Swanee River Oriole Orchestra

Come Join

The Swanee River Oriole Orchestra

♦ Thursday, March 18th ♦

from 7:00 - 9:00 pm

at Kristin's Riverwalk

Located in the “heart” of downtown Stevens Point at 1140 Clark Street (@ the corner of Clark and Strongs) – this is the location of the former Hot Fish Shop and (most recently) Hibachi Joe's.

No Cover Charge!

The Swanee River Oriole Orchestra was founded in Stevens Point in 2002 by some of the members of the pit orchestra for the CWACT production of the musical Annie. Our first public performance was in 2003, a benefit concert for the wife of one of our members.

Since then, we have been playing at a variety of local events. Most recently:

Party in the Park -- 2007
Riverfront Rendezvous -- 2008
UW-SP’s Festival of the Arts – 2008 & 2009
P.J. Jacobs’ Class of 1954 reunion -- 2009

The SROO has also been the “house band” at several local venues, playing at each locale for over a year:

Clark Place (Stevens Point)
Traditions (in the former Country Springs Hotel – Stevens Point)
Smiley’s Bar and Grill (Plover)

We are now happy to have settled in at Kristin’s Riverwalk, a restaurant in downtown Stevens Point, where we play the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month from 7-9 p.m. There is no cover charge. They have a nice dance floor, which our audiences put to good use.

Although we bill ourselves as a Dixieland band, we actually play what is known as “traditional” or early jazz, including blues, ragtime, and dance band arrangements from the early 1900's. Many of our tunes were first made famous by the likes of Red McCLeod, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Fats Waller, W.C. Handy, Hoagy Charmichael, Tommy Dorsey, Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington and "Kid" Ory.

The original Swanee River Oriole Orchestra played throughout Wisconsin in the early 1920's. The banjo pictured in the photo of this band, an Epiphone Recording banjo, is still often used in performances by our band today.
Our band's members either have "regular jobs" or are university students. We've known each other for a quite some time and have played in other bands and groups together over the years. Several of our members also play in the local big band jazz group, The Swing Doctors, which plays at Smiley’s Bar and Grill in Plover on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month.

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 have a lot of fun playing -- our audiences enjoy it just as much as we do!