Sheboygan Concert Association

From its origins and inception in the 1920’s to the present, even as the organization has undergone several name changes, the ideology of the Sheboygan Concert Association has remained the same:  to provide a series of quality musical performances at an affordable price to the people of the Sheboygan area.

The 2024-2025 season will mark the 96th season during which this organization has presented live performance opportunities for the Sheboygan community under a variety of different names:  Sheboygan Civic Music Association; Sheboygan Community Concerts Association; and most recently, Sheboygan Concert Association. The anniversary season was dedicated to those who had the foresight to recognize the need for live performance in peoples’ lives as well as those who had the means and vision to create venues for those performances.

In 1927, three Sheboygan ladies, Mrs. Helen Calhoun-Witte, Miss Mabel Colton and Miss Zella Roenitz established the Sheboygan Concert Bureau which was the forerunner of the Civic Music Association. During the two short seasons of this group’s existence, the Bureau presented such prolific artists as violinist Fritz Kreisler, “Pershing’s Own” U.S. Army Band, pianist Vladimir Horowitz, the Russian Symphonic Choir and world-renowned coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, as well as many other well-known performers. Individual tickets were sold for each performance with a surcharge included which was often labeled “war taxes”. When the Civic Music Association was created in 1929, tickets were sold as an annual membership for a $5.00 fee with no individual concert tickets being sold. The policy of season memberships only continues today.