Jon Hurty leading a performance of Handel's "Messiah" by the Augustana Oratorio Society at Centennial Hall, Rock Island. (courtesy of Augustana College)
The next performance of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah at Augustana College will be extra-special for its conductor and performers, as Jon Hurty – the school’s director of choral activities since 1996 – is retiring at the end of this school year. He will lead the classic oratorio on February 22 at 3 p.m. in Augustana College's Centennial Hall.
The famed composition will be performed by the Augustana Oratorio Society, with soloists Michelle Areyzaga (soprano) Steven Soph (tenor) and Jessye Wright (mezzo soprano) accompanied by a professional orchestra.
“We have an amazing lineup of soloists, all of whom have sung Messiah here at Augustana in previous performances,” Hurty said recently. “The chorus has been rehearsing since early October, so we'll be in excellent shape for the performance.”
The Augustana Oratorio Society was formed in 1880, with its first concert being Handel's Messiah in 1881. The Augustana Oratorio Society is currently composed of community members and Augustana students, among them members of the Augustana Choir.
Hector Lareau, 62, who’s sung with Hurty since his first Messiah (including in several Masterworks performances with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra), recently said that the conductor “has managed somehow to be both intensely demanding and unfailingly kind. Jon has a unique ability to communicate what he expects his singers to do, and the precision and excellence he expects have inspired me – and, I am certain, countless others – to deliver performances that were better than I thought I was capable of.”
Hurty chose to retire this year for many reasons, including his age, which is 66. He and his wife Sonja, who also teaches in Augustana's music department, have two grandchildren (in the Chicago area) and want to spend more time with them.
“We're both at that age where we're thinking it might be a good time to pass the baton to somebody else,” Hurty said, noting their daughter and son-in-law have a three-and-a-half-year-old and a nine-month-old. “Our rotation this year is (also) an international trip for choir. So that's kind of a good way to end our time at Augustana.”
As he made his announcement far in advance, Hurty has been able to really make the most of this last school year – including leading an emotional and satisfying performance of Christmas at Augustana, which found 160 students performing, this past December.
“It's this totally bittersweet kind of a thing, because in a way, this is a lot,” he said. “I can enjoy this one more time.”
Hurty said that leading Christmas at Augustana and Messiah are incomparable thrills, given that he has stood in charge of such a huge collection of performers. (Messiah alone will boast 200 singers.)
“For Messiah,” he said, “it’s a totally different kind of thing. You're interfacing with the orchestra's professional musicians, and there's a lot of community members that are amateur – although really good amateur – singers. That's totally different from Christmas at Augustana, which is amazing, and features almost all student musicians. It's always such a joyful experience to be with those students and work with them and they get so excited about the performance. Christmas at Augustana is a really super-special part of what happens at Augustana in general.”
On occasion, Hurty juggled doing the holiday concert and Messiah both in December, which, he admitted, got to be too much. The college eventually pushed off doing Messiah annually, so the Oratorio Society could feature other big choral works in the non-Messiah years.
Most recently, Augustana hosted Messiah in the springs of 2018 and 2022. In intervening years, Ron May and Opera Quad Cities have led sing-along versions of Handel's masterpiece in December (including this year) at Davenport's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
The Augustana Choir rehearses four times a week during the day, the Oratorio society meets on Monday nights for 90 minutes, and the Messiah orchestra includes some QCSO members and Augustana faculty.
Hurty has preferred when Messiah performances landed closer to Lent and Easter, considering Handel originally wrote it as a Lenten oratorio, one that premiered in April of 1742. This year, Ash Wednesday is February 18, and Easter is April 5.
The Christmas-season Messiah would be more abridged: a 75-minute version. It’s still abridged now, but is two hours total and has an intermission.
Colleagues Sing the Conductor's Praises
Anne Earel has known Hurty since 1997, when she first enrolled at Augustana, and returned to the college in early 2006 to work as a librarian. After singing as a student, she has sung with Augustana Choral Artists (formerly Quad City Choral Arts) off and on since 2008. This month's performance will mark Earel’s 15th time doing Messiah at the college.
“Jon Hurty is kind and supportive, encouraging growth from his students and community members,” she said recently. “His comments during rehearsals are precise and formal when they need to be, but he's not afraid to be emotional or whimsical or humorous to get a point across.
“His singers grow to love each piece of music, because once we know it well enough to get out of the details and listen across the choir and hear the big picture, we eventually understand how much thought and care Jon gives to the selection of each piece,” Earel said. “He teaches his singers about texts, composers, and historical context, knowing that this knowledge will help the choir connect more deeply with the repertoire.
“Jon is the most emotionally generous conductor I've ever sung for, and by that I mean that he doesn't simply want his singers to ‘feel the music’ in a technical way,” she added by e-mail. “He's hoping his singers will actually feel the emotions of each piece. This is true in rehearsals, yes, but even more so during concerts.”
“He's just such a joyous, generous embodiment of what it means to be a musician,” Earel said. “He loves the music for its technical aspects and for its heart, and he excels in sharing and teaching both. Singing in a choir requires a certain amount of humility. If you want to be a soloist, by all means, go and do that. But choral singing means leaving your ego at the door for the good of the collective, in service of blending voices together as one. Even with his experience, skill, and musicianship, Jon somehow also models this humility.
