By Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
While the administrative offices of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra are filled with music lovers, sometimes it takes more than Tchaikovsky to keep an orchestra running. Sometimes it takes an English major.
Kaye Glover is the new director of development for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Though she is a regular at JSO performances and a big fan of classical music, Glover couldn’t play you three notes on a fiddle. Luckily for the symphony, she is a whiz at fund raising, which is one of her primary responsibilities.
Glover was recently hired to fill the vacancy left by her predecessor Gwen Evans, who stepped down to take a part-time position with the symphony.
“Gwen Evans has done a wonderful job and I am very fortunate to follow in her footsteps,” Glover said.
Though she doesn’t have a background in music (she was an English major at Mercer), Glover does have an extensive background in leadership and fund raising. Over the past several years she has held multiple leadership roles with several local community organizations and committees including the Junior League, the Florida Forum and the Cummer Ball.
Glover said her many years of community leadership is the main reason she was picked for the position.
“I am certainly a fan of the symphony, but I was not hired for having a background in music,” Glover said. “(JSO executive director) Alan Hopper said to me that he could see that I was successful in many different types of situations and as director of development you are often in many different situations. You are not only raising the funds for the symphony, but you are helping with the special events like the opera dinner and the opening night dinner for the board members and the big sponsors.”
It’s good that Glover is a fan of the symphony, however, because another of her duties will be to attend many of the performances to ensure that donors and sponsors are happy with their ticket packages.
Though she has big shoes to fill and a $6 million budget to maintain, Glover said she is fortunate to be working for this particular symphony. Jacksonville is home to one of Florida’s only three full symphonies and one of the more successful symphonies in the nation, she said.
“We are a viable symphony and there are a lot of symphonies closing their doors across the nation,” she said. “We were all the talk at the Association of Symphony Orchestras convention recently because we had the highest increase in ticket sales nationwide.”
Besides swelling ticket sales, Glover said her job is made a little easier thanks to the charitable nature of Jacksonvillians.
“Jacksonville is an incredible city,” she said. “The people in this town have a history of giving and they continue to give. They don’t say ‘I have given once and that is enough.’ They continue to give and that is the only reason we can continue to support an orchestra like this. An orchestra is an expensive endeavor.”