Heather Wittels is a member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra first violin section where she was the co-Acting Assistant Concertmaster for the 2021-23 seasons. She is the Director of Chamber Music at the University of Chicago, and Artist Faculty at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts. Since 2022, Heather spends her summers serving as Concertmaster of the AIMS Festival Orchestra in Graz, Austria. Prior to that she was the Associate Concertmaster of the Glimmerglass Opera Festival Orchestra in Cooperstown, New York. She performs as a principal player/concertmaster with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Chicago Opera Theater, and is a regular substitute violinist with both The Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
She has performed the Brahms and Tchaikovsky violin concertos and the Beethoven Triple Concerto with orchestras in Chicago, where reviewers praised her “exquisite taste” and “immaculate technique”. As a chamber musician, she has performed on Classical Music Chicago’s Rush Hour Chamber Music Series, Fourth Presbyterian Church’s popular Friday Noonday Concert series, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, Henry Fogel Presents, Wisconsin’s The Midday radio show, and Live from WFMT on the radio in Chicago, as well as at the Illinois Holocaust Museum.
During the summers of 2013-2019, while at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY, Ms. Wittels created, programmed, produced, and performed in an annually sold-out spoken word and music salon series in local venues; themes have included a Schubertiade, Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, Brahms and the Schumanns, and Music and Letters from Russia. She currently mentors young violinists in collaboration with the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, a program designed to support talented and motivated students from underrepresented backgrounds in classical music. She has served on the judging panel of various music competitions, and has given public masterclasses.
Heather graduated cum laude from Yale University with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, with distinction. Subsequently she earned a Masters in Music and Graduate Diploma in violin performance in the studio of Malcolm Lowe at the New England Conservatory, as beneficiary of the 2007 Tourjée Alumni Award for graduate study. She was a Fellow of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida and a three time Tanglewood Music Center Fellow. A native of Brookline, MA, Heather began the violin at age three.