Nob Hill Gazette

Musical America 2025 Composer of the Year Is Feted From Coast to Coast in March
February 2024

When Jake Heggie was a public relations associate for San Francisco Opera in the early 1990s, he had a long-standing dream to become a composer. That vision was fulfilled in a high-profile way when the company’s then General Director Lotfi Mansouri unexpectedly asked him to compose what would become his first opera, the highly acclaimed Dead Man Walking, which premiered in 2000.

On March 27, Heggie will be in focus as Opera Parallèle fetes him — newly recognized as Musical America’s 2025 Composer of the Year and on March 7 inducted in the OPERA America Hall of Fame — in a benefit evening celebrating Parallèle’s 15th anniversary. The event will be held at The City Club of San Francisco and is aptly called In Pursuit of a Dream: A 15th Anniversary Celebration Honoring Composer Jake Heggie.

“I could never have imagined a career like this when I was working at San Francisco Opera; I was so happy with my job, being close to the opera world, but I never thought I would be in the middle of it as a composer,” Heggie recounts. “I had sort of given up on that dream, and it came back, kept tapping at me, and that fire inside kept burning. Then these opportunities and doors opened.”