BY LARRY NAGER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Every May and June, as the school year winds down, the Rev. John Heim of Xavier University gets busy with his youngest charges.
REV. HEIM BIO
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![[heim]](/editions/1998/10/25/heim_180x140.jpg)
(Steven M. Herppich photo)
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Occupation: Director of the Xavier Piano & Guitar Series and the XU Parents Club.
Birth date and place: March 28, 1934, Springfield, Ohio.
Lives: North Avondale, in a 20-member Jesuit community he administrates.
Education: Springfield Catholic Central High School, class of 1952. He entered the Jesuit order the same year, attending Milford Novitiate (1952-1956). Studied biology and philosophy at Spring Hill College, Mobile, Ala. (1956-1959). Taught English at Loyola Academy, Wilmette, Ill. (1959-1962). Studied theology at West Baden College, West Baden, Ind. (1962-63). Completed theology studies at Bellarmine School of Theology in North Aurora, Ill., where he was ordained in 1965.
Family: A sister, Connie Reed, raises quarter horses and thoroughbreds with her husband, Phil, on a farm in Catawba, Ohio, near Springfield; a brother, Allan, is a former Cincinnati Enquirer sports editor and public relations director for the Bengals. His late mother Eleanor was a music teacher. He remembers his late father Paul as a dyed-in-the-Irish sports fan. "He broke into tears at the Notre Dame fight song."
Local claim to fame: Founded the Xavier Music Series in 1976, starting with classical music. He added the jazz series in 1980, and runs the entire program to this day.
Most memorable Xavier Series experience: "The concerts with Teddy Wilson (the pianist who broke the jazz color line in the late '30s with Benny Goodman's band) and the conversations I had with him. He talked about his personal involvement in changing the racial restrictions of who could play with whom and when; the living arrangements, all the petty prejudices of the time. And for the love of music, he was able to endure all of that and keep a smile on his face and a good sound in his music."
Hobbies: Raising Samia Cecropia moths, fishing, reading, traveling.
Most proud of: "I don't know that I'm really proud of anything. I just go from concert to concert and try to meet the (artists') planes and be on time. I don't think I could have done any of it without the help of the university."
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Each day, he'll spend about half an hour in his room feeding them apple leaves and checking for eggs.
"You just make sure the adults mate, then gather the eggs from the adults," Father Heim explains.
The Jesuit priest has been raising moths for most of his 64 years. His favorite is the colorful Samia Cecropia.
"I am a preservationist," he says, sitting behind his desk in a cramped office in one of the two homes on the Xavier campus that serve as alumni buildings.
"I think they're a beautiful thing, something that shouldn't be let go or disregarded or forgotten about. And I think the same thing about music."
It's music, not moths, that has earned Father Heim a national reputation. He has helped preserve jazz and classical music in a virtual one-man campaign that began in 1976 with his founding of Xavier's classical piano series. He later added classical guitar concerts and, in 1980, jazz, in what has become the area's longest-running jazz concert series.
"Some friends said to me, "You know, you're really not being fair. As long as you're doing this for the classical people you ought to at least do it for jazz.' That's how we got into the jazz," he says.
It made sense, he thought. Jazz was a music of high artistic quality; it had the potential of broadening the audience; and it should be more profitable than classical.
"I thought the jazz would be a good thing and pay its own way and maybe even a little more. But was I wrong," he says with a grim chuckle. It hasn't been profitable, but Father Heim is a man used to making that leap of faith.
A compact, youthful-looking man, he has persevered in the face of public apathy, continuing to present quality concerts at bargain prices. His long tenure with the series has made it one of the most respected in the country.
"He's kind of the standard bearer when it comes to presenting jazz piano," says Dave Barber, coordinator for the jazz concert series presented by CityFolk in Dayton, Ohio.
At the same time he has presented some of the top names in jazz, Father Heim is also admired for his willingness to put lesser-known, but no less worthy, musicians on the stage of the University Center Theatre.
