Jeff Homer, founder of Ensemble Performing Arts, plays a piano at Dana V Music outside of Denver.
ing small businesses sort of came together in my life in a really happy but accidental way in 2018 when I met a woman who owned a music school [outside of] Denver.” Homer said one trip to Dana V Music and he knew it was something special. “I walked in and just felt the good vibes,” he said. “It was just this warm, welcoming space for students to come and learn music. It’s a fun place to spend time, and it was a great environment for kids, but at the same time, it was obviously a business and it just wasn’t up to modern standards. It was largely a pen-and-paper company at that time, and it wasn’t really taking advantage of the technology and the ways to reach customers in 2018, yet there was a really strong population of students who were there on a weekly basis, and so it was obvious that they were doing something right. It was also obvious that someone with my skill set could come in and could contribute something of value in helping this business provide musical instruction to more students and get music into the lives of more kids in the immediate area of the school.” From that realization, the Ensemble Music Schools brand was born and that first purchase set off what would become a string music store, music school, and, eventually dance
school, purchases across the country that would total some 72 locations in just five years by 2024. These would include well- known industry names, such as Middle C Music in Washington D.C., Creative Music Center in Monroe, Connecticut, and Rick’s Music World in Raynham, Massachusetts. “The idea for Ensemble came from this idea that there would be many music schools and stores out there that would have this exact pattern where they’d be great at providing services and anchoring their community from a music, or later dance, perspective, but they wouldn’t be as focused on the operational side of their business,” Homer explained. “That wouldn’t be what the entrepreneur was interested in. It wouldn’t be their back- ground or their expertise, and so it wouldn’t be done to nearly the same level as what we could provide. So, Ensemble was stood up basically to provide that backend support and allow a school or a store to continue to offer a really great local service, while having the backing of a national company and national infrastructure behind the scenes.” THE EARLY DAYS Just five months after closing on Dana V Music, Homer and Ensemble purchased their
second music school: Brill Music Academy in Las Vegas. “We bought our second store in May 2019, which still sounds very aggressive to me in retrospect,” Homer said. “I think about what that means: We had to get in there [Dana V Music], make the improvements we were hoping to make and see the positive results, then find this other school in Las Vegas that was for sale and transact on it all in about a four-and-a-half-month period. So, I think that speaks to the level of excitement I had around the progress we saw in the first store and the changes we were able to make and the vision that we had for building the busi- ness into something much larger.” When it comes to growing at a quick pace, Homer said it was all thanks to maintaining the business’ current staff to run the day-to- day while using Ensemble’s infrastructure to boost the business into the 21st century. “I partner really closely with the existing administrative team that’s in place — includ- ing at the early stores like Dana V and Brill Music Academy,” Homer said. “Both schools had someone in place who we were confident could do the general manager role and run the day-to-day. What I viewed as being my job was to take on those traditional owner
36 I MUSIC INC. I SEPTEMBER 2024
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