♦ Upcoming Shows ♦
Thursday, August 6th
Thursday, August 20th
Swanee River Oriole Orchestra was founded by members of the pit orchestra for the musical Annie. It was all very informal, and included a fair amount of malt beverages. The year was 2002 and after the party, the music went back under the bed until the next year when the same group of friends all played for the musical Once Upon a Mattress. Again, the music came out, we had a lot of fun and talked about doing more with it than just entertaining ourselves.Later that year our banjo player's wife required serious surgery, so we were approached to play a benefit performance. It was our first gig with a public audience. They seemed to love it! We were hooked.
Since 2003, we have been playing at many different venues in the area. This is also the same year the Swing Doctors formed. This big band jazz group includes many members of our band.
In Plover, Swanee River has played regularly at Smiley’s for over a year; we also recently played at Mikey’s. In Stevens Point, we played over a year each at Clark Place and at the “Traditions” lounge in the former Country Springs Hotel.
We played as part of the “Party in the Park” series in 2007 and in March of 2008 we played at the Festival of the Arts in UW-SP’s Noel Center. In July of 2008, we played at Riverfront Rendezvous in the Pfiffner Building.
We are now happy to have settled in as the “house band” at Kristin’s Riverwalk in downtown Stevens Point, where we play the first and third Thursdays of each month from 7-9 p.m.
We have been building our library of music slowly, which, although we bill ourselves as a Dixieland band, we actually play more of an early style jazz and dance band arrangements from the 1920s.
The original Swanee River Oriole Orchestra played throughout Wisconsin in the early 1920's. The banjo in the original photo, an Epiphone Recording banjo, is the actual instrument often used in performances by the band today.
For the most part, all the members of the band have regular jobs and we just
play for fun. We've all known each other for a long time and have played in
other bands and groups together many times in various combinations. We have
a lot of fun playing and hope our audiences enjoy it as much as we do playing
it!
You can book the Swanee River Oriole Orchestra for any engagement by contacting us via e-mail. The Swanee River Oriole Orchestra is available for private parties, wedding receptions, jazz festivals, dances, concert series and other special events.
We play a variety of styles from a variety of composers and arrangers: King Oliver, Red McCLeod, Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory and many others.
Reserved for Friends of Swanee River Oriole Orchestra:
circa 1923
2005
2008
© All Rights Reserved 2008