by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The St. Johns River City Band management is taking the City’s official band back to the basics in 2005 after a year spent reviewing as many ledger sheets as sheet music.
An ill-fated foray into downtown real estate plunged the band into seven-figure debt and ended last July with a bailout from the City. The band’s executive and music director, Mike Davis, said the attempt to turn Laura Street’s Snyder Memorial building into a headquarters and music hall was “a dream that didn’t come true.”
Davis hopes to pay off the last remnants of the band’s debt this year through a renewed focus on its most marketable asset: music.
The brass-heavy band’s calling card is a unique ability to mesh musical styles. Any listing of past performances would include outdoor festivals, school classrooms and some of the world’s grandest music halls. After being sidetracked by finances last year, Davis is looking forward to a renewed emphasis on performing.
“My short-term goal is to absolutely have the band operating totally in the black,” said Davis. “The only way we’re going to do that is to choose our performances carefully to make sure they’re going to bring long-range financial support to the band. They have to be investments.”
That means performances will have to pay for themselves or else result in enough publicity to get the band more work. That was the criteria Davis used when he accepted an invitation to perform down the road at the March 12 American Bandmasters Association concert in Gainesville. The standard also forced him to decline an offer to play a music festival in the south of France.
The band was offered free lodging and food for the week-long stay in France. But the $25,000 cost for airfare forced Davis to nix the overseas trip.
“What an opportunity. Free housing, free food, three performances in the south of France. But I’m looking at airfare of $1,100 for 20-30 people and I just said, ‘We can’t do this,” said Davis.
After drowning in red ink in 2004, he says the Band’s balance sheet is poised for a breakthrough to the black in 2005. The performance schedule last year was hamstrung by debt figures that reached $1.5 million, most of it invested in Snyder, the half-renovated music hall. The Band simply didn’t have enough money to perform. Without performances there was no revenue.
Davis knew the climb out of debt would be one of his primary tasks when he took on the role of executive director in November 2003. He felt his prior administrative experience as Band and Orchestra Director for the Walt Disney World Resort had prepared him for the challenge.
Despite that experience, the state of the Band’s books stunned him when he got his first look. The Band’s non-profit status and accompanying board structure meant that changes were slow-moving.
Fifteen months later, the outlook is considerably improved. The Band’s debt has been cut to $75,000, thanks largely to the City’s buyout of Snyder. The City took possession of the former church on Hemming Plaza and about $250,000 in construction liens. The bulk of the Band’s debt disappeared almost overnight.
The Band never made a dent in the original $650,000 loan the City gave it to buy Snyder. But Davis points out most of that money went into renovating a building the City now owns and said the Band was instrumental in lining up about $250,000 in pending State grants for the building.
With the books just about balanced, Davis hopes to keep them there through a more conservative booking strategy. That’s not to say the travel schedule will be all bus trips and no airfare. Given the right opportunity, the band will still travel nationally.
Those opportunities either pay for themselves or raise the band’s profile, leading to other paid performances or funding from sponsors, said Davis. He points to a late-season performance at the Midwest Band Clinic in Chicago last year as an example. That performance drew a standing ovation from an audience that included more than 15,000 conductors from 33 countries and led to an invitation for an upcoming paid performance in Savannah.
“The Midwest Clinic was an investment in the future, and it’s already paid off,” said Davis.
He credited the Chicago performance for the Band’s invitation to play the Gainesville concert for the American Bandmasters Association, a collection of top university conductors. They voted unanimously to invite the St. Johns River City Band.
Davis had another opportunity to present his band nationally when he agreed to sponsor The World’s Largest Concert. The annual event features performances of traditional American music broadcast by PBS to an audience of millions.
The St. Johns River City Band committed $100,000 to the concert, which is produced by the National Association for Music Education. Davis said he’s found donors to cover $60,000 of the cost, and is hoping an encore performance scheduled to coincide with the concert’s March 10, national broadcast spurs enough donations to cover the rest.
The concert brought together members of the St. Johns River City Band with thousands of local children performers from the Jacksonville Childrens Chorus, the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestra and more than 2,000 children from Duval and Clay County schools. The November performance at the Moran Theater was
hosted by Mayor John Peyton and Duval County Supervisor of Schools John Fryer.
The encore performance, also scheduled for the Moran Theater, will feature a screening of the original followed by live performances.
Sponsoring the concert represented a large expenditure for the band, but Davis thinks the national broadcast will create enough fundraising buzz to defray most of the cost. He’s using the concert as the centerpiece of a fundraising campaign.
Building a national reputation also appeals to sponsors, said Davis. Instrument makers like Yamaha have been more willing to write checks when they know their brand is featured nationally, said Davis.
Increased revenue from sponsors is one area where Davis thinks he can improve the Band’s finances and he’s looking for every spare dollar he can find. Sponsors, donations and performance revenue pays for 76 percent of the Band’s $640,000 annual budget. A grant from the State Cultural Council pays for the rest. Davis said fundraising efforts haven’t been hurt by the Band’s past financial troubles.
Davis is satisfied, for now, with the Band’s new headquarters in space in a shopping center on the Arlington Expressway. It might lack the grandeur of Snyder Music Hall, but it’s not chained to a million-dollar debt either.
Davis said he “won’t even consider” buying a new music hall until the Band is on solid financial footing.