"He's been this outpost for emerging musicians. To be that committed to people who aren't household names, that says something for the integrity of the series," Mr. Barber says, adding with a laugh that being a priest probably helps. "A vow of poverty comes in handy when you're a jazz promoter."
Early appreciation
Born and reared in Springfield, Ohio, by Paul and Eleanor Heim, Father Heim always loved music, but was never particularly musical. His mother was the local piano teacher and church organist.
"She tried to teach me, and it wouldn't work, so she sent me to the sisters at school. And I'd take my 50 cents there every Wednesday and get my piano lesson for a half an hour. That really didn't take either. But I always did have some kind of nice ear for music, to enjoy it."
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LIVE AT XAVIER
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All events in the Xavier University Piano and Guitar Series are held on Sundays in the Xavier University Center Theatre.
Jazz piano: Next Sunday, Donald Brown; Jan. 10, Aaron Goldberg; April 11, John Bunch.
Jazz guitar: Feb. 28, Bucky Pizzarelli; March 14, Mark Elf.
Classical piano: Today, Fazil Say; Nov. 8 and 15, Kemal Gekic; Jan. 17, Edward Auer; Jan. 31, Ory Shihor; Feb. 7, Vaclav Macha; March 21, Janina Fialkowska; April 18, Jeffrey Biegel.
Classical guitar: Jan. 3, William Kanengiser; March 7, Paul O'Dette.
Classical concerts are held at 2:30 p.m.; jazz concerts at 7:30 p.m. Single tickets for classical piano concerts are $15 and $17; classical guitar, $11. All jazz concerts are $14.
All concerts are free with any student ID.
Information: 745-3161 or (800) 344-4698, Ext. 3161
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As a teacher in the Chicago area in the late '50s and early '60s, he became a regular at classical concerts at Orchestra Hall. There, he says, he developed a taste for lesser-known artists, noting that the best musicians were not always the ones with the biggest names.
It's a lesson he would put to use after starting his own series years later. The immediate inspiration for the Xavier concerts came in the mid-'70s during a particularly nerve-wracking winter's drive home from Oxford after a concert at Miami University.
"On the way back, when I was negotiating the ruts in the road with the ice, I said, "Why should I be coming up here under these conditions when I've got a theater right next to where I live?' "
Warming up
At the time, Father Heim was the freshmen men's chaplain at Brockman Hall. In 1976, with a budget of $3,000, he presented his first series of six classical piano concerts.
That budget unfortunately didn't include utilities.
"It was so cold that first or second winter that the city was running out of coal, and they came around and turned down the temperature in the buildings," he recalls. "So we moved the concert to Bellarmine Chapel after the 7:30 Mass over there, because there was still some body heat in there."
Things have gotten a little better and a little warmer since then, as year after year, Father Heim presents some of the world's finest jazz musicians. Along with the support of the school, assistance has come from such longtime sponsors as Baldwin Piano and individual patrons.
Classical concerts are regularly found on the city's calendar, but national jazz acts remain rare. For many of the past 18 years, Xavier's concerts have often been the only shows bringing national jazz headliners to the city.
Famous friends
Consider this list: guitarists Herb Ellis, Charlie Byrd, Barney Kessel, Howard Roberts, Joe Pass, Bucky Pizzarelli, Tal Farlow, Emily Remler and George VanEps; pianists Marian McPartland, Teddy Wilson, McCoy Tyner, James Williams, Mulgrew Miller, Harold Mabern, Tommy Flanagan, JoAnne Brackeen, Max Morath, Dick Hyman, Ahmad Jamal and Dave McKenna.
It's an impressive collection of some of the best jazz musicians of the second half of the 20th century, and all have played the Xavier series, some of them as often as four times.
One of those four-concert veterans is James Williams, a critically acclaimed, Memphis-born, New York-based jazz pianist who first performed on the series in 1982.
"This is almost a unique series," Mr. Williams says. "Especially including both classical and jazz. It speaks volumes that he's able to do this practically single-handedly. That makes it very personal. He can call up the artists themselves."
