Ms Brettingen, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was possibly the first ticket buyer - it is difficult to tell with online sales - for the Southern Sinfonia's Tally Ho concert this weekend.
It is highly probable she has come the longest distance of anyone to attend the concert.
The sinfonia is moving outside its usual musical mores to take on the music of bands including the Straitjacket Fits, The Clean, The Verlaines and The Chills.
The sinfonia will ''revisit'' their songs, using orchestrations by Verlaines' frontman, now University of Otago music head of department, Dr Graeme Downes.
Soprano Anna Leese and other local singers will take on the songs at the Dunedin Town Hall, with musicians Shayne Carter, Martin Phillipps, David Kilgour and Downes also singing and performing backing vocals.
Dunedin writer and former music shop proprietor Roy Colbert was a driving force behind the concert.
Ms Brettingen said she had been corresponding with him through Facebook, and ''he told me about plan for the sinfonia two years ago''.
''In November last year I asked him, 'Where are you with that'?
''He said: 'It's about to happen'.'I said, 'I'm coming for this'.
''It was an epiphany moment.''
Ms Brettingen said she discovered New Zealand music through Split Enz, but after hearing The Chills' album Submarine Bells, ''I bought just about everything on Flying Nun I could find''.
Her interest in the Dunedin Sound stemmed from her love of 1960s psychedelic music.
Dunedin bands ''did something with that sound and put their own undefinable twist''.
''It's so hard to explain, but there's so many inventive people doing things with the sound and making it their own.''
She had seen bands including The Chills, The Clean, Straitjacket Fits and The Bats when they toured Minneapolis in the 1990s, but the reporter and now English teacher had never been to New Zealand.
Of her trip, Ms Brettingen said it was ''monumental - it's probably one of the highlights of my life''.
She had been to the Otago Peninsula site where the video of The Chills song Pink Frost was filmed, walked through the University of Otago campus, seen where different music identities flatted, and planned to go to Port Chalmers music venue Chicks.
Sinfonia marketing manager Pieter du Plessis said about 100 tickets a day were being sold.
Sales were expected to top 1000 by the night of the performance.
The rock/classical crossover was attracting what he described as a ''new audience'' for the sinfonia, with sales to buyers from Auckland, Wellington and Greymouth.
The sinfonia is offering $10 tickets for students.
