Special Concerts

ANNUAL REPORT

In 2016 the Special Concerts Committee produced four concerts, one festival, two house concerts and one workshop. The festival, New Jersey Uke Fest (NJUK), consisted of two concerts and thirteen workshops.

Taken individually, over the course of the year, over 1000 people attended one of the 10 Special Concerts events (the NJUF is being counted as 3 events). We know that many are repeat clientele.

It took 51 Volunteers on the day of just to run these 10 events. A great BIG Thank You to each and every one of them. A BIG Thanks to all the numerous volunteers who worked behind the scenes doing the not so mundane tasks such as planning, booking, graphics, press releases, publicity, web design, copying flyers, editing, ticketing, and all the other myriad jobs that make these events possible.

Artistically the events were awesome. We brought to The Folk Project stages Celtic music, singer/songwriters, Jazz, Pop, Rock, even some Trad and more Ukuleles than you could shake a stick at. It has been an amazing year musically.

Financially, we did not do as well. If you include the kitchen in the numbers we ended the year just barely in the black with $36, not including Liability and Workers Comp Insurance. Including our share of Liability and Workers Comp Insurance, which was calculated to be $600 for 2016, SC the +$36 becomes -$564 for the year.

Most of the events brought in some positive cash flow. The NJUF was our biggest loss by almost $1000.

A number of factors played into the loss, including: only raising the ticket prices by a small amount over prior years in an attempt to bring prices in line with other similar events; that almost 2 times the expected number of attendees purchased tickets at the early-bird rate; that the performer budget exceeded its projected fees by $1000; and finally that we ended with a small inventory of T-Shirts which cost $428. (If we had sold all the T-Shirts, the NJUF still would have been in the red by almost $400.)

The Committee has one more event in 2016. In two weeks we are presenting the Folk Projects Holiday Concert to benefit the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship. It will be a fun night of song and good cheer featuring; Ken Galipeau, Roia Rafieyan, Barrett Wilson & Frank Sole; Kathy Moser & Diane Perry and Clarum Sonum. The festivities start at 7:00PM.

Committee Members -

Special Concerts: Pam Robinson, Bob Safranek, Olga Alvarez, Fil Wisneski

Uke Fest: Pam Robinson, Fil Wisneski, Bob Safranek, David Codey - additional staff: Deborah Graham, Judy Felton Storey

Pam Robinson

HOUSE CONCERT REPORT

The Lil Rev House Concert and Workshop was a huge success.

Both events were sold out.

Rev made over $900 in attendance and a huge wad of $20s in merchandise.

I estimate four to six hundred.

The Project made $25 as planned.

The party lasted almost 12 hours.

The workshops and concert were great.

The homegrown music was wonderful and occasionally thrilling:

a big sing-along between the workshop and dinner,

and an exciting after-concert jam session with talented newbies and old friends.

Mark Schaffer for the House Concerts portion of Special Concerts Report December 2016