Man returns home to led ESO
The Elgin Symphony Orchestra has hired a former Fox Valley resident as its new chief executive officer.
Dale J. Lonis will join the organization in July. He comes from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, where he has served as executive director.
Lonis replaces Michael Pastreich, who led the symphony through a growth period during his 12 years here. Pastreich left in October to be executive director of the Florida Orchestra in the Tampa Bay area.
Robert Hanson, the ESO's music director, hopes Lonis will also enjoy a long tenure.
"We're predicting this to be a great partnership," Hanson said.
Lonis is a graduate of West Aurora High School. He received bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois in music education and a master's in conducting from Northwestern University.
He taught in Crystal Lake and at Northwestern, where he was on the conducting faculty. He was a member of the music faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia where he founded the Fine Arts Residential College and was the coordinator of conducting and performing organizations and director of bands.
In 2000 he became the dean of the music faculty at the University of Manitoba in Canada until he left for the Winnipeg Symphony.
Under his leadership, the Winnipeg Symphony sold out at least 10 concerts this season for the first time in more than 20 years, Elgin Symphony officials said.
Lonis still conducts and, as a motivational speaker, works with teachers, youth orchestras and youth bands around the world.
He is the founder and director of the Canadian Wind Conductors Development Program and the Australian Young Conductors Program.
He has worked in Israel over the past 25 years, where he founded and conducted the Israel Wind Orchestra.
Still, with all those accolades, it was an interview over dinner that permanently cemented Hanson's interest in Lonis.
The meal was supposed to last 90 minutes, but the two of them got on so well that they didn't ask for the check until four hours after they'd sat down.
It turned out the pair share the same vision for the ESO's direction, Hanson said.
"It was so invigorating to talk to him, we just hit it off so well," Hanson said. "I think we're going to make a great team, he and I."