FIM

The 100th AFM Convention (Musicians’ Union of US and Canada) took place in Las Vegas (Nevada) from 20 to 25 June 2016.

After a curtain-​raising, high-​flying music evening on 19 June (The Quebe Sisters Band, The Las Vegas Jazz Connection with Tom Bones Malone, Dan Higgins, Marvin Stamm) in the pres­ence of Bennie Thompson (Congress mem­ber), the con­ven­