John Stropes

Milwaukee-based Guitar Company to Present Charitable Donation to Music Education Non-Profit

Minneapolis, Minn. and Milwaukee

Milwaukee Guitar Collective (MGC) is honored to be working with Leo Kottke on the sale of a number of the guitars acquired and used throughout his legendary career. At Leo Kottke’s direction and as part of their charitable mission, MGC is pleased to present the donation of $22,018.14 to The Stropes Foundation, Inc. to help promote the art and science of fingerstyle guitar. This donation supports scholarship, education, publication and the development of related archives. The check presentation will be held Tuesday, September 15th, 2020; 1:30pm CDT at The Pabst Theater, 144 E Wells St, Milwaukee, WI 53202.

It is with heartfelt gratitude The Stropes Foundation accepts this donation to advance our fingerstyle guitar mission. Gratitude to Leo Kottke for his generous sharing from the sale of his amazing guitars and gratitude to the Milwaukee Guitar Collective of making this possible. This donation will allow the Foundation to accelerate delivering three breakthrough fingerstyle guitar collections: the reprint of Michael Hedges/Rhythm, Sonority, Silence; a new Leo Kottke collection including transcriptions and history of his 1969 iconic album Leo Kottke/6- and 12-String Guitar, and a new Michael Hedges collection containing six previously unreleased transcriptions.

John Stropes
Chairman, The Stropes Foundation

One of the MCG’s core goals has been to help grow music and musicians. Now that live performances have been drastically curtailed as a side-effect of the pandemic, music education has become even more important. The staff at Milwaukee Guitar Collective are dedicated to helping young musicians find a voice and Leo Kottke and The Stropes Foundation Inc. have been the perfect partners in making this happen. We’d like to also thank the staff at Pabst, Turner, Riverside for the use of their venue highlighting Milwaukee’s great music performance venues.

Joe Gallenberger, Mike Cudahy, Jason Klagstad – Partners
The MGC Staff

About Milwaukee Guitar Collective:

Milwaukee Guitar Collective (MGC) is a company created for sale of notable guitar collections with a focus on benefiting charities of the consignor’s choice. MGC’s staff is a world-class sales and marketing team (Joe Gallenberger, Jason Klagstad and Mike Cudahy) who, combined, have sold over fifty million dollars in new, used and vintage musical instruments during their thirty years in the industry.

About The Stropes Foundation

Stropes Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established to promote the art and science of fingerstyle guitar by supporting scholarship, education, publication and the development of archives. The Stropes Foundation supports publication of state-of-the-art transcriptions and scholarly materials pertaining to fingerstyle guitar and the development of new delivery systems that improve accessibility through technology and online access. Our goal is to create seamless connections between the artists, their music, and the world. These connections include archives and new search technologies, extensively-edited transcriptions, publications, pedagogical approaches, and breakthrough work with GridTab. Visit stropesfoundation.org to keep up to date on our exciting projects.

About Leo Kottke

Leo Kottke is one of the most important and influential acoustic steel-string fingerstyle guitarists of the 20th century and continues to produce and record new material that inspires fledgling guitarists to this day. Leo has recorded over 37 albums and 4 movie soundtracks and has received 2 Grammy nominations; a Doctorate in Music Performance by the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; and a Certificate of Significant Achievement in Not Playing the Trombone from the University of Texas at Brownsville.

MEDIA CONTACT
Jason Klagstad: Jason.klagstad.mgc@gmail.com | 262-327-3849