| President’s
Corner
 We
pulled it off again!
AMPPR’s
39th annual Music Personnel Conference, February 14th to 17th in Tucson,
Arizona, was a big success. We had stimulating sessions, from Marilyn Pittman
on how to run a useful aircheck session to inside peeks at the latest in
internet radio technology. (See Howard Cornelsen’s article inside for complete
coverage.) There was a lot of terrific music, from the opening reception
performance by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra to closing banquet tuba fireworks
of Patrick Sheridan and the zoot-suited saxophone showstoppers of the Capitol
Quartet. We had a particularly fine hotel this time around, with excellent
service and ambiance. We remembered long-time AMPPR board member and champion
Robert J. Lurtsema with tape and stories and ice cream. And of course we
had lots of good food and drink and lots of opportunities to see old acquaintances,
make new ones, and in general get reconnected and revitalized.
This conference was the big project of my rookie year as AMPPR president,
and it was entirely a team effort. I thanked the board at the conference,
but I want to thank them again here for their unstinting dedication to
this sometimes quixotic-seeming project of putting on a major conference
despite the fact that we all have other real jobs. Thank you! Special thanks
besides go to outgoing board members Karen Walker and Nicola Lubitsch for
their dedicated service to AMPPR, to President Emeritus Beverley Ervine
for helping me so much to settle into the job, to Boyce Lancaster for his
long hours of sound support at the conference, and to our conference planners
Betty Weaver and Sandy Jackson for their unfailing good humor, unflappability,
and awesome competence.
Also on the subject of the board, I took it as a very good sign for the
future vitality of AMPPR that six people put themselves forward as candidates
for two openings on the board. When the votes were tallied we welcomed
back one former board member, Hal Prentice of WKAR in Lansing, Michigan,
and welcomed for the first time new board member Laura Harbert of West
Virginia Public Radio. They are both exciting additions to an already strong
roster.
We are already planning for next year. The 40th (!) annual Music Personnel
Conference will be in Savannah, Georgia, February 13th-16th, 2002. It will
be a gathering of real value to anyone who announces any kind of music,
or who supervises announcers of any kind of music, on a public radio station.
It’s not too early to plan ahead. Make room on a budget line today for
this stimulating total-immersion radio and music experience. Ask anyone
who has been, and they will tell you, it will be money well spent. I hope
to see you there.
Dave
Bunker
President
Copyright
1999-2001 Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio |
