Produced by Contemporary is the story of how Steve Schankman, a 20-year old trumpet player and band leader from University City, Missouri, enlisted grade-school classmate Irv Zuckerman to help book local and regional bands beginning in 1968. The business would eventually be known as Contemporary Productions. Over the next 30 years, they would build Contemporary into one of the country's largest entertainment production companies. From a 1969 concert at the Fox Theatre by a new band with a cult following called the Grateful Dead, to a 1978 surprise concert by the Rolling Stones at the intimate 3000-seat Kiel Opera House, to the 1999 visit to St. Louis by Pope John Paul II with an audience of more than 100,000 people at America's Center, Contemporary Productions has set the standard for concerts and special events in St. Louis and throughout the nation.