Stanley M Ackerman Obituary

Stanley M Ackerman attended Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, IL. View the obituary, post a memory, or share a photo about Stanley M Ackerman.

Graduation Year	Faculty
Date of Passing	Jan 11, 2013
About	Stanley M. Ackerman (BSM56), 78, Lake Forest, Ill. Jan 11. A high school music teacher and conductor, Mr. Ackerman inspired a generation of musicians and music lovers, from players at orchestras across the country to college professors and the current dean of Harvard Law School. Offered a chair in the St. Louis Symphony’s viola section, Mr. Ackerman instead decided to teach because a full-time orchestra musician would have trouble supporting a family. Mr. Ackerman joined the staff of the brand-new Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, Ill., in 1959 and seven years later moved to New Trier High School in Winnetka. He also played with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, played with and managed the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra for several years and coached at the Chicago Institute of Music. At New Trier Mr. Ackerman managed four orchestras. Instead of playing “dumbed-down arrangements,” Ackerman insisted on having his students play the full works, says Alison Fujito, a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. During her freshman year at New Trier, the orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, among other difficult pieces. “In the concert, everything came together,” Fujito says. “I was so thrilled with what I heard that I stopped playing in the middle of the piece and thought, ‘This is what I want to do, this is the career I want.’ My stand partner nudged me in the elbow and said, ‘Hey, we’re supposed to be playing right now.’” Mr. Ackerman was also known for his humor, says Fujito. Once, when listening to students enthusiastically butchering the work of Gustav Mahler, he stopped them and said, “If Mahler weren’t already dead, you’d have killed him.” Mr. Ackerman, who always dreamed of moving to Los Angeles and playing for movies and commercials, spent several years as a freelance musician in the entertainment business in California. But after a few years in Los Angeles, he returned to the North Shore and taught at schools in Waukegan, where he started a strolling strings program — a marching band of violinists and violists. He continued teaching and conducting until illness forced him to retire. At Ackerman’s memorial service in Deerfield, Ill., more than 10 of the strolling strings players from Waukegan played the music he had taught them, says Fujito. Mr. Ackerman is survived by his wife, Charlene; two sons, Bruce and Michael; and two grandchildren.