The Green Lake Festival of Music was founded in 1979 as a summer concert series by Ripon College Music Professor Douglas Morris and a small group of community leaders.  In the ensuing years, the Festival has evolved into a comprehensive program which was recognized for its outstanding record of bringing cultural enrichment to Central Wisconsin with a 2004 Governor's Award in Support of the Arts.  The Festival's current programs comprise a series of concerts featuring top-=quality artists from throughout the U.S. and beyond, a two-week chamber music workshop for high school and college students, an adult choral institute, and its newest offering, a series of free concerts for children which was inaugurated in 2006.  The Festival's mission is threefold:  to entertain, inspire and educate through artistic performances and activities of the highest quality.  No other summer presenting organization exists in Central Wisconsin, making the Festival's mission both important and unique.  Festival concerts range from classical chamber and choral concerts to jazz, cabaret and ethnic music.  Most concerts are held in the historic Thrasher Opera House in Green Lake and Ripon College's Rodman Center for the Arts, as well as in nontraditional venues such as a local historic barn.  Outreach and educational activities are held in surrounding towns such as Princeton, Oshkosh, and Beaver Dam.

Since its founding, the Festival has brought the highest caliber artistes from throughout the U.S. and abroad to its audiences, earning a reputation for high artistic standards.  during the early years, the Mirecourt Trio was featured as a resident ensemble.  In subsequent years the Festival presented such renowned artists as the Ying and Brentano String Quartets, the Jacques Thibaud Trio from Berlin, the Amelia Piano Trio, violinists Rachel Barton and Samantha George, soprano Nicole Cabell, Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the husband-wife team of composer-pianist William Bolcom and soprano Joan Morris, and renowned Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser.  The Festival is honored to present the first-prize winners of the Hilton Head and Cleveland International piano competitions in alternate years, and in 2009 it will present a medalist of the Van Cliburn competition.

Wisconsin Public radio regularly records and broadcasts several Festival concerts each season, attesting to the Festival's high artistic quality.  The Festival has also brought international recognition to the U.S. and Wisconsin in particular through concert tours by its Chamber choir to Poland, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Canada's Maritime Provinces.