Robert Massey was about 5 when he found his father’s trumpet tucked away in a closet.
That trumpet, which his father taught him to play, was more than a musical instrument to Massey. It became a way for the son of a career Marine to make friends each time the family moved to a new city every three years or so.
“Every time I would finally make a friend, either they would leave or I would leave,” said Massey, who was announced Thursday as the new president and CEO of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra.
But Massey knew he could play trumpet in each new school’s band or an orchestra, which would form the basics of his social network.
Massey, 44, realized as a teenager he wanted to be a professional musician. A couple of years after graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1995, he took a job in Memphis, where his parents had retired.
Soon came a life-changing revelation.
While he was the director of marketing and development for the Germantown Performing Arts Center, the group decided to create its own orchestra.
On opening night, the hall was packed.
At that point, Massey realized he wasn’t going be a professional trumpet player anymore. As much as he loved playing symphonic music, he loved sharing it with people even more.
That career change led him to several jobs in Washington, D.C., and then to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he spent more than six years as executive director of Orchestra Iowa.
The change also got him a second date with a violist who originally wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Benefits of a second date
Massey became the public affairs specialist for “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band.
He tried to get to know a violist in the band, but Lisa Ponton wanted nothing to do with him.
“Every time I went to talk to her, she would get up and leave,” he said.
When she was assigned a concerto with the orchestra at Goucher College, he was named the marketing specialist for that performance.
Ponton passed him in the hall one day and asked how he planned to get people to her concert at the venue well north of Baltimore.
And there he saw an opening for a first date, of sorts.
“I was like, ‘Well, if you have time for dinner one evening, I’d love to run down my ideas,’” he said.
Reluctantly, Ponton agreed.
Massey’s marketing ideas worked and the concert was sold out.
They worked with her, too. Massey got a second date with Ponton. They were married about 18 months later.
His wife is the principal violist with Orchestra Iowa, he said, but won’t join the Jacksonville symphony.
“It’s very difficult to be a couple where one is front of house and one is back of house,” he said. “We look forward to being together at events.”
They’ve been married 11 years, which Massey jokes he remembers because that’s the age of their dog, Tess, a champion West Highland White Terrier.
The couple’s 9-year-old daughter, Elsie, plays piano, but her true passion is animals and wildlife.
“I had to tell her, ‘No, we’re not getting a pet alligator,’” he said.
Navigating floods
In June 2008, Massey began a stint as executive director of the orchestra in Cedar Rapids.
Less than two weeks into that job, the city was devastated by historic floods.
The Paramount Theatre, where the orchestra performed, was under nine feet of water.
The orchestra’s administration building and school were flooded, as well. They lost everything — computers, records, archives. Once the water receded, the mold set in. The renovations were costly and took years.
“We had to put ourselves back together,” Massey said.
The administration found an interesting alternate location for its offices — a former funeral parlor.
“All the equipment and stuff was still there,” he said. “It was a little creepy.”
They shared the space with a community theater, which actually built a stage in the funeral home’s former viewing area and had performances there.
After navigating the lengthy process of insurance and FEMA, the orchestra raised $7 million to rebuild the offices and school.
The city owned the Paramount Theatre and was responsible for its restoration, which has been estimated at $16 million.
Building new audiences
Massey grew the budget in Iowa from $1.5 million to $5 million. About $3.5 million of that was for the orchestra itself. (Jacksonville’s budget is $9 million.)
Growing revenue meant building audiences, which included performing outside Cedar Rapids. Once a program is prepared, he said, if it’s only played once, there is a very low return on the investment. Instead of 10 performances a year, what if you did 18 or 20?
“The more audiences you put that performance in front of, the most efficiencies you have,” he said.
Orchestra Iowa began traveling to other cities, such as Iowa City.
No amount of marketing could get the residents from there to drive 25 miles north to watch the orchestra perform in Cedar Rapids. But, the residents would gladly attend concerts at home.
He’s heard similar thoughts about Jacksonville’s orchestra. In what he called his “hotel and airport interviews,” he talked to a woman from Amelia Island who came to Jacksonville for special performances.
But, she told him, if there was a six-concert subscription series closer to home, her community would definitely attend.
After six years in Cedar Rapids, Massey was ready for a new challenge. A call over the summer brought that possibility.
Ready for new challenge
Massey was contacted by Cathy French, a recruiter hired by the Jacksonville symphony to replace the retiring David Pierson.
The job interested him from the beginning. He liked the fact that the Jacksonville musicians are full-time because they can be more involved in the community engagement, education and artistic outreach programs.
And he was excited about the recent addition of music director Courtney Lewis, whom he described as “dynamic, vibrant and energetic.”
The symphony’s history of financial problems didn’t deter Massey. He had not only stabilized Orchestra Iowa, he had grown it.
After talking to people in Jacksonville, he believes it is possible here, too.
Too often, when a budget is in the red, people decide to cut expenses. Massey disagrees with that philosophy, instead opting to find new revenue streams, build new audiences and find more efficiencies as he did in Iowa.
Massey and his family will be moving to Jacksonville over Christmas break. They’ve rented a house here in the Atlantic and Kernan boulevards area. They’ll buy a house once they sell theirs in Iowa. That isn’t easy to do in the winter, he said, when the pitch to buyers is: “If you look past the ice wall.”
For years, Massey has kept a trumpet under his desk at work. He doesn’t play much anymore. He wants to remember how he sounded when he was with the Boston Symphony and recording with the Boston Pops.
Every now and then, when he is the only person in the office on a Saturday, he might play a bit.
But it mostly stays tucked under the desk. Still a familiar comfort after all these years.
@editormarilyn
(904) 356-2466