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One really annoying thing about being back in Australia is that the financial year is a half year out of step with the calender (and pretty much every thing else...) year. For a music ensemble this is a little bit more annoying as you are planning your concert series and stuff by the calender year, whilst all the financial stuff needs to be compiled in the half year. Thankfully, our group is pretty small and I do keep a pretty tight reign on documenting everything as quickly as possible... but it is still a little bit of a weird thing.

Anyway, as we reach the end of this financial year, we start to plan out what is possible from a financial point of view when it comes to committing to our projects for 2025. We did already put in some advance planning at the end of 2023, when we were solidifying our 2024 programming for this year... and that had meant that we needed to postpone one concert that was likely to be more expensive than we wanted to risk due to people travelling from further away... it was quite likely that we could make it, but when official arts funding fell through, it became clear that it was going to be a gamble...

... so, that one got moved back to 2025, and we were going to use our 2024 to buffer up money to be able to spend on that concert.

Fast forward to now... and we are are in a much much healthier financial position than we had expected to be. A couple of large donations, two highly sold chamber concerts, and additional concerts shunting more revenue direct to the ensemble... well, all of that has meant that we would have easily covered the postponed concert! Sigh... well, there is a reason why we are in this position... and that is by being conservative and not over-reaching!

But with that additional buffer, we are likely to invite an extra player for our third main concert... we had already expanded it by one player, but there is a possibility to have another really top-class world player to join us, and it would be a bit foolish to let that opportunity slip by!

However, it is quite likely that our last concert of the year will stay in the same formation. It was already going to be one of the larger ones though... the largest of 2024 now that the other one had been postponed.

We had also floated an idea that we would have a sort of training/education weekend... and it might be possible to do that now. We might have to go a little smaller than we had originally intended (again, no funding this time around...)... but we do have the capacity for it, and it is something that we want to continue through to following years.

So, it appears that we will finish this financial year in a much stronger position than we had expected... and that does give us a bit more leeway to be a little bit riskier with our ensemble compositions for 2025. A very pleasant surprise situation to be in... but again, the temptation is to over-reach...

... for instance, we already pay a pretty competitive fee for our guest artists... and the temptation is to raise that a bit, or to include other things... but there is no guarantee that we would be able to keep up that amount of burn indefinitely... so, whilst there is a good buffer, we probably shouldn't burn it in a way that is not long-term sustainable until we know roughly how reliable our yearly revenue is going to be!

Basically, after talking to our "treasurer"... aka, my wife. We did decide that it is probably prudent to not expect that our current good-fortune and revenue is an ongoing thing until it is more solidified as a real trend. Play it safe, don't over-reach and continue as we have been.... and hope that things are really actually looking up!

... and now, to get the accounts in order so that I can compile the reports. Sigh.... I just want to play music!

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