Juli Wood, Kim Zick and Robin Pluer
Juli Wood, Kim Zick and Robin Pluer
Though most of the Milwaukee Jazz Institute's more visible musicians are male, things are changing. The aggregation understands its “motherlode” roots as a strong independent music organization, growing notably from the city's modern history of women musicians. Those include singers Jesse Hauck, Penny Goodwin, Adekola Adedapo, Donna Woodall, Marcya Daneille, and vocalist-accordionist Robin Pluer. There's also pianists Lynn Arriale, Martha Artis, pianist-organist Beverly Pitts, violinist Sonya Robinson, the duo Mrs. Fun, and saxophonist Juli Wood, among others. The Institute's co-founder and managing director is also a woman, Erin Davis.
Marilyn "Pat" Petry
Marilyn "Pat" Petry
Then there was one Marilyn “Pat” Petry, a patron extraordinaire during the faculty’s heyday in the 1980s, when a number of that jazz degree program’s students emerged with national reputations, including Arriale, multiple Grammy-winner Brian Lynch, David Hazeltine, Gerald Cannon, Carl Allen and others.
So, time has come to honor that ongoing legacy during Women’s History month in Milwaukee. The Institute has founded a jazz music scholarship in Petry’s name, and will present the Pat Petry Celebration Concert, 3-6 p.m. Sunday, March 27 in the Jan Serr Studio, one of the city’s newest event venues, in the Kenilworth Square building at 2155 N. Prospect Avenue.
The concert will include members of the all-star jazz sextet We Six: trumpeter Eric Jacobson, pianist Mark Davis, guitarist Paul Silbergleit, and drummer Dave Bayles. Other featured performers include vocalists Adekola Adedapo, Robin Pluer and Marcya Daneille, bassist Clay Schaub, saxophonist Juli Wood, Mrs. Fun (keyboardist-vocalist Connie Grauer and drummer Kim Zick) and drummer Bob Ellicson’s trio.
Then, on Monday, March 28, the Institute aims for a broader educational celebration as guitarist and jazz historian Silbergleit hosts an online program Women in Jazz: Keys & Frets. This will investigate women jazz keyboardists and guitarists in jazz history.
Her Legacy
None of this would’ve happened but for the legacy left by Petry, a woman who advocated mightily for the jazz art form and, in her distinctive way, might be compared to Lorraine Gordon of Village Vanguard fame or Pannonica de Koengiswarter, Thelonious Monk’s longtime patron.
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She grew up in Menomonee Falls, married and raised three sons on a dairy farm and in the 1970s began travel industry work, which allowed her to travel to favorite cities, New York, Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New Orleans, while deeply cultivating her appreciation of jazz, according to her son, Daniel Petry, a scholarship organizer.
From the 1980s until 2022, Pat Petry became a fixture at Milwaukee’s jazz clubs. In the crucial 1980s, she friended the jazz faculty and students of the Conservatory, including Berkeley Fudge, Manty Ellis, David Hazeltine, Brian Lynch, Mark Davis, Juli Wood, Adekola Adedapo, Dave Bayles, Paul Silbergleit and many others. As a travel consultant, she arranged trips for Brian Lynch to and from New York and around the United States. She also worked with Juli Wood on her many trips to Denmark, Sweden and Norway in the late 1980s and 1990s.
In the 1980s and ‘90s, Pat shared a weekend apartment in New York and regularly attended theatre, then haunted jazz clubs at night, rubbing shoulders with many jazz legends. Her other passion included women’s rights as a volunteer for many organizations, including Sojourner Peace Center.
“Thus, the Pat Petry Jazz Scholarship was established by family and friends as a tribute to Pat’s passions for jazz, young women and education,” Dan Petry says.
