Few people in Milwaukee have played as wide a role in shaping local classical music as Daniel Petry. In the last decade alone, the longtime arts fundraiser and administrator played a key part in UW-Milwaukee’s Jan Serr Studio, raised money for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s campaign to open the Bradley Symphony Center, and was instrumental to the past and present of Present Music.
But many remember him most for his gift of connecting with people, especially over the arts. “He was a quintessential people-person,” says co-artistic director Eric Segnitz. “Passionate about the arts and bringing the two together. He had a sort of a missionary zeal about that.” Daniel Petry died of natural causes at his home late August. He was 71.
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Petry graduated from UW-Madison in 1977 with a bachelor’s in music education and later received his master’s in arts administration from Columbia University in 1988. After starting his career at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, he joined Present Music in 1989, when the contemporary classical music nonprofit was only in its fifth year.
“He came in with a lot of professional ideas, but he was a grassroots person,” says co-artistic director Eric Segnitz, who at the time was Present Music’s first violinist. He called Petry and Present Music founder Kevin Stalheim “the dynamic duo.” During Petry’s time with the organization, it built up an international reputation for commissioning and performing new and forward-thinking classical works.
“The things that we accomplished after he came were really remarkable, and it wouldn’t have been possible without him,” says Stalheim, who retired from Present Music in 2019.
It was during this time that attorney Tim Frautschi met Petry as a Present Music board member. “All my life, I’ve been on a lot of nonprofit boards,” he says. “[Petry] is a very unusual person in the sense that, as an employee, he becomes in many cases a friend of board members, not just an employee who raises money or takes care of stuff.”
Much of Petry’s bridge-building stemmed from his passion for the arts, which also drove him to take on a wide array of tasks. “His job always tended to expand,” Frautschi says. “So, he raises funds, but he ends up being so useful and so hardworking that he does a lot of other stuff, too.” That included arranging accommodations and meals for visiting guests and speaking to the press.
“He would do crazy things to promote the group,” Segnitz says. “We were laughing the other day at one memory – when he dressed up in a gorilla costume outside of the Oriental Theatre and was pamphleteering for the group. He would go to any lengths to promote us.”
Outside of his work, “[Petry] was kind of quiet and humble and almost reserved, personally,” Stalheim says. “But when it came to the arts and other people, he would just blossom.”
Afterward, Petry had stints with the Florentine Opera, the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and Early Music Now. While at the UWM Peck School of the Arts, he approached philanthropic couple John Shannon and Jan Serr about building out a venue on the sixth floor of the Kenilworth building. The couple donated $1 million, and the resulting Jan Serr Studio opened in 2019 as an academic and rental space, the latter use being one of Dan’s ideas. “The rentals have paid for dozens of upgrades to the Studio over the years, things that the university didn’t have to pay for,” Shannon says.
He carried that creativity back to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, where he raised funds to acquire the Warner Theatre and transform it into the new home for the symphony’s many concerts. Petry then returned to where his career took off at Present Music, becoming its development director in 2022. He guided the nonprofit through the pandemic and continued to explore new avenues to fund and promote the group until his death. “He saw the value of helping small organizations because he could make such an impact,” Stalheim says.
In his family, Petry wasn’t alone in his love for music. His mother, Pat Petry, was a jazz enthusiast and a staunch supporter of local musicians. And Petry’s enthusiasm extended beyond the professional – he could been seen at all kinds of concerts across the city, and he was even once a piano player at the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport.
Still, always working hard behind the scenes in the arts, Petry didn’t flag in his imagination. “The week before he died, Dan attended the annual meeting of Chamber Music America, which, this year, was in Chicago. He came back with a dozen actionable ideas to help Present Music and music in Milwaukee in general,” says John Shannon. “Dan was an instigator. He created ideas and figured out how to make them happen.”
Daniel Petry is survived by two brothers and many cousins on both his father and mother’s side.
