Cue music: the Brevard County-based Space Coast Symphony Orchestra is back with a full schedule in Vero.
After being $100,000 in the hole at one point in its brief history, the Brevard-based orchestra embarks on its sixth season having survived its growing pains and financial pitfalls, says artistic director and founder Aaron Collins. And after slashing its Vero season last year, it is planning a full schedule in Vero for the 2014-15 season.
Sunday, the group performs its annual Film Music Spectacular, a concert of film scores complete with movie clips as backdrop, and the action will be taking place in its new permanent home in Vero: the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center.
After bouncing from various venues in its satellite Vero series, the orchestra has reached a deal with the high school to use its ample – and excellent – facility for all of its upcoming performances, at least for the foreseeable future.
“We’re really excited about it,” says Collins. “We have room to grow in Vero. “Last year, we kind of cut out Vero for a lot of concerts. We were losing money in Vero Beach. We’ve never had any idea how many concerts we can do reasonably and I think we finally found the secret formula this past season.”
This year, in the 2014-15 season, with a better financial deal arranged with the high school for doing all its shows there instead of just a few, people can know where to expect the concerts. Profits should be easier to come by, Collins believes.
In prior years, the orchestra, which ranges in size from 35 to 70 players, has performed at Community Church, Trinity Episcopal Church, the Emerson Center, St. Edward’s School, and VAPA, as the Vero High theater is called.
Fees for those venues varied by as much as 400 percent. This year, VAPA which many say is the best space in town for orchestras, offered its 1,000-seat facility for less than the others. “They’ve been really amazing,” says Collins. “The audience loves to have us there.”
The benefits aren’t all one-way. “We’re hoping to do some side-by-side concerts with their orchestra, with our musicians spending the day with the students.”
He says some of his musicians are already teaching Vero high school students privately. And the school’s orchestra teacher Matt Stott, a violinist, has subbed in two Space Coast concerts.
Collins, who began the musical group at the tender age of 24, has a mellowed wisdom to his voice these days, in stark contrast to the boundlessly ambitious optimism that characterized his early years.
“We’ve smartened up,” says Collins, now 31.
His judiciousness has brought the group into the black for the first time, he says, after nearly hitting rock bottom last season. Revenues fell to the point in early 2013 where he couldn’t pay his musicians. Now for the first time, he is even paying himself.
“I wasn’t paid for five years,” he says. “It was tough. It was really hard. There was one point when I wanted to give up, when we were four or five concerts behind in paying the musicians.”
That was in January of last year. Then, things turned around and beginning in July 2013, the organization began turning a profit with every concert. Prior, there were some profitable concerts, “but never a string of them,” Collins says.
In addition to paying its leader, the group has hired a development director to handle donors and sponsors.
Since then, ad sales in programs have increased dramatically, he says. “Last year, our program had 10 or 11 ads. Now we have 50 to 100. That’s helped us out greatly.”
There is also a communications director for the first time to place ads for the concerts.
State grants contribute another $6,000 or $7,000, though last year, with no one to apply for the grants, none was written. “The grant cycle is two years. The only year we didn’t get it was the year we didn’t apply,” he says. “We made sure we have all those areas covered now.”
The orchestra has relied on ticket sales alone to cover the orchestra’s $225,000 annual budget. Now, Space Coast has streamlined its schedule to rein in costs, shaving off four of its major concerts a year.
“At our maximum, we were doing three or four in a month,” he says, referring to the concerts in Brevard County.
The tenor of the music has also shifted to more familiar, more popular music. “Rather than doing masterworks, we’ve integrated more pops into the programs and more money-making projects that appeal to a wider audience and that are also cheaper to produce,” he says.
“When I was programming a lot of new music, there were concerts that didn’t quite appeal to everybody. There might be a Pulitzer-prize winning piece of music, but when people see ‘Colored Fields,’ they don’t know the name of the piece. If you call a concert ‘Beethoven’s Fifth’ they go, Oh, I know what ‘Beethoven’s Fifth’ is.”
As for the musicians, Collins says most have stuck by him and are still performing with Space Coast. “They’re all very pleased and excited about the program.”
He says Space Coast performs a wider range of music than any other group in Florida. “And we give them the most opportunity,” meaning, the most work.
Three-quarters of the group come from Orlando and elsewhere in Florida. Only a quarter live in Brevard County, which includes Palm Bay, Melbourne, Viera and Cocoa Beach.
Unlike Vero’s Atlantic Classic Orchestra and church-based musical groups that perform from January through April, Space Coast performs year-round, with its season beginning in June.
Last year, the group performed 16 major concerts and 30 smaller chamber concerts in Brevard. This year, it expects to offer 17 concerts, along with the chamber series. Nine concerts are scheduled for Vero Beach.
Space Coast entered the rich Vero music scene in mid-2009, ruffling the feathers of some established musical groups who compete for audiences in the small town. Its first performance was at Community Church, home base for the Indian River Symphonic Association, which brings in touring orchestras as well as the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, the upstart Space Coast’s closest competitor.
“We knew that wasn’t going to last long,” says Collins.
Next, the group moved to Trinity Episcopal Church. “They were concerned with some of our programming, like jazz. When it was clear they weren’t too thrilled, we partnered with Emerson Center for our jazz series.” That split-venue arrangement lasted for two years, until Trinity’s new minister moved to have in-house performances only, Collins says.
Meanwhile, Space Coast held a scattering of concerts at St. Ed’s Waxlax Center as well as at VAPA.
Now, people can know in advance that Space Coast’s Vero home is VAPA.
“There’s new energy in the orchestra,” he says. “We have new board members, new volunteers and new employees. We’re debt-free and rocking it.”