Remembering Dan Petry

Daniel Petry. Photo taken September 28th, 2019 by Michael Horne.

Dan Petry was a leading supporter of classical music in Milwaukee.

The longtime marketing and financial development professional, who was a key person behind the scenes for nearly four decades for such groups as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Present Music and Florentine Opera, died at age 70 sometime last week in his apartment at the Astor Hotel Apartments. The cause of death is unknown at this time.

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Daniel Petry, whose commitment to the arts and to our community made a lasting impact,” said the symphony’s executive director Mark Niehaus in a statement. “Dan was a tireless champion of music, a gifted fundraiser, and truly one of a kind. He had a remarkable ability to connect with people and cared deeply about his donors and the community he served.”

Petry served for more than four years, from 2018 to 2022, as campaign gifts officer. “His passion and persistence helped advance the Grand Future campaign and the vision that became the Bradley Symphony Center,” Niehaus said. “His contributions are part of the MSO’s lasting legacy.”

Petry’s longest and perhaps most impactful work was for Present Music. He served as its managing director from 1989 to 1997, at a time when its founder and musical director, Kevin Stalheim, was building the group’s national reputation and international standing as a contemporary music ensemble that commissioned many original works by a wide range of composers. He returned to work for the group in 2022 after Stalheim had retired, helping the new co-artistic directors, Eric Segnitz and David Bloom, with strategic planning while serving as development director.

In between those two stints, Petry served in marketing and financial development positions with the Florentine Opera, Early Music Now, the UW-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts, and the symphony.

While working for UWM, Petry worked closely with philanthropist John Shannon and his wife, artist and philanthropist Jan Serr, who donated $1 million to create the Jan Serr Studio for the arts in the UWM Kenilworth Square East Building, which opened in 2017.

“He was as practical as he was passionate about music,” Shannon told Urban Milwaukee. “When working with Jan and me on UWM’s Jan Serr Studio, Dan helped create a self-sustaining business model. By using revenue from private rentals, the studio funded its own upgrades — including a new dance floor, seating and top-tier sound and video systems — without taking a dime from the university’s budget.”

Dan Petry received a bachelor’s degree in music from UW-Madison in 1977 and later earned a master’s degree in arts administration from Columbia University in 1988. He was a passionate and knowledgeable fan of classical music, and also an accomplished pianist with a varied repertoire who played at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport for several years.

Petry’s mother, Marilyn “Pat” Petry, was “a patron extraordinaire” of jazz music in Milwaukee, as a story by Kevin Lynch reported. “She grew up in Menomonee Falls, married and raised three sons on a dairy farm and in the 1970s began travel industry work, which allowed her to travel to favorite cities, New York, Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New Orleans, while deeply cultivating her appreciation of jazz.”

Pat Petry became a fixture at Milwaukee’s jazz clubs and a supporter of the jazz faculty and students of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, including such jazz performers as Berkeley Fudge, Manty Ellis, David Hazeltine, Brian Lynch, Mark Davis, Juli Wood, Adekola Adedapo and many more. As a travel consultant, she arranged travel trips for some of those musicians. In recognition of her support, the Milwaukee Jazz Institute created a scholarship in her name after her death in 2021.

Her love of music was clearly shared by Dan, who brought his mother as a guest to the grand opening of the Jan Serr Studio in 2017.

“That guy loved music and the enterprise of making music happen more than anyone else I’ve known on the business side,” said Tom Strini, who covered Milwaukee’s classical music scene for more than three decades for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Third Coast Digest, in remarks to Urban Milwaukee. “The proof — beyond his hard, effective work for Present Music, the Florentine and the MSO — was in his presence at concerts by groups beyond his own. Dan Petry was everywhere, supporting the whole scene, making connections, all out of a deep love for the arts. His passing is a loss for the entire Milwaukee scene, and he is irreplaceable.”

This is a developing story and additional reporting may be added later.