Mirage began it’s journey as a musical group in early 1992 as a five piece band featuring drums, keyboards, bass guitar, lead guitar and female vocalist. In the beginning, the band’s schedule consisted of roughly half private engagements and the other half playing nicer clubs. The band was (and has been throughout the years) fortunate to maintain a consistent line up of performers, with little turnover of musicians. This constant is one of the contributing factors that has made Mirage so successful for over three decades! (The members of Mirage often refer to the band as more of a ‘family’ than a band.)
As the years progressed, Mirage moved away from playing clubs and focused on private events such as wedding receptions, corporate events with several outdoor community concerts thrown in as well. Then, in or around 2010, a popular St. Louis 8 piece band, Quintessence, disbanded. Mirage had talked about adding horns on and off but never pursued that. (Brett, longtime keyboard player, also played sax in the early days). Mirage was overjoyed to add the three horn players from Quintessence, Kurt Schmid – trumpet, Robert Ray – trombone and Kenny Schwein sax. All three had been friends for years and went through the music program at UMSL together. Tragically, both Robert and Kenny, both outstanding musicians, passed away within an 18 month time frame. That was an extremely tough time for Mirage, but knowing Robert and Kenny would want the band to continue and add new members, that’s exactly what the band did.
Now entering it’s 31st year, the band continues to enjoy phenomenal success playing on average, about 30 engagements per year in and around the St. Louis area. (As a sidenote, the farthest the band has traveled was southeast Iowa for a wedding reception, which was an 8 to 9 hour road trip.) Before the pandemic, Mirage booked nearly 40 engagements. During this time and enjoying weekends with family and friends, the band decided (as a group) to limit the number of engagements to about 30/year.
Mirage has been blessed to have achieved the immense success it has over a 30+ year period, we are truly humbled and immensely proud of what Mirage has accomplished over the years and thank our many clients over the years.
- Numerous instrumentation options available (solo piano, jazz trio and more)
- Detailed planning assistance to take the guesswork out of managing your event
- Formal attire unless otherwise requested
- Master of Ceremonies (emceeing) as requested
- Wireless microphone for announcements, toasts, etc.
- Recorded music during breaks (when appropriate)
- Personally meet with each client one month before the engagement
- Personally be on site two hours before every event to ensure all logistics are worked out for the evening
- Coordinate with the Director of Catering/Banquet Manager, etc at each venue as well as the Photographer, Videographer, Event Planner and others as applicable
- Have a sound/light engineer at every engagement to ensure a quality performance pleasing to the ears and the eyes.