Heather Wittels
Violin / Concertmaster
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 as a regular substitute violinist with both The Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She has served on the judging panel of various music competitions, and given public masterclasses.
In February 2026 she gave the world premiere performance of The Sky Between, a concerto for violin and orchestra commissioned by The University of Chicago and written by Shawn Okpebholo for her to perform with The University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She will perform this exciting new work with several more orchestras in the 2026-7 season. She has performed as a soloist with various orchestras and as a chamber musician on numerous series in Illinois and Wisconsin, as well as live on public radio. She has given chamber music concerts at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and at a benefit to raise money for Centro Romero, a nonprofit immigrant services organization in Chicago.
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.