They're glad to come, Mr. Williams adds. Most jazz musicians make their livings in endless one-nighters, usually playing smoky bars amid the backdrop of conversation and tinkling glasses.
They flock to Father Heim's concerts, the pianist says, "for the opportunity to play in that setting, the hall, the intimacy. It's almost as if you're playing a private function among friends. Everything is totally relaxed, there's no pressure."
Mr. Williams says the musicians have nicknamed him "Earl "Fatha' Heim." It's a respectful joke, a pun on the late jazz piano great "Earl "Fatha' Hines."
Standing on principle
The series remains a personal crusade for Father Heim, an attempt to preserve something of value that would otherwise be lost in today's profit-driven music business.
"I feel very bad that modern music has gotten into the state that it has let itself get into," Father Heim explains in a reassuringly calm voice. "People with real talent feel that they're forced to compose music that is ugly. I mean, they have the talent -- why can't they come up with some chords that strike some beautiful thoughts in people's minds?
"I like to see something beautiful created. And while the tunes that are played at a jazz concert are tunes played at a jazz concert, they're played each time from a different angle, a different twist. It's a re-creation of beauty, the same beauty in a different way, like the jewel that reflects the light."
Through the years, music has become an important part of his ministry.
"I think it's a religious experience. You see through these things the beauty in the world that's created for us by the Lord. I think it's our duty as intelligent beings to look and search for these kind of things that refresh us and inspire us and renew us."
Spreading the word
Presenting jazz in Greater Cincinnati comes with its own special set of trials. More often than not, crowds are small. On Sept. 13, jazz guitarist Henry Johnson played to 40 or so jazz fans, barely one-tenth capacity of the 400-seat University Center Theatre. That's despite a $14 ticket that included a post-concert artist reception with refreshments.
Father Heim tries to get the word out, but even as his annual budget has risen to around $40,000, that money pays for talent, not advertising. "I think it's one of Cincinnati's best-kept secrets, though it seems like we've got too many of those," says Dale Rabiner, president of J Curve, the new Cincinnati-based jazz record label. "You're able to get a great seat in an auditorium and spend a Sunday evening listening to some great music."
Mr. Rabiner credits Father Heim's series with giving him an appreciation for solo instrumentation. A longtime supporter of the series, he's making his support public with the release of the new local jazz compilation, J Curve Cincinnati Jazz Collection Vol. 1. J Curve will donate a percentage of sales to the series.
Universal harmony
The musicians who perform at Xavier appreciate Cincinnati's financial commitment to the series, but what they'd really like to see is more seats filled.
"I just wish the community would support the series," Mr. Williams says. "Because it's been there so long it's totally taken for granted. But believe me, if Father Heim was to stop doing the series, Cincinnati and Xavier would suffer greatly."
A man of quiet determination, Father Heim has no plans to stop. In his religious beliefs, he is used to standing in opposition to the mainstream in a society that has legalized abortion and tolerates adultery. He's had lots of practice holding on to his beliefs. He continues to have faith in good music, accepting the frustrations of booking artists he believes in, only to wind up presenting them in a near-empty auditorium.
"Somebody like Henry Johnson, he's somebody who makes me feel really good about the guitar," he says. "I think he's a consummate artist in that way. His music really takes hold of me; he's at the service of the music. He wants the people not to enjoy him, but to enjoy what he can do for them with this music."
"At the service of the music" -- a phrase that also fits Father Heim and his unflagging dedication. He's a man who has found music in the workings of the world, and has discovered a world within the music.
And whether presenting jazz or raising moths, Father Heim is aware of the creative force behind it all.
"Everything that is around us is a form of music," he explains. "There's a harmony in the universe. For instance, when I see a symphony orchestra at work or I see a group of jazz musicians, it's the same concept -- people learning to work things out together.
"And something good happens from what each individual does, (creating something) . . . beautiful. And you kind of wish that this is the way the world would work more often."
![[heim]](/editions/1998/10/25/heim_500x389.jpg)