Keys to Aurora: A Night of Dueling Pianos for Local Students

Star Bright Electric was proud to sponsor the Aurora Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Keys to Aurora fundraiser.

Some nights you go to an event. Other nights you end up singing along with a room full of neighbors while two pianists try to out-play each other. Keys to Aurora was the second kind.

On Friday, July 10, the Aurora Inn Hotel & Event Center filled up for Keys to Aurora, a dueling piano fundraiser hosted by the Aurora OH Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Doors opened at 6:30 and by the time the show started at seven, the tables were full, the cocktails and appetizers were moving, and the request slips were already stacking up on the pianos.

Two Pianos, One Very Loud Room

If you have never been to a dueling piano show, the format is simple and the results are unpredictable. Two pianists take requests from the crowd, and the crowd decides where the night goes. Every request comes with a donation, which means the person who really wants to hear a particular song has a way to make that happen — and the person at the next table who would rather hear something else has a way to fight back.

The result was a couple of hours of ballads, sing-alongs, a few songs nobody expected, and a room that got progressively less shy about singing out loud. Raffles and bidding on donated items ran alongside the music. It was, by a comfortable margin, the most fun anyone has had funding a scholarship.

Where the Money Goes

Every dollar raised through ticket sales, song requests, and raffles goes into scholarships for graduating seniors in the Aurora City School District, along with community education programs in the area. The scholarships support students heading into both four-year programs and vocational training, and awards recognize academic work, leadership, and community involvement.

That last part is the piece that matters to us. We work in a trade, and we know what it takes to get into one. The path from high school into an apprenticeship, into a license, into a career is real and it is worth funding. A scholarship fund that treats a kid headed to trade school as seriously as a kid headed to a university is a fund worth showing up for.

Tickets ran $35 per person, with tables of eight available for groups — an easy night out for a cause that pays itself forward for decades.

Why Star Bright Sponsored

Star Bright Electric is an Ohio company working in Ohio communities. Aurora is our neighborhood, and the Chamber Foundation does the kind of quiet, steady work that makes a place good to live in. When the sponsorship opportunity came around, it was not a hard call.

We also just wanted to be in the room. Our crew spends its days in basements, attics, and panel rooms across Portage and Summit counties. Getting to spend an evening with the business owners, teachers, and families we work for — with a piano soundtrack and no ladders involved — was a genuinely good time.

Looking Ahead

Thank you to the Aurora Chamber of Commerce Foundation for putting the night together, to the pianists for taking every request thrown at them, and to everyone who bought a ticket, dropped a bill for a song, or bid on a raffle item. The students on the receiving end of those scholarships will never know exactly which song request paid for their books — but it counted.

We will be back next year. Come find our table.

⚡ Star Bright Electric — a finished work of art, wired right and shining bright.