Maurice Boyer is the artistic director of Heritage Chorale. He is assistant professor of music at Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois, where he directs the Concordia University Chamber Orchestra and Schola Cantorum. He is also choir director at First Saint Paul's Lutheran Church in Chicago.
Boyer is founder and music director of the Maryland Sinfonietta and the Ashgrove Ensemble. He has been chorus master of the New Jersey State Opera and has served as music director in several churches. Also a singer, he is a member of Fuma Sacra, one of the East Coast's leading vocal ensembles specializing in Renaissance and Baroque music, and the Carmel Bach Festival Chorale.
In 2007, Boyer was invited to participate in the second International Academy of Orchestral Conducting in Paris and Vendome, France. There he worked with Kenneth Kiesler of the University of Michigan and conducted the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris (EOP), France's leading chamber orchestra, in rehearsal and performance. In response to Boyer's performance at the academy, internationally renowned conductor John Nelson, music director of the EOP, invited him to be his assistant conductor for three series of concerts in spring 2008: in France (for Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Notre Dame Cathedral) and in the United States (for the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston and at Wheaton College).
Currently a DMA candidate in orchestral conducting at the University of Maryland, College Park, Boyer holds a master's degree in choral conducting and a bachelor's degree in sacred music from Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton, New Jersey. His principal conducting teachers have been James Ross, Kenneth Kiesler, Joseph Flummerfelt, and Andrew Megill. He has also studied theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Although born in the United States, Boyer began his musical training (piano, voice, and solfege) in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he lived until the age of 18.
Tehra Hiolski has served as accompanist for Heritage Chorale since 1990. She teaches general music part time in Oak Park's elementary school district, acccompanies many area musicians in both recital and competition, and serves as organist and pianist at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Oak Park. She taught piano privately for 16 years and has also worked with the Merit music program in Chicago. A native of Oak Park, she received her degree in music education from Michigan State University.
