Writer Elaine Schmidt was an evangelist for music in Milwaukee

An elbow injury disrupted the career that Elaine Schmidt might have had as a high-level flutist. Undaunted, Schmidt channeled her mellifluousness into writing about music.

For more than three decades, Schmidt wrote about classical music and the performing arts for Milwaukeeans in many contexts: freelance reviews for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, scripts for Milwaukee Public Television broadcasts, books for Hal Leonard and, in recent years, program notes for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Schmidt died Dec. 19 after a short illness, according to her family. She was 66. Her death caught many who knew her here by surprise.

“Her passing is a loss for me personally, yes, and I’m heartbroken,” wrote MSO Communications Director Erin Kogler in a Facebook post. “But more important than my personal sadness, the arts community in Milwaukee needs people like Elaine — arts evangelists. People who truly understand how important the arts are in a community and will use whatever wonderful talent they have to keep the arts strong and thriving. Fellow Milwaukee arts lovers, we all have some big shoes to fill.”

Born June 18, 1958, Schmidt was raised in Milwaukee and graduated from Milwaukee Lutheran High School in 1976. After earlier study at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and Concordia University, Schmidt moved to New York to study flute and voice at The Julliard School, according to an obituary prepared by her friend Karen Herzog, a former Journal Sentinel reporter.

Schmidt worked as a musician and singer in New York until her elbow injury. She then earned a master’s degree in music criticism from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Returning to Milwaukee in 1993, she plunged into life as a freelancer or, as she wryly put it, “a gig pig,” teaching flute and voice and also writing for many customers. Her first review for the Milwaukee Sentinel, of a Master Singers Quartet concert, was published on Aug. 16, 1993. Her final review for the Journal Sentinel, of Florentine Opera’s “Maria de Buenos Aires,” was posted nearly 31 years later, on May 17, 2024.

Full disclosure: For many of those years, I was Schmidt’s assigning editor at the Journal Sentinel, commissioning and editing her reviews and articles. During hundreds of phone conversations (rarely short ones, because she liked to gab), I heard Elaine’s warm, cultured voice, often tinged with mock seriousness before unleashing a joke that could lead to boisterous laughter.

On her LinkedIn page, the proudly erudite and eclectic Schmidt wrote: “I am frighteningly well-versed in the trivial and arcane.” Here’s one example: She did a spot-on hilarious imitation of the nasal voice of Fran Drescher (star of “The Nanny”).

Schmidt revealed another facet of her creativity in 2013 when she published “The Travelers: Present in the Past,” a time-travel novel for young readers in which touching an antique quilt sent someone back in time. She followed that up a year later with “The Travelers Companion: Sharing Timeless Handwork Projects With a New Generation,” a guidebook in which she shared her passion for quilting.

Schmidt, who lived in Grafton, is survived by her husband, Mark Hoelscher; her sister Paula Schmidt, and her cat, Junior. Her family plans a celebration of her life in the spring. Memorials can be made to Lutheran Counseling and Family Services of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.