If you saw live music in Bloomington-Normal in the past decade, chances are Morgan Schulte had something to do with it.
Schulte listens to pretty much everything, her eclectic musical tastes the result of growing up with a house full of foster kids.
“My biological parents were foster parents,” she said. “You can imagine how much trauma was experienced by all of these kids. One of their coping skills was listening to music. If you went into your bedroom and closed the door, you were allowed to listen to music as loud as you wanted."
Schulte might hear Run DMC in one room and Ratt in another. There was Def Leopard over here and Black Crowes over there.
That eclecticism is what she brings to her current role programming live entertainment for Connie Link Amphitheatre, Uptown Normal and the Town of Normal’s flagship music festival, Make Music Normal. Schulte just rounded the bend on two years since becoming a Civic Arts Specialist for the town. Prior to that, she booked shows for the Castle Theatre and music hidey holes in bars and restaurants around town as an independent music promoter under the name Gabriel Events.
Cultural Arts Director Beth Whisman met Schulte the same way most people do.
“It would have been at the front of a crowd, on a street watching live music,” Whisman said. “I think we were in Lexington and a mutual friend introduced us.”
As the leader of a three-person team with Adam Fox, Whisman knew Schulte was the ideal candidate to take Normal's free entertainment to the next level.
“She can barely be pulled away from the music because she enjoys it,” Whisman said. “That’s really what she’s all about.”
Schulte learned the business of talent buying on the job. Her career began as a special education teacher at The Baby Fold’s Hammitt School. She brought in local musicians to foster empathy and build coping skills and raised about $15,000 for the school with the Jammin’ for Hammitt Benefit Concert, started in 2013.
That’s the year everything changed for Schulte, when her father’s death threw a curveball at life.
“I needed something to focus on,” she said. “The grief was so bad.”
Schulte picked up music promotion to cope with the loss, just like she taught kids at Hammitt to do, simultaneously helping her mother through a protracted illness.
“I ended up losing my mom in 2020, but music was the constant that entire time,” Schulte said. “It all just kind of fell into place. It was never on my radar that I’d be in the music industry or government as a career.”
Key to Schulte’s vision have been genre, race and gender parity, and highlighting new and local talent. She’s obsessively organized and takes every artist seriously, be that a pricey headliner band or a local teenager with a guitar. Leah Marlene, for example.
“She gave me so many opportunities to share my gift and make some money making music,” said Marlene, who’s making a go of it in Nashville after a third place finish in American Idol propelled the Normal native’s career.
As the scene’s biggest fan, Schulte has raised the bar for live music in Bloomington-Normal. She’s modest about her impact but recognizes she’s exactly the right person for her job.
“Compliments are hard,” she said. “I know I do a great job with what I do, because I care about it. And I work really hard for it.”
