Making Musical History
By Francine Russo
In uptown Manhattan during rehearsals for Pan Asian Rep's Cambodia Agonistes, conductor and composer Jack Jarrett, 71, taps a key on his laptop to tweak the tempo for the dancers. Looking bohemian in a black turtleneck and wire-rimmed specs, Jarrett's doing his musical director thing. Back home in Greensboro, N.C., he's got another job--as vice president of R&D for software start-up VirtuosoWorks, Inc.
His off-Broadway gig will mark the first theatrical run of NOTION, the music notation and playback program that his company introduced in April 2005.
How Jarrett, daughter Lori Jarrett (the company's CEO) and son-in-law Ram Sethuraman (director of the company's board) got VirtuosoWorks off the ground could make its own opera--not off-Broadway but offshore. It's a tale about the possibilities and perils of outsourcing. It begins in the 1980s, when Jarrett, a music professor, created MusicPrinter Plus, a program to compose music onscreen and play it back on a synthesizer. He updated his program to eliminate the need for a synthesizer, allowing users to write music, then play and conduct it, all on a laptop. Jarrett's daughter and son-in-law, both technology consultants, thought it a winner. The three partnered to create VirtuosoWorks.
The trio figured if they outsourced--a no-brainer given India's inexpensive software talent and Sethuraman's contacts--development would cost $150,000. Or so they thought. The first Indian company they worked with didn't measure up. India is more focused on business applications than shrink-wrapped software, so they realized they had to run the project themselves. But to do it in Greensboro meant raising $3.2 million. Their business plan was sound, but it was 2001, just after the dotcom bust, and investors weren't buying. Again they looked to India for a solution, but this time resolved to go there themselves. The plan: nine months of development and a mere $600,000 to launch. Borrowing on credit, cashing out retirement plans and selling houses, cars, furniture and clothes, they realized $350,000. In 2003 the three moved to Madras with Lori and Ram's two sons.
They hired brilliant programmers straight out of school. Jack's $1,500-a-month Social Security check covered living expenses for three adults and two children, complete with a cook and driver. Working 12-hour days, they hunted for investors and finally found their angel, an oil company CEO, who put up $600,000 and brought in other investors. After 18 months in India, VirtuosoWorks, Indian staff and all, moved to Greensboro. NOTION, launched last spring, according to Sonic Control magazine, "has the potential to become the first true mass-market music software."
Because NOTION requires only a laptop, possible users include schools and churches that can supplement live musicians with VirtuosoWorks' ready-to-conduct score files. NOTION for PC, out now, represents only 5% of planned offerings through 2006. Without offshore development, VirtuosoWorks wouldn't have got off the ground. Once home, the firm found that its operating costs shot up 92%. But the tiny company, with 33 employees, is poised to meet its year-end projection of $1.3 million in revenues and expects to break even by October 2006. Thanks to India, Lori and Ram have their business, and Jack has his toy. But for now, he's too busy in the theater. "I'd really like to go home and write my own music," he says, "stuff people call passe." Maybe. But VirtuosoWorks sure looks like the future.