Reunion concert with 200 singers

Date: September 4, 2012

By Melissa Silverberg

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL -- More than 200 singers from different generations will come together for a concert this fall that is part reunion, part tribute to the man who helped them fall in love with music all those years ago.

Jerry Swanson, now retired and in his mid-60s, was the choral director at Forest View High School in Arlington Heights from 1971 until the school closed in 1986, and at Elk Grove High School from 1986 until his retirement in 2002.

Swanson’s choral groups sang with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra more than a dozen times, won awards in state competition, performed all over the Northwest suburbs, and toured Europe every few years. Nearly a decade after he retired, more than 20 former students showed up at a Christmas concert Swanson was directing at his church last winter.

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