Noontime Concerts

Noontime is a presenter of free mid-day concerts of high quality classical music at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco’s Financial District. The concerts primarily feature both local and touring soloists and chamber groups and attract a mix of downtown office workers, tourists and elderly classical music aficionados. Under the leadership of executive director James Ritell the small budget organization has managed to attract a consistent roster of impressive artists, establish a strong relationship with the Catholic diocese and the leadership of St. Mary's and, in response to concerns raised by Hewlett program staff in the past, build up a relatively healthy cash reserve. Nevertheless, the audiences that Noontime reaches are very small, the organization has not succeeded in developing and implementing plans to boost its marketing efforts, and now that Noontime has settled into a groove and organizational budget size of less than $200,000 a year it can continue to pursue its mission as it sees fit with support from individual donors and relatively small project grants from local and corporate arts funders, thus this grant is recommended as a tie-off.