 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C.

Heitzeg wrote Centennial Fanfare (A Common Call) in honor of the Minnesota Orchestra's 100th season in 2002. We Are Met at Gettysburg, co commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra and debuted in 2003, was jointly created with Pennsylvania composer Amy Scurria. With a title taken from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the work honored the 140th anniversary of the Civil War battle. The choral concert River Journey Suite, debuted in 2004 by the Dale Warland Singers, included compositions by Heitzeg, William Banfield, Kirke Mechem, and John Muehleisen; Heitzeg's work, Elegy on Water, was inspired by a Robert Bly poem, "Mourning Pablo Neruda." Bly read his poem during the performance; reviewer Michael Anthony praised the music's "whirling figures [which] coalesced into a folklike hymn at the end." Song Without Borders, a four part work for string quartet, was written in memory of the victims of a 2003 bombing attack on UN workers in Baghdad, and was performed by the Daedalus Quartet in 2008 at the UN Headquarters in New York to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attack. Soon afterward, it was performed by the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra String Quartet in Baghdad. In 2008, the James Sewell Ballet collaborated with Heitzeg on Social Movements, a 30 minute dance piece scored by Heitzeg on the themes of war, global warming, refugees and human rights and inspired in part by the self sacrifice of the Quaker peace activist Norman Morrison, who set himself on fire in 1965 to protest the Vietnam War. Reviewer Camille Lefevre, writing for the Star Tribune, praised the music's "sensory and historical barrage packed with emotional and dramatic cues."

In 2011, Innova Recordings released Wild Songs, an album of compositions by Heitzeg and Lori Laitman sung by soprano opera and chamber music singer Polly Butler Cornelius and Zeitgeist members Heather Barringer and Patti Cudd, as well as recorded bonobo vocalizations. It features texts by Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall and Terry Tempest Williams. Reviewing the album, Steven Ritter of Audiophile Audition magazine called Heitzeg "a composer who is fiercely melodic and knows how to integrate disparate sounds into a whole". Dominy Clements of MusicWeb International magazine called the album "highly approachable" and praised the music as "full of fascination and variety. These are works which lead their own environmental consciousness raising life with considerable communicative depth." Cheryl Coker of the Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music called it "intriguing" and said that Cornelius was "excellent" and "consistently effective throughout her vocal range." In 2012, the Des Moines Symphony debuted Symphony in Sculpture, a 25 minute work commissioned for the Pappajohn Sculpture Park in Des Moines and for the 75th season of the Des Moines Symphony itself. It is divided into nine short movements, each representing one of the sculptures in the park. Music critic Michael Morain of The Des Moines Register felt the piece was too short, but said that "the music matches the sculptures with just a few thoughtful strokes." Symphony in Sculpture II followed in 2015, covering six more sculptures and including windchimes made from chakra stones and olive branches, a steel mixing bowl from Heitzeg's late mother's kitchen, and trilobite and whalebone fossils. 2019's Symphony in Sculpture III pays tribute to three more sculptures, including a sculpture by Ai Weiwei. In 2015, the Minnesota Orchestra premiered Heitzeg's trumpet concerto American Nomad, a work for full orchestra which also included instrumentation such as an armature bar from the Statue of Liberty, New York City subway spikes, a piece of steel from the Golden Gate Bridge, and fallen branches from a Joshua tree. Michael Anthony of the Star Tribune, writing about its debut performance, called it an "intriguing" and "vividly rhythmic rumination on the American spirit: its loneliness, its medley of cultures, its restless ambition and grandiosity," which he felt was "so good that one is led to predict it will be performed by numerous orchestras across the country." Terry Blain, writing about a 2019 performance, praised its "exuberant, multifaceted writing for solo trumpet, laced with jazzy stylings and suffused with the irrepressible curiosity of the American spirit." For violinist Ariana Kim, Heitzeg wrote the music for How Many Breaths?, an 18 minute multimedia work for solo violin and spoken word inspired by the 2020 protests in the Twin Cities against the murder of George Floyd. Kim not only performed the violin but edited the video presentation of demonstrations and art created during the protests, with spoken text by Penumbra Theatre artistic director Sarah Bellamy. The video premiered in September 2020 on the website of the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota. Star Tribune critic Terry Blain called Heitzeg's score "jaggedly expressive." Heitzeg received Gustavus Adolphus College's First Decade Award in 1992 and the Distinguished Alumni Citation in 1996. Gustavus Adolphus College maintains an archive of materials related to Heitzeg's composing career.