When Comedy Central’s The Daily Show made plans to cover September’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, McNally Smith College of Music and the History Theatre won the bid to host the tapings. Each night, the show began with the phrase, “Coming to you from the History Theatre on the campus of the McNally Smith College of Music,” gaining the school exposure to the show’s 1.8 million viewers each night.
And it probably was the first time most local viewers had heard of the school.
“Locally, if we did a survey of what percentage of people in the greater Twin Cities area really know about McNally Smith College of Music, I think we’d see pretty low numbers—10 percent, maybe 15,” acknowledges Harry Chalmiers, the college’s recently hired president. “Nationally, we’d hardly show up.” But to Chalmiers, this anonymity gives the school an opportunity to carve out a distinctive niche “in the world of education in general, and music education in particular.”
Known until 2005 as Music Tech, McNally Smith is the Upper Midwest’s top higher-education music institution. Whereas most other local music programs—say, at the University of Minnesota—tend to focus on classical music, music instruction, and other more traditional forms of music education, McNally Smith trains students for careers in the music industry—as performers, producers, engineers. It’s part liberal arts school, part vocational college.
The school’s origins were modest and low key. In 1985, Jack McNally (now the school’s chairman of the board) and Doug Smith (vice president) started the Guitar Center of Minneapolis in a second-floor warehouse on Washington Avenue, offering private guitar lessons to 130 students. With $20,000 borrowed from the pair’s personal savings and those of their families, the founders grew the business by reinvesting all profits back into the school. The school steadily added other instruments to its curriculum, then a music business curriculum, and finally degree programs. In 1989, the school changed its name to Musicians Technical Training Center, “Music Tech” for short.
Music Tech grew by 697 percent from 1987 to 1992, landing a spot on Inc. magazine’s Inc. 500 list in 1992. In 2002, it moved to its current location at the former Science Museum of Minnesota site, a multimillion-dollar campus that covers an entire downtown St. Paul block. For the 2007–2008 school year, McNally Smith’s budget totaled more than $10 million; the new school year’s budget is expected to reach $12 million.
Why such growth from such modest beginnings? Very simply, McNally Smith has taken its cue from the ever-evolving nature of the entertainment industry. In a time when artists can get their songs heard through YouTube, iTunes, and MySpace all without a label backing them, learning the business side can be critical in an entrepreneurial performing career.
