Background
Heitzeg was born and raised on a dairy farm in southern Minnesota by Louie and Barbara Heitzeg of Kiester.
Heitzeg was born and raised on a dairy farm in southern Minnesota by Louie and Barbara Heitzeg of Kiester.
Heitzeg graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1982 and received his Doctor of Philosophy in music theory/composition from the University of Minnesota in 1986, studying with Dominick Argento.
Heitzeg first attracted attention for his score, A Marriage: Georgia O"Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz (starring Jane Alexander), in 1991 and for the award-winning children's video, On the Day You Were Born, released by the Minnesota Orchestra in 1996. Heitzeg’s debut recording, Earthworks: music in honor of nature, was released two years later in April 1998. In 2000 he also received a regional Emmy for his original score for the public television documentary Death of the Dream: Farmhouses in the Heartland.
Heitzeg was awarded a McKnight Fellowship in 2001 and has received grants from the American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, and the Jerome Foundation.
In addition to concert and film music, Heitzeg composes ecoscores (intimate works with inventive musical syntax) that seek to honor nature and promote peace. Two of these works, Peace March for Paul and Sheila Wellstone and American Symphony (Unfinished), are in the permanent collection of Minneapolis’ Weisman Art Museum.
Two recent works funded through a 2005 Archibald Bush Artist Fellowship, include Social Movements, a ballet premiered by the James Sewell Ballet in 2008, and Song Without Borders, a four movement string quartet premiered in 2008 by the Daedalus Quartet at the United Nations’ New York headquarters. Four months later, the work was performed by the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra String Quartet in Baghdad.
Heitzeg’s music has been commissioned or performed by the Atlanta Symphony, Auckland Philharmonia, Chanticleer, Daedalus Quartet, Dale Warland Singers, Detroit Symphony, James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Orchestra, members of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and VocalEssence, among others