Peter's benefit concert in Denver

Concerts are music to ailing kids' ears

Concerts for Kids' founder pushes a cause she feels in her bones
By Lisa Everitt
Special to The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 05/27/2008 01:08:37 AM MDT

Molly Hughes, left, her husband, John Butler, and Christie and Walter Isenberg became friends working for Concerts for Kids. (Bill Thach, Special to The Denver Post )

After four years as an impresario, Christie Isenberg is star-struck — seriously head-over-heels gone crazy — by a musician.

She wants to talk about her organization, Denver-based Concerts for Kids. It's the most successful charity you've never heard of.

Its summer concert June 6 will feature John Legend and Jewel. Its annual Community Day on Saturday will send a small army of volunteers to more than 30 nonprofit sites around the metro area to do badly needed fix-up work.

But first she needs to say a few words about a 24-year-old singer-songwriter named Cincotti, whose New York panache and serious piano chops remind her of a young Billy Joel. Cincotti will play a solo show to benefit Concerts for Kids at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House on Aug. 1.

"I'm star-struck by him. I hope to be around when he achieves what I think he's going to achieve," Isenberg says. "Oh, by the way, he's really cute."

Behind the starry eyes, Isenberg has a longer view. She expects that when Peter Cincotti is bigger than Bono, he'll remember the little charity gig he played in Denver. Because Christie Isenberg thinks about kids with every step she takes.

At 3, she was diagnosed with a congenital hip disorder. Forty-eight years and 26 surgeries later, Isenberg has never forgotten what it's like to be a scared kid in a hospital bed.

She had a number of surgeries at Shriners Hospital for Children in Los Angeles. "You would go in at the end of the school year and you would spend the entire summer, and they would fit you in when they fit you in. ... You were alone a lot of the time."

She remembers college football players from the annual East-West Shrine Game coming to visit, and what a big deal it was, even to a girl who didn't care about football. That's one of the reasons Concerts for Kids is starting a summer concert series at Children's Hospital — and one of the reasons that time backstage, meeting kids, is written into the contract of every performing artist.

"I'm 51 years old, and I remember it," she says. "I can tell you, that's why I do what I do."

While Christie holds the title of president of Concerts for Kids, husband Walter Isenberg, co-founder, president and CEO of hotel development and management company Sage Hospitality Resources, "is my top corporate person."

Walter's business success has underwritten the organization and the couple's other charity endeavors. "He's just as passionate about it as I am," she says.

In between running a $500 million business with 16 hotels in Colorado and projects from coast to coast, Walter Isenberg makes phone calls to potential sponsors.

"My husband is the sweetest person," Christie says. Those who know Walter as a hard-charging executive might be surprised to learn that after her most recent surgery, "He did not leave my side. He slept right next to my bed. He held my hand."

Says KCNC correspondent Molly Hughes, "He washed her hair every day when she was in that body cast."

Hughes got to know the Isenbergs after being assigned to do a story about the inaugural Concert for Kids. Since then, Hughes and her husband have become close friends with the couple and their 21-year-old daughter, Nicole. The Isenbergs are in the process of adopting a girl from Ethiopia; they expect her to join the family this fall.

Neither Walter nor Christie takes on charity work for recognition, Hughes says. "She won't go up on stage. She's not doing it to raise her own profile."

In a short four years, with a paid staff of three — Christie Isenberg doesn't take a salary — Concerts for Kids has raised $600,000 for children's charities with the summer concert and five other events. Isenberg's goal is to boost that to $1 million a year and expand the concept nationwide.

"They've generated — very quietly — a lot of corporate support," says Denver marketer Tom Botelho. Eighty percent of the tickets for the John Legend/Jewel show go to corporations who treat vendors, clients or employees to a fun evening at Fiddler's Green. "Concert for Kids is a big office party."

For Community Day, Concerts for Kids will mobilize more than 400 volunteers and more than $100,000 in cash and in-kind donations to benefit 30 nonprofits for children and youth, from the Joshua Station transitional housing program for homeless families to Mile High Montessori.

"Christie's very persuasive," Botelho says. "She's just good. That's why they've been so successful."

Concerts for Kids' beneficiaries are the Denver Public Schools Foundation, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Children's Hospital Foundation.

"The Isenbergs have been tremendous supporters of the hospital," says Steve Winesett, president and CEO of the Children's Hospital Foundation. Along with Concerts for Kids, the couple chaired the hospital's annual gala in 2003 and have served on boards and committees. Children's is also a beneficiary of a Sage Hospitality in-room donation program, Dollars for Dreams.

The key, Christie Isenberg says, is to create a range of events that allow people to participate in large or small ways. Those who can't write a big check or buy a block of concert tickets can show up for Community Day and roll up their sleeves.

"There are needs out there that aren't being met," she says. "I'm working it from every angle."