Global artists close to home

The Brown County Civic Music Association, in partnership with the Weidner Center, has announced a rebrand of its subscription concert series — a step the organization hopes will enable it to continue presenting national and international musicians to the community as it has for nearly 100 years amidst changing market conditions.

“There is much more competition than there was in 1927 for the entertainment dollar and the volunteer base is dwindling…” said Laura Fisher-Bonvallet, president of the Brown County Civic Music Association. “With all of that, we started to look at how we can make this organization viable into the next century. We decided that with this magnificent hall here at the Weidner Center, we would be able to leverage their resources to support talent acquisition, production and promotion and to ensure the high quality of concert experience that all of [our attendees] have come to expect.”

And with the new partnership came the need for a new name for the concert series — Virtuosi Live.

“We decided we also need a new identity…” Fisher-Bonvallet said. “In order to make us more visible in the community and to stand out on our own, we decided to change our name… This name better reflects who we are and what we do, and that is that we present global artists close to home.”

This partnership is the latest in a series of carefully planned partnerships made by the Weidner Center in recent years to round out their programming and expand their community impact.

“During COVID, I was tasked with coming up with a re-operalization of the Weidner and there were a few different tenets that came out of that plan — one of them was ‘nothing without a partner,’” Strickland said. “I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but what I did know was that I had observed in my first few years here that when we were partnering with other organizations — other arts organizations and other civic organizations — we were more impactful. And so we set about building intentional partnerships.”

The Weidner will add Brown County Civic Music Association and the Virtuosi Live concert series to its roster of partner organizations, which includes Northeast Wisconsin Dance Organization to produce the Nutcracker, the Weidner Philharmonic, local Latino leaders to put on Estamos Aqui, the Birder Chorale for Holiday Pops and Innovation Arts for the Broadway series.

Strickland said she’s looking forward to the Weidner Center becoming home to the Virtuosi Live concert series and to all those who attend it.

“I’m most looking forward to more people who love arts and culture feeling as if the Weidner is their home for the performing arts,” Strickland said. “That’s always been our goal — to restore a sense for those who are passionate about the performing arts that this is their home for that. Previously, the series was held at a lot of different venues across the region, so I’m glad for people to be here repeatedly and have that level of comfort and ownership over the space.”

That feeling of home is also a welcome change for leaders at the Brown County Civic Music Association, who are looking forward to having a consistent performance space after several seasons of putting on concerts wherever a venue was available.

“We’ve had to kind of scramble to find places and now we’ve settled at the Weidner,” Fisher-Bonvallet said. “We’re so happy that we’re here.”

Learn more about the upcoming concert series at bccivicmusic.org or weidnercenter.com/virtuosi-live.