Tower of Sound

In her brown slacks and worn sneakers she looks like a gym instructor. The 170 people gathered before her rise and begin stretching. Then they start rubbing and kneading one another's necks and shoulders. As it turns out, the main thing on their minds is not physical fitness but singing. The woman signals with her right hand. Out comes a huge roar: "Ming ... mo!" A pause, another signal. "Ming mong!" And so it goes, now higher in pitch, now lower: "Ming mang," "May me may," "Me mo me."

That was Choral Director Margaret Hillis, 54, warming up the Chicago Symphony Chorus before putting the final rehearsal polish on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The Ninth is one of her specialties, but at this summer's Ravinia Festival, she has been conducting all manner of choral works--Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, and this past weekend a potpourri of Lerner and Loewe. Although Hillis is also music director of the nearby Elgin Symphony Orchestra, she might be called an unsung heroine: her principal job is to ready her chorus for other maestros. She founded her group 19 years ago at Fritz Reiner's invitation. Today the Hillis sound--vibrant, precise, enormous--has become an indispensable element of the famed Solti sound, notably at events like Sir Georg's luminous concert version of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. Says Solti: "Working with her and that chorus is one of the major joys of my life."

Ideally, Hillis would like a chorus of Kirsten Flagstads. Says she: "I still have the sound of Flagstad in my ear. Her pianissimo was right out of the rafters. When she opened up, she never sounded loud, but she created somehow a tower of sound." Actually, about 100 members of her chorus have voices of professional solo caliber. But even they earn only about $2,000 per year--the rest get nothing--and most of the singers have full-time jobs elsewhere, so it is up to Hillis to keep drilling them. She is just as demanding as Reiner or Solti, although a bit less overwhelming. Her worst insult: "You sound like a church choir."

Tricky Business. Rehearsing her chorus, Hillis is both morale builder and teacher. At one point in the Ninth she holds her palm out as if to ward off the sound. "Piano. Piano. You know that young man will hold that note forever," she says, referring to James Levine, 33, music director of the Met, who is to conduct the full symphony. "I expect you to be as young as he is." A few measures later she is talking about one of the chorus' celebrated pianissimos. "Sopranos, listen to the tenors and just place the sparkling star gently above their sound. It should have a misterioso quality, just whisper. Shh, shh." Balancing a chorus of 170 is a tricky business, no less so when it turns to popular music. "This song has got to bounce, it's got to bubble!" she burst out last week during a rehearsal of The Night They Invented Champagne, from Gigi. "Why don't you smile? Your singing is rather heavy here. Just rela-a-ax."

Hillis, who has never married, says that when she was young she never thought that "being a woman would make a difference [in her career], because I'd always done everything I wanted." Her father Glen was a lawyer and businessman in Kokomo, Ind.; her mother Bernice, an amateur musician. The most illustrious member of the family was Bernice's father, Elwood Haynes, who designed one of the first successful automobiles and discovered stainless steel in 1911.

Margaret started piano lessons at age five, and by eight knew that she wanted to become a conductor. She set about mastering a wide variety of orchestral instruments; she tooted the baritone horn in her high school band and played the double bass in the orchestra at Indiana University. She was also a junior golf champion and a wartime civilian flying instructor for the Navy. When she graduated from college in 1947, one of her teachers warned her that orchestra conducting was a male preserve, and so she went to the Juilliard School to study choral conducting with Robert Shaw, now music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Shaw soon named her assistant conductor of his Collegiate Chorale. In 1952 Hillis made her professional conducting debut leading her own chorus. Jobs followed with New York City, Santa Fe and NBC operas, and the Cleveland Orchestra.

When Levine finished the concert at Ravinia, the biggest ovation was for Hillis' chorus, and Levine ushered her onstage. Said he later: "I adore that chorus." In Chicago they also adore the woman who built it.

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