Press & Media

Press Release:

Fro​​m: Producer Barb Sorensen / Emerald City Music Productions, Inc.

For Project:  ORIGINAL MUSIC SHOWCASE – Mt Horeb 2025

When: Sunday, September 14, 2025 1pm - 5pm

Where: Grundahl Stage  600 S Blue Mounds St, Mt Horeb, WI 53572, USA

Project Info:

     A 4-hour showcase featuring 10 top quality local area original musicians presenting fresh and original music you have not heard on the radio. We also have food trucks and a closed-box auction table.  Lawnseats, bring your own chair. No pets, no liquor, no smokes please.

The showcase is free for the audience to attend, and the event is supported via advertising funds from local area and Wisconsin businesses. The production crew is made of volunteers from the local area, student interns, and silver/purple cord volunteers.

This event is being produced by Barb Kronau-Sorensen and a collaboration of local area original artists, under the umbrella of her company Emerald City Music Productions, Inc.

(Emerald City Cusic Productions, Inc. is an independent entertainment productions company out of Palatine, IL. We create, develop, produce and release family friendly, multicultural, multi-platform entertainment. We work only with original and traditional music artists across many mediums (music, art, dance, books, speakers, and more). https://tinyurl.com/webemcy

For more information on how Barb came to Mount Horeb to produce this event, reference the bottom of this document please. Thanks.

Mission/Why:

     To draw in and entertain an original music loving audience, to create a free family-friendly event for the community to enjoy, to showcase and highlight some of the best original music talent from the area, to celebrate authenticity and creativity, to encourage and inspire others to create authentically, to have fun, make money mindfully, support the local area original artist scene, be inclusive of other businesses and people wanting to help as volunteers and advertising sponsors, offer short end-of-summer internships to local area students, draw tourism to Mt Horeb, practice our sales skills with selling advertising in support of the production costs of this event, practice getting grants, be inclusive of other businesses as food truck vendors, be able to pay the artists well/as competitively as we can for their time and sharing their talents, work with local original artists as much as possible in all aspects of the production, encourage authenticity and support creativity in music, have fun, make great music, present an awesome happy memorable show for the audience, be as “green” in our efforts as much as possible, and spread good Karma, cheer, and joy!  …. because this is what we do and love, and who we are… original musicians!

Event Goals:

• To pay each artist

• To draw in an audience of over 500 people

• To sell $50,000 worth of advertising for this event

• To have a safe, happy event for all

Who:

Production company: Emerald City Music Productions, Inc.

Producer: Barb Sorensen ( https://tinyurl.com/barbkronausorensen  / https://sites.google.com/view/emerald-city-music/about )

Collaboration of artists, interns, and volunteers from Mount Horeb and the surrounding area

Stage lineup includes (* NOTE THIS LINEUP HAS CHANGED AND WAS UPDATED 09/11/2025):

• Barb Sorensen: [pop rock/country folk rock (https://tinyurl.com/barbkronausorensen )]

• Chris Underwood: [Harmonious European tropical jazz rock]

• Music of the Plants: [Original music by the plants themselves [( https://www.musicoftheplants.com/about-us/ ]

• Paige Kleber [( https://www.paigekleber.com/ )]

• Ailani Singh [{https://www.instagram.com/ailanisings )]

• Wendy Lynn Markus [(https://www.wendolynn.com/ )]

What:

4 hours of original family-friendly music 

Acoustic and/or electric

Food truck vendor available at the site

BYOC (Bring your own chair) lawn seating

Closed-box auction of top quality items from local area businesses

No liquor, no pets, no smoking please

Fresh air, open skies at this outdoor amphitheater

Rain or Shine

How:

The Production team works with the producer on the details of the event.      

      Artist / Food truck selection and schedule

      Backline selection

      Sound person/equipment selection

      Marketing

      Advertising

      HR

      Admin

      Logistics

Sales

      Budgeting/finance

How Much:

Our startup budget is set at $500 guarantee for the artists

Each artist will be paid a guarantee

Our goal is to bring in over $50,000 worth of advertising sales for this event for production costs

The event is free for the audience to attend

Food trucks are invited to attend but are not charged

The sound person will also be paid

We are working with student internships, volunteers, silver/purple cord students, and local orgs looking to raise funds for volunteering.

