Who It Helps: Lovers of adventurous music; adventurous musicians
Where to Give: www.emitseries.org.
It began as a single avant-garde concert held at the Dali Museum in 1995 and has grown into a music series that presents eight to 12 concerts a year by such fringe artists as Eugene Chadbourne, Sam Rivers, Sex Mob, Evan Parker, the Rova Saxophone Quartet and dozens of others.
Don't recognize the names? You're not alone. They are acts that delve into free improvisation, the avant-garde and other generally out-there disciplines that tend to make mainstream listeners cover their ears.
Still, EMIT, somewhat improbably, has lasted 11 years and shows no signs of folding. "We have very low overhead," says founder/director David Manson, a composer/trombonist/music educator. "Funds go right out to local and visiting artists in terms of concerts and workshops. It was never our goal to have a space, to hire eight staff people. We'd rather just go ahead and be a vehicle to have these concerts of innovative music and creative projects."
When it comes to venues, EMIT has led a bedouin-like existence. Shows and events have been held at various Pinellas venues: the Dali, the Palladium, the Gulf Coast Museum of Fine Art, Java Junction, Studio @ 620 and an array of art galleries, many of them now closed.
EMIT's budget, about $20,000 annually, comes from ticket sales, grants and the occasional charitable gift. The series is never better than a break-even proposition, Manson says, and occasionally board members will lend the organization cash and get paid back from gate receipts after a show.
Manson seems resigned to his fate, but certainly wouldn't mind having a cushion, a small surplus in the event of tough times. Raising the money is difficult, though, because big corporate givers to the arts generally look to larger, established arts organizations.
Clearly, EMIT is one of those arts-for-arts-sake nonprofits that flies low on the cultural radar. Yet it's these very groups that promote adventurous art and a challenging of the status quo that's crucial to progress.
Manson sums it up thus: "I've never felt like we're doing something useless or self-indulgent. The community has a use for what we do. This area really needs to cultivate a better artist base."
This article appears in Nov 16-23, 2005.