There is still time to book your summer concert!
We’ve made a couple changes to the South Milwaukee Music Parents Association auction to get the bidding going. Opening bid is now $250 for each of three concerts — Apollo Jazz, Jazz Combo and a performance from music teacher Aimee Swanson.
Auction link: https://www.32auctions.com/SMNashvilleTrip
Bid early and bid often. Buy it now for $1,000. All proceeds will help get South Milwaukee students to Nashville! The auction closes on Monday, August 12.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on the auction …
While money has already been raised for the trip, the group is looking to raise more funds to ensure more students who might not be able to afford the trip have an opportunity to go. “We don’t want any student to feel like ‘well I can’t go because I can’t afford it.’ So we’re a doing a lot of different fundraising things, both music parents and the kids doing their own fundraising,” Sarah Brooks said.
Swanson said at a South Milwaukee Music Parents Association meeting earlier this year that a colleague at her former school district, Lake Geneva, also played in the Lake Geneva Symphony Orchestra. She said her colleague asked her if she could donate voice lessons or playing the piano. She had played private concerts in the past, such as during cocktail hour at a wedding and a Christmas concert at someone’s home, that people bid on as part of silent auctions.
When asked by Erik Brooks, former South Milwaukee mayor and Sarah Brooks’ husband, if she’d be willing to play a private concert, Swanson said she would. Then the idea came up of having the Apollo Jazz or the South Milwaukee High School Jazz Combo perform outdoor concerts on porch steps, which came from a discussion about porch concerts happening during the pandemic. Swanson credited Erik Brooks for taking the ideas and bringing them together.
Erik Brooks said the idea is a continuation of momentum gained after a successful gala event called “Jazz and More” that was held in April at the Bucyrus Club in South Milwaukee that he said raised over $7,000. “For that donation, you’ll get a really special evening in your backyard or on your front porch or probably in your family room if you really wanted to. It’s an opportunity for the kids to show off what they can do and raise money for their trip to Nashville,” Erik Brooks said.
The trip to Nashville will include stops at the National Museum of African American Music, where choir students will possibly perform; the Grand Ole Opry, where the group will do an outdoor performance, take a backstage tour and watch a show; Fisk University, for a tour and choir clinic; Vanderbilt University, for a band and orchestra clinic; and Centennial Park. Fisk University is home of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which performs spirituals “originally sung by slaves prior to the Civil War,” according to the singing group’s website. The group will also get to see the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and possibly tour RCA Studio B there, tour the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, go on a walking ghost tour of Nashville, take line dancing lessons and possibly tour Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, the home of the seventh U.S. president.
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