John Nicholas Paul Vitale

John Nicholas Paul Vitale passed away quietly in his sleep on March 12, 2018. John was a musician, band leader, sales executive, pro audio professional, and teacher who touched the lives of thousands over the course of a memorable sixty-three years on Earth.  John Vitale was born on November 18, 1954 in Chicago, Illinois; the fifth of six children in a close-knit Italian-German family. Values of kindness, honesty, and devotion to family were instilled at an early age, values that John would carry his entire life and later pass onto his children.   John was also instilled with a love of music from the very beginning. His father Vito, a classical pianist, gave him piano lessons in early childhood, but it was the guitar that would eventually capture John’s soul. In 1971, at the tender age of fifteen, John’s life was transformed when he attended a concert of the great classical guitar master, Andres Segovia. The young man was utterly captivated, and his interest in the guitar graduated from jamming out on barre chords to a serious study of the instrument and respect for the art of performance.This devotion would eventually lead John to earn a degree in Classical Guitar Performance from Roosevelt University. John soon became an established live and studio musician, performing in numerous ensembles in Chicago and Los Angeles, including becoming musical director of Chicago’s Free Street Theater.   As passionate as John was about music, it wasn’t until 1984 that he met the real love of his life. John first encountered Susan Witherington when she walked into the Sound Post, a music store where he was working at the time. John was immediately transfixed; the two of them soon began dating and were eventually married in 1988. Like so much of John’s life this partnership had musical roots. Susan was an accomplished singer/piano player and the two of them combined their talents to form the Vitale Group, a five-piece band that performed at weddings, corporate events, and other gigs throughout the Chicagoland area.  In the early 90s, with the birth of the couple’s first two children Nick and Amanda, John moved into the world of pro audio retail, utilizing the skills in salesmanship and management that he’d developed over a decade and a half as a musician and bandleader. He worked first as National Sales Director at Bag End Modular Sound Systems and was later recruited to Full Compass Systems, Ltd., which brought him to Madison, WI. In both of these ventures John achieved consistent sales growth and was introduced to hundreds of industry professionals around the country who remembered his jovial smile and irrepressible congeniality long afterward.  After his gig at Full Compass ended John began to turn more and more of his energy toward teaching guitar. Working out of the studios of Heid Music in Madison, John taught dozens of students from children aged six to men in their sixties, sharing with each of them the passion for the instrument he loved so dearly. Above all what defined John Vitale, beyond his talent for guitar, his fearless charisma, and his preternatural salesmanship, was his enormous heart. John’s sense of kindness, love and empathy knew no bounds. He had a gift for making you feel that you were the most important thing in the world to him, and no one who ever interacted with John Vitale, no matter how briefly, left feeling anything but better for it.   On October 27, 2017, John’s wife Susan unexpectedly passed away in her sleep. John was understandably devastated and the enormous grief challenged him as nothing else had. Nevertheless, John was determined to remain strong for his family, and continued to work, teach, and play music full time for the next four months. In the end, however, the struggle was too much to bear and John too passed quietly in his sleep, his seemingly indefatigable heart finally broken.   John is survived by his children Nicholas, Amanda and Daniel Vitale; his father, Vito Vitale; sister, Thea Vitale(Tom) Harrison; brothers, Onofrio Vitale, Thomas (Dawn)Vitale, and Vito(Mary) Vitale; parents-in-law, Paul and Gay Witherington; as well as many other relatives, students, and hundreds of friends.  A memorial gathering for John is being held on Saturday, April 7, 2018, from 2:00 pm until 6:00 pm at the Fox Run Golf Links, 333 Plum Grove Rd, Elk Grove Village, IL. A separate musical tribute and memorial will be held on Saturday, April 28th from Noon until 5:00 pm at Charlie’s Restaurant, 113 S. Main St., Oregon, WI.  All who were touched by John’s life are welcome to attend. In Lieu of flowers, donations to his surviving children for home, legal and funeral expenses are accepted and appreciated https://www.gofundme.com/vitale-children-support-fund