Tuesday I got the opportunity to attend the NYMM conference and the morning’s panels and speed talks. Doors opened at 9am, I checked in and got my credentials and then went downstairs for light breakfast and refreshments. I then entered the theater for Welcome and Introductions to find out more about New York Music Month from Pay Swinney Kaufman, Shira Gans, Jack Knott and Judy Tint.
The first panel was a 20 minute chat about the Sony Audio Institute at NYU aka “Jordy and Larry’s Excellent Adventure” with Jordy Freed the head of Brand Development at Sony and Larry Milly an NYU Music Professor and Executive Director of the new Sony Audio Institute of Music. It sounds like they are going to be attempting to do some new and groundbreaking things with sound and I am looking forward to hearing more about that in the future as things start to progress.
Next up Lee Bynum gave us a speed talk about “Why you should care about gender equity in musical theater” where they went into how unbalanced the male to female and non-binary ratio is in musical orchestras and what is being done to try and shift that. Gender equity is always a topic I am interested in hearing about, being a woman in a male dominated field.
Then it seemed like the agenda got switched up a bit and we got another speed talk this time from Danny Ross about Creating the Largest Songwriting Camp in the World – through Anti Social Camp. This seemed like a really cool event and I’m bummed that it seems like the playlist they make of the top songs written at the camp are exclusively on Tidal. But it sounds like a really fun time and includes a lot of fun events.
We then found out why the last minute switch – Taylor Hanson was racing to get to the theater on time and there were worries he would be stuck in DC and not make it to NY. He was joined by Rich Pagano, Syreeta Thompson and NYU Professor Judy Tint to talk about Where the Action Is: Music for Social Change where they talked about different ways music could be used for change – Syreeta helps students who don’t have access to instruments, Rich’s son died of an accidental overdose when he was trying to become a social worker to help others with addiction and now he hosts concerts to help raise money for a foundation started in his son’s honor and all those who have gone through the program have gotten clean, Taylor spoke of his work in Africa with Tom’s Shoes as well as Food on the Move. The panel was a lot more moving than I thought it would be.
The final speed talk before the lunch break was How Artists Data can Make an Impact where Emily White talked about how you can use data to figure out where artists have the most underserved fans or the most fans who aren’t registered to vote so you can gear certain events to certain areas. While this isn’t the sort of band data that’s my thing, it was definitely really interesting and something I intend to look more into.
Then it was time for the lunch break and my time to head home. I ended up bumping into Taylor, Judy and Rich on my way to the elevator and said a quick hello.