Singer Suzanne (Gasiorkiewicz) Selmo ’98 returned to campus in March. No one could sit still.

Kids are the world’s most awesome critics. It’s not just the brutal honesty with which they deliver their verdicts, it’s how they provide their feedback. Rarely do they need a litany of words to make their feelings known.

Impressed with the brilliance of a beetle? Or an old penny? Or a dandelion? In the pocket it goes.

Not a fan of the food they’ve been served? They will twist their face into an expression of disgust as if you’ve served them a plate of homework. 

Moved by the musical mastery unfolding in front of them? Time to twist and dance and clap and…do yoga, obviously. 

Such was the case when Suzanne (Gasiorkiewicz) Selmo ’98 visited Prairie this spring for a special Primary School concert. 

Earning Accolades

Selmo is no stranger to making children boogie. And bounce. And bop. The musician, whose stage name is Suzanne Jamieson, has made four albums – three of which are children’s music – and her work has garnered recognition from the National Parenting Product Awards (NAPPA), along with organizations such as Parents Choice, Kids Choice, Kids First, and Moms Choice. She has a Creative Child Album of the Year award to her credit, an SEL Album of the Year, and earned First Place in an international songwriting competition for her song, Grateful. 

In the children’s music industry the NAPPA award is a biggie, and it was Selmo’s third studio album, Bounce, released in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, which caught the organization’s attention. 

“Bounce comes jammed with buoyant, bopping tunes that will have kids bouncing along to these energetic songs,” NAPPA said in a review of the album. “Parents, meanwhile, will enjoy grooving to the ’80s dance rock mood flowing through this CD. While loaded with some sweet ear candy, Bounce is not full of empty calories (lyrically speaking).”

While it can be suggested that Selmo’s creative ingenuity fully blossomed on Bounce – the first album on which she wrote every lyric for songs rooted in concepts such as being positive and believing in yourself – it was at Prairie where Suzanne’s inclinations to create and perform first began to bloom. 

“The faculty, particularly Prairie’s music and theatre teachers instilled in me a sense of confidence and a standard of excellence that have helped scaffold the choices I’ve made artistically and personally,” she says.

The Crowd Goes Wild

Have you ever seen those videos of a packed, raucous sports stadium, the ones where you can literally see the upper terrace shaking because of the movement of the fans? Well, if the seats in Prairie’s John Mitchell Theatre hovered in the air, and if the Primary School was filled with bigger bodies, this might have been what happened during Selmo’s concert. 

For an hour everyone in attendance had a blast. More impressive than the ease with which the students laughed and did yoga poses and danced and bounced (and bounced and bounced), was the atmosphere Selmo created using nothing but her words and her heart and a microphone. Everyone, it seemed, was smiling. 

This, Prairie teaches, is the power of art.

“The kids and the teachers loved it,” says Abby Brzezinski, Prairie Early School Teacher. “We were all in such a happy mood after singing and dancing throughout the show.”

While Suzanne Selmo has played to plenty of audiences throughout her career, this one – performed in the school where she first felt seen, for hundreds of students currently figuring out their own individual paths – was something she will always remember. 

“Prairie is a very special place,” says Selmo. “It was the first school I attended where the teachers were interested in who I was, what I cared about, and what my strengths and stretches were. It is my deepest desire as a mother for my own children to be seen and supported, pushed and held, in the way that Prairie did for me.”

We look forward to celebrating Suzanne and the rest of the 2025 Hall of Fame inductees on Saturday, June 14th. Click here to register for the Alumni Weekend Celebration and Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.