Violinist Eliot Heaton joined The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2024. He previously served as concertmaster of the Detroit Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, and the Saginaw Bay Symphony. He was also guest concertmaster with the Chautauqua, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Fort Wayne, and Terre Haute symphonies and has played in the sections of the Detroit and Pittsburgh symphonies.
Mr. Heaton has appeared as a soloist with a number of orchestras throughout the Midwest, performing concertos by Tchaikovsky, Korngold, Bruch, Khachaturian, Bach, Stravinsky, and Mozart. He is also an enthusiastic proponent of new music, an interest that began with Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble and continued with the Indiana New Music Ensemble and New Music Detroit.
Mr. Heaton was a double major at Oberlin College and Conservatory, earning degrees in history and violin performance while also competing on the tennis team. He later received his Master of Music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with a minor in jazz studies. His primary violin teachers included Marilyn McDonald, Kevork Mardirossian, Linda Case, and Jan Butler. When he’s not playing the violin, Mr. Heaton enjoys reading, tennis, and spending time with his wife and their two cats. He plays a 2019 Joseph Curtin violin.
Photo by PD Rearick