Audience Demographics for the Event:

All ages / Family-friendly

Fans of each artist/group

Families, singles, couples of all ages

People who enjoy music

People who appreciate original new music and want to hear stuff not on the radio

People who enjoy listening to music outdoors

Mostly from the Mount Horeb and surrounding areas

Traffic that comes through Mount Horeb and sees the street banner

People within a 1-hour drive of Mount Horeb

Event Advertising Channels we are using:

Print (posters, leaflets, street banners, coroplast street signs)

Press (press releases to be sent to local area newspapers)

Media (public access television, local area and public radio, releases to be sent to regular TV channels in the area)

Digital (email blasts, online event listing sites, event website, event Facebook page, event Instagram page)

Other (word of mouth, cross event advertising with other events nearby)

Link to our event website: https://tinyurl.com/oms-mthoreb

Link to our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OMSMountHoreb/ 

Please call if you need more information. 224-901-2679.   media.emcy@gmail.com 

History behind the Original Music Showcase:

Original Music Showcase (OMS) is a collaboration of original music artists from Mt Horeb, WI. It is an event that is spearheaded by original artist/producer Barb Sorensen of Emerald City Music Productions, Inc. 

The showcase began as a happy happenstance outfall from a random set of paths crossing at an opportune time. 

The story:

Barb Sorensen was in Blue Mounds WI on St Patrick's Day 2025 for a parade with her sound person. Unbeknownst to her at the time, the parade was actually in Blue Mound, Milwaukee.  Which is a subdivision in Milwaukee. Both Blue Mounds (west of Madison) and Blue mounds Milwaukee did not know each other existed.  And when she Googled directions and information, the only thing that came up was Blue mounds (west of Madison).  She and her sound person therefore missed the parade they were scheduled for.  Instead of moping around afterwards, they had some time and decided to head out to Mt Horeb to explore the Troll Trail they had heard about and take silly photos.

As they walked around Mt Horeb exploring the businesses and looking for Trolls, they came across a wooden bridge crossing over a walking path.  Barb decided to have some fun and re-enact the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff - because, well after all, Mt Horeb is known to be a Norwegian city. 

Barb began acting the story, playing all the characters in intervals (Billy goats, Troll and narrator). Soon, local musician Mitch Doty and his family (Jenna and Theo) came strolling by on their afternoon walk on the path beneath the bridge. 

Being a creative family, they walked over to see if they could "play" too. Agreed. Mitch became the Troll to cross the bridge and produce the dramatic Billy Goat/Grumpy Troll final scene for the camera. Excellent acting!

In their conversation after the video was completed, Barb learned that Mitch and his family are musicians as well. The live nearby and she and her sound person were invited to Mitch's house for a short impromptu concert on their family's front porch.

Barb and her sound person were blown away at their music and presentation. That was when Barb decided she wanted to try and book Mitch and his band - Lex Murphy and the Lawmen - for concerts. 

Later that afternoon Barb and her sound person went to visit a farm which was struggling financially. After she returned home she called up the farm to ask if they would consider letting her produce a fund raiser concert event for them.  While the owner was initially interested, Barb never heard back from the farmer and could not reach them again, and the idea bottomed out.

But the spark of creativity had ignited within her. She loved the area and wanted to give a concert of her own here, outdoors. After discussing it with Mitch, they felt it might be fun if all the local area Mt Horeb musicians had an original concert showcase here. It would be the first all original independent showcase in the area.

After broaching the topic to Mitch to see about interest from the local musicians and to find out how many there might be.. it turns out that Mt Horeb is a music loving city! They love their musicians and original new music and have tons of high-quality original artists.  The excitement grew and now it is coming to fruition.

Mitch, Lex Murphy and the Lawmen, Jenna Snyder, and 2 other choosing-to-remain-anonymous local area musicians got on board and began to meet and put the event together grass roots style.

2025 is the first year. The rest of the story is about to unfold as we move forward with this event.

We invite you to join us at the inaugural showcase and enjoy the music.