Baird was influential in area arts community
Audrey Baird loved music. She earned a degree in music education, studied flute, piano and dance as a kid and later taught piano lessons.
She made sure each of her three children learned a musical instrument. And she attended many concerts in Milwaukee.
Most people’s love of music would end there. But not Baird’s.
She began volunteering with the new Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s and never really stopped, eventually dedicating decades of her life to the symphony, as well as the Milwaukee Ballet, Florentine Opera and other arts organizations in the community.
It’s not hyperbole to say Milwaukee’s arts community might not be thriving today had it not been for Baird, who died Nov. 22 at Froedtert Hospital at the age of 95.
“Her legacy is the Milwaukee Symphony,” said Mark Niehaus, MSO president and executive director. “There was a point in the orchestra’s history where volunteers were responsible for selling all the tickets and raising most of the philanthropy. Audrey was at the forefront of that.”
The MSO’s holiday pops concerts this weekend will be dedicated to Baird.
Starting in 1958 as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League’s ticket drive chairwoman in Wauwatosa, Baird volunteered throughout the 1960s and ’70s before joining the orchestra’s administrative staff in 1981 as director of audience development. The Audrey G. Baird Stars of Tomorrow competition and auditions are named for her.
Remembered as a dynamo and bundle of energy well into her 90s, Baird came up with inventive ways to promote the symphony, such as getting her son Brian to dress up as a lion for kinderkonzerts and using motorcyclists or a cheerleading squad — she was one of the pompom girls — to sell MSO tickets.
In a 1996 interview at the MSO’s headquarters with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Bill Janz, Baird said, “Too many people think of us as stuffy. We are not stuffy. We’re in show biz.”
To show Janz just how unstuffy she and the MSO could be, she began singing her cheerleading song to the tune of “On Wisconsin!”: On with music, on with music, come let’s fill the hall; Ives, Mahler, Shos-ta-kovich and Brahms will soothe us all, rah, rah, rah!
Born in 1922 in Ithaca, New York, Baird’s childhood was filled with music and dance lessons. While working at a summer music camp in the Adirondacks, she met her future husband William, a doctor in the Navy. The couple settled in Wauwatosa in 1954.
“When we were growing up, it wasn’t a question of whether you would pick up a musical instrument, it was which musical instrument,” said her son Bruce Baird, who played trumpet. “There was no music education in Wauwatosa schools at that time. She got involved in the PTA, and then music teachers were hired for the schools.”
Baird’s work with the symphony led to sharing her creativity and enthusiasm with arts groups around the country, visiting all 50 states plus Guam.
“Whenever an arts organization wanted to sell tickets, figure out how to raise money, how to raise their influence in the community, she was right there,” her son said.
She served on the American Symphony Orchestra League board, which gave her its Golden Baton award in 1996 for her service to symphonies in the U.S. The league gives an award in her name for the most successful and creative ticket sales campaign in the country.
Baird volunteered with the Milwaukee Ballet and helped form the Opera Club affiliated with the Florentine, which organized the sale of tickets, raised money and spurred the group’s education programs.
“She was one of the people who has been an inspiration to me,” Florentine Opera General Director William Florescu said. “She was 90 plus years and she was always thinking, ‘What’s next?’ That’s a great way to live.”
Baird is survived by her children Bruce and Brian Baird and Barbara Zaferos. No funeral services are planned.