Joyce Turner Hilkevitch started Mostly Music in the early 1970s as a way to share her interest in chamber music and its promising young performers with audiences in private homes, small Chicago venues, area schools and eventually even nursing homes.
In the 28 years Hilkevitch ran the program, she produced over 700 concerts, an accomplishment recognized by the Illinois General Assembly following her 2001 retirement. Among the young musicians and groups she brought to a wider audience, perhaps the best known is the Vermeer Quartet.
“She did it for the love of music and for wanting to offer music to other people,” said author Heather Refetoff, who met Hilkevitch after moving to Hyde Park, Refetoff was often enlisted to help with Mostly Music matters. In that she had lots of company.
“That was part of her organizing ability, to draw you into whatever her initiative of the moment was and make you an offer you could not refuse,” said Jamie Kalven, a Chicago writer and human rights activist who grew up friends with one of Hilkevitch’s sons. She could be considered formidable, he said, “in a sort of neighborly way.”
Hilkevitch, 97, died of natural causes April 19 at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center in Chicago, according to her son, David Turner. She had lived on Chicago’s South Side since the mid-1950s, first in the Kenwood neighborhood and then in Hyde Park, including Montgomery Place, where she moved in 2004.
She was born Joyce Brown in New York City and grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood. She graduated from Hunter College in New York in 1942. Refetoff said Hilkevitch was part of a generation of women inspired to community service by Eleanor Roosevelt, whom she interviewed while on the student newspaper at Hunter.
During World War II, she worked in San Francisco as a journalist for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Dispatch and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1943, she married Jonathan Turner, who during the war was stationed in the Pacific with the Army.
In 1946, the couple moved to Chicago, where Turner joined his family’s business, Turner Manufacturing Co., a large producer of framed art and wall accessories. Turner died in 1971. She later married Dr. Aaron Hilkevitch, who died in 2008.
With her children launched by the late 1950s, Hilkevitch enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Chicago, getting a master’s degree in social work in 1961. She later held posts in public health with Lake County and the city of Chicago, served with an Illinois commission on women’s issues and worked as a social worker at Hull House, according to family members. She also worked with Urban Gateways to help provide arts programming for young people.
In 1973, she founded Mostly Music.
“She did a lot for young artists she could discover and promote,” said Sandra Tice, a friend who helped with the program. “Sunday concerts in peoples’ homes, music in the schools, concerts for underprivileged children.”
Hilkevitch served as the program’s producer, advertising manager, fundraiser and overall promoter.
David Turner said volunteer help, rented chairs and music stands, and loyal subscribers overcame any lack of organization.
“It was kind of a miracle to see it all unfold,” said Turner, who more than once was part of the chair-arranging crew.
She retired from the organization in 2001.
“She brought a unique sort of energy to civic and cultural activity at the community level,” said Kalven, executive director of the Chicago-based Invisible Institute. Of her ability to draw others in he said, “there was a sort of air and aura of fun and possibility that she carried.”
She also is survived by daughter Susan Turner Jones; stepdaughters Margaret Stein, Victoria Hilkevitch and Barbara Ida; 12 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her sons Carl, who died in 1987, and Peter Turner, who died in 2006.
A memorial service is set for 3 p.m. June 30 at KAM Isaiah Israel, 1100 E. Hyde Park Blvd., Chicago.
Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter.