Heartland Sings sending founder out on right note
On Sunday, June 8, Heartland Sings present A Choral Testament: Celebrating the Legacy of Founder Maestro Robert Nance, marking 28 years of the group.
That night at Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Auer Performance Hall, there will be 40 professional singers, a 40-piece professional orchestra, and a veritable multitude of guests from throughout the history of this unique group.
Tickets for this special event are listed as “pay what you can,” with a suggested donation of $35.
The singers, from age 18 through their 60s, represent Heartland’s history. Several alumni are coming from as far as Colorado and Montana to perform.
They’re marking a milestone, and while Robert Nance’s name is on the bill, he told me, “It’s not about the me. It’s about the we.”
Singer Eric Miller added, “Yes, there are some things in there that have specific meaning to Bob and Heartland as an organization, but it’s really to celebrate music, and choral music, in Fort Wayne.”
Passing of torch
Heartland Sings have chosen a program of worshipful contemporary sacred music for this concert, although they will open with a more secular classical piece, Dirait-on by Morten Lauridsen, and an ode to choral singing, “Gloria Fanfare” by Jeffrey Ames.
In a more intimate, sacred sense, they’ll perform the Shaker song “Not One Sparrow,” and two church anthems composed by Nance, his setting of “The Lord Is My Shepherd” and “Seeking Peace (Jacob’s Ladder).”
The showpiece will be the 40-minute masterwork Lux Aeterna by Lauridsen. That means “Eternal Light,” and the text is from the Requiem Mass. It’s been chosen by incoming artistic director Natalie Young as a theme for their forthcoming 2025-26 season: bringing the light of God to the world.
The concert concludes with the gospel anthem “Use Me, Lord,” by Byron J. Smith, and “The Promise of Living,” from Aaron Copland’s opera The Tender Land. It’s going to be an epic closer.
Heartland and the orchestra will be joined on stage by scores of singers from local church choirs, university choirs, the Fort Wayne Children’s Choir, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Chorus, and others who have sung with them before.
No retirement
So what’s the occasion, exactly?
“I’m not retiring from anything,” Nance said.
Nance will now be “emeritus.” He’s planning for the future by promoting two long-serving younger members.
While vocal artist Young will be the artistic director, Miller will be the group’s president.
Nance is keeping his part-time position as the beloved music director at Plymouth Congregational Church.
“It’s a difficult question to get your head around 28 years of what Bob has done in Fort Wayne,” Miller said. “The quintessential, hardworking, freelancing go-everywhere musician is the best way to describe Bob and what he’s done for the last 28 years to make music in the town. Wherever you go in the music world in Fort Wayne, people know Bob and have worked with Bob and have seen that.”
In October, then-Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb gave Nance the honorific title of Sagamore of the Wabash, an award to those who have rendered distinguished service to the state and its heritage.
‘The justice issue’
Nance has been making music in Fort Wayne for 35 years.
He arrived in 1990 to be a church music director. Around 1997 he took over an existing volunteer group called Opus 18 and rebuilt it into Heartland Sings.
I’ve covered Heartland a lot on these pages, and I’ve always struggled to explain just what this group is and how unique they are. In speaking with Nance and Miller, I found that they find it challenging as well.
It’s to rectify what Nance calls “the justice issue.”
As succinctly as I can describe it, the problem is this. In the music business, singers, even those who are highly accomplished and have advanced university degrees, don’t get the basic respect instrumental musicians do. An established symphony orchestra is a residential group of full-time salaried musicians. In contrast, singers in musical theater, opera, and the few professional choirs in the world are almost always paid part-time as independent contractors. They have to try to keep a second job or adopt a nomadic lifestyle, hopping from city to city, living out of a suitcase.
Nance set out to build an alternative model in Fort Wayne.
Over the years he’s become a shrewd entrepreneur. Today, Heartland provides a core staff of vocal artists with full-time salaried jobs with benefits while they perform throughout the community and teach in Heartland’s music school. In concerts, Heartland augments the core staff with part-time singers who are paid comparable wages to what instrumental musicians command.
Advocate for vocalists
Nance and Miller assert there is no other musical group like Heartland in this country. The only analogue would be those few singing groups in the elite ensembles in the U.S. military.
Nance tells the story of hearing our late Mayor Tom Henry speak at a Rotary Club meeting around 2012. Henry boasted about how easy it is to promote Fort Wayne to new business investment because of specific strengths, including the arts.
Nance related to me what he said to challenge Henry afterwards: “Oh, I see, we’re bringing new business to Fort Wayne because of all the arts, but yet anybody who claims to be a full-time career-focused artist in the city of Fort Wayne, by and large live at the poverty line.
“And that was proven by the Census,” Nance said.
While advocating for Fort Wayne’s artists, Nance renewed his resolve to expand Heartland Sings’ teaching mission. Professional singers can serve the community by teaching the love of amateur music.
“I think it has everything to do with advocating for music and art’s value,” Nance said. “And specifically the vocal arts, because everybody can do it. You don’t have to master a major skill to tap into the benefits of singing. But if you choose to do that, the enhancement to your life is exponentially greater. And these are time-tested and scientifically supported statements. This is not just my feeling or our inherent experiences with singing. These have been studied.
“And so as we have grown, we have become more and more of an advocate. At least I have and worked very hard to challenge folks.”