“I literally can't imagine Augustana without Dr. Jon Hurty – he and the Augustana Choir are synonymous in my mind when I think of Augustana College. Making music with him (and my husband and our friends and so many wonderful musicians over the years) has been one of the greatest joys of my life,” she added.
Jerry Johansen and his wife have worked with Hurty since 2000, singing in the Oratorio Society at Augustana, with the QCSO, and even at Carnegie Hall (for Carmina Burana).
“As a conductor, I would describe him as extremely well prepared,” Johansen said. “He is one of the best time management conductors I have worked with. He works very hard to help each person and each section reach the highest performance level possible.
“As a person, he is very empathetic, working hard to understand people and bring out the best in them,” he added. “Yes, it will be difficult to see him leave, but I believe he has given generously and tirelessly for his entire tenure at Augustana. He deserves to retire while he is still at the top of his game and spend what I hope will be many healthy years enjoying his family and other pursuits.”
Maggie Meyers, an Augustana senior, said that over the past four years, she’s had the privilege of singing under his direction in the Augustana Choir, Chamber Singers, and Oratorio Society. She also works with Hurty in administrative roles as a choir librarian and the Oratorio manager, where she helps the organization and coordination of ensemble operations.
By e-mail, Meyers said that Hurty “holds musicians to a high standard of excellence while leading with a calm, confident, and steady presence. He clearly communicates his expectations and treats every singer with genuine respect. He consistently expresses his appreciation for the musicians he works with, which inspires us to show up not only as strong performers, but also as better people within the ensemble.
“I have never met someone so deeply committed to music as an art form and to the individuals who create it. That commitment extends beyond the rehearsal space – Dr. Hurty is an exceptional human being who cares deeply for others, leads with generosity, and is dedicated to making the world a better place through music and beyond,” Meyers said.
One of her highlights at Augustana was performing Duruflé’s Requiem with the Augustana Orchestra, an experience that she said “proved deeply formative for me. This work sparked my love for the choral-orchestral tradition and inspired a lasting passion for oratorio as an art form.”
“Dr. Hurty has been profoundly formative in shaping me as a future conductor, and it will be incredibly difficult to no longer sing under his direction, learn from him daily, or be able to visit and see him at the podium,” she said. “Augustana has been extraordinarily fortunate to have a choir director so deeply committed to preserving tradition while continually pushing the art form forward through innovation. I will miss him dearly, but I am also truly excited to see what this next chapter holds for him.”
Varied and Wonderful Opportunities
It’s fitting that the Augustana Choir’s last tour under Hurty will be in Scandinavia, given that the college was founded by Swedish settlers. The choir will perform late-May through mid-June in Norway and Sweden, with their final concert at Uppsala Cathedral.
This will be Hurty’s fifth tour to Sweden with the choir, and first since 2018. His international travels have included China and several in Europe, while other tours have been across the U.S.
“We have made a lot of connections over those years,” he said of Sweden, “and I've also been there a number of other times for other things besides choir tours. It’s been a really good long-term relationship we have. We're also fortunate this year. We have a student from Sweden in the choir.”
Preparing big choirs for QCSO Masterworks have also been career highlights – including doing the Verdi “Requiem” right before COVID shutdowns in March of 2020, then returning with the Beethoven “Ninth” that October.
“The opportunities that I've had as a conductor have been so varied and so wonderful, it's been like a dream,” Hurty said, citing concerts at Uppsala Cathedral and China as standouts.
“Being able to conduct Messiah so many times, and become intimately familiar with the piece and what it's all about, and expose the students to that on a yearly basis, and being able to collaborate with the QCSO and the last number of years with Mark Russell Smith … . It's been such a salutary experience. He and I get along so well and I respect him and I think he respects the work that I do. So that's been amazing.”
One of the most meaningful aspects of Hurty’s daily job, he said, is working with the Augustana Choir. (He also leads Chamber Singers and teaches choral conducting.)
“They just love what they do,” he said of the choir. “They take pride in being a high-level performing ensemble. And at the same time, they get along with each other. They feel like they have a community together, they're supportive of each other. I get to know the students in a way that I would never get to know in any other kind of context.”
Hurty, who also conducted the St. Paul Lutheran Church Chorale for 15 years, up until 10 years ago. noted that if he didn’t have grandkids, he wouldn’t quit now.
“I tell people, oftentimes, that I have the best job,” he said. “I don't really feel like I'm working. I have the kind of job where I feel like, every day, I'm able to do what I love to do, and it doesn't feel like work at all.”
Hurty is planning a special reunion concert in early May, inviting choir alumni over the past 30 years to come back to Rock Island in a concert featuring Augustana Choral Artists, as well. The college choir will do a separate home concert on May 17, the repertoire featuring their tour program. And Hurty added that it's important when students blend their voices with those outside college grounds.
“I’m always amazed at the kind of connection the students make with the community members and vice versa,” Hurty said. “Then the kind of thing that the students offer to the community members in terms of their interest in collaborating and just bringing together both kinds of voices. The younger voices that are more flexible and the older voices that are more mature. And putting that all together has been the thing that really is good for everybody.”
Jon Hurty will lead Handel's Messiah on Sunday, February 22, in Augustana College's Centennial Hall (3703 Seventh Avenue, Rock Island IL). Admission to the 3 p.m. concert event is $23 for the general public, $18 for senior citizens, $11 for faculty and staff, $5 for children and students. For more information and tickets, call (309)794-7306 and visit Augustana.edu/arts/ticket-office.
