Hawaii Public Radio’s music director Alan Bunin, 49, died of a heart attack in Tucson on February 17. Services were held in Honolulu on Sunday, February 25.

Alan had been with Hawaii Public Radio for ten years. He hosted several programs including “Morning Café,” “Morning Concert,” and “Tune-in with Bunin,” a program devoted to one of his passions, contemporary compositions. He had attended music personnel conferences for many years and was a familiar face and personality to all of us. We are grateful for his support of music on public radio, and we will miss him very much.

The one-day AMPPR announcer workshop held at KUAT-FM in Tucson on the opening day of the Music Personnel Conference was “excellent,” “a day well spent,” a “great experience,” and “very inspiring,” according to participants. Voice coach Marilyn Pittman led the all-day session energetically, leaving some members of the group regretting that eight hours were not enough time to take full advantage of all the workshop had to offer. Feedback from the attendees was constructive, and future workshops will reflect some suggested changes.

The next announcer workshops will be held at KUOW in Seattle on May 14 and 15—two one-day workshops held along with the 2001 PRC. 

Two more one-day workshops will be held at WBJC in Baltimore on September 11 and 12, in conjunction with the PRPD.

MPC 40 will be held in Savannah, February 13-16, 2002. A workshop day is planned, and details will be announced. Watch the AMPPR listserv and the web site at amppr.org for details.

Since 1998 our conference planning company, The Conference Group, has been responsible for organizing Music Personnel Conferences. Under Betty Weaver’s direction, The Conference Group has seen to our hotel arrangements, the registration process, and the care of attendees.

At the Tucson conference Betty announced that this would be her last AMPPR conference, but that she is leaving future AMPPR conferences in the able hands of her colleagues, Joanie Purvis and Sandy Jackson.

We will miss Betty very much, but she goes with our grateful thanks for helping to make our conferences so successful. We wish her the best retirement anyone could have.

Thanks to our presenters, exhibitors, artists, and attendees for contributing to the success of the conference. Special thanks to our sponsors for making MPC 39 possible: