Have you ever attended a musical performance that felt like it was put on just for you and a few of your closest friends? On Thursday, April 5th, Swoon was lucky enough to host its first ever Sofar event in the café. Sofar is known for its “Intimate gigs all around the world,” as each of their events is very small and people are encouraged to gather around the performers, usually sitting on the floor. Each Sofar show features three different artist groups and no headliner.
Antoine Smith, a recruiter in our Chicago office, nominated us to host a Sofar show after speaking with Michelle Baker, our CEO who is passionate about music. Swoon is a very musically-cultured environment, and we felt our space would be a great fit for a show. We host Record Club every Friday during lunch where employees bring in their favorite records to play on the office record player. We share weekly blog posts about music called “Swoon Tunes” and we named all our conference rooms after music venues throughout Chicago such as “Schubas,” “The Empty Bottle” and “Lincoln Hall.”
Antoine met with the Sofar team to discuss the logistics of hosting the event, and the next thing we knew, we were live! The event location was kept secret from attendees until the night of the event, adding to anticipation and excitement. Our show sold out, and we were thrilled to welcome many non-Swooners into our fantastic space.
The Artists
Sylvie Grace
The evening began with an intro from Sofar and Antoine about the night and our space. Everyone was seated around the “stage” and ready for a great acoustic set. Sylvie Grace started the evening with an intimate set played on her cello.
Phillip-Michael Scales
Up next was Phillip-Michael Scales who set up his neon logo on the stage and debuted some of his new music from his album “Sinner Songwriter.”
Honeystone
Honeystone wrapped up the evening. They are a rock’n’roll all-male group from Chicago.
We want to thank everyone who attended and performed at our first Sofar event. We had a great evening, met some awesome people and can’t wait to host another soon!
Photography courtesy of Jonathan Feng.
Last Friday, March 23rd, Swoon and NextGen Global hosted our third annual fundraising event to raise money for the local organization, Almost Home Kids (AHK). The event was held in our office space at 300 S Wacker and took place from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. It included food, drinks, raffle prizes and a silent auction.
Our charity committee began planning and gathering donations for the event in early January. We reached out to our friends, family and local organizations to request donations for our gift baskets and silent auction items. Several charitable donors participated, including Beggar’s Pizza who donated pizza for all our guests the night of the event! We had a very successful evening with over 90 guests and several bidding wars on our hot ticket items.
Judith Mclean, Director of Marketing & Communications at Almost Home Kids attended the event and gave a brief presentation on the organization and the many ways that it helps families in need. AHK offers transitional care and training to families who are bringing their children home from the hospital with complicated health needs. Swoon is honored to be able to contribute to the costs associated with running the Almost Home Kids facilities. For more information or to see how you can make an impact, please visit www.almosthomekids.org.
A special thanks to all our sponsors who made our event possible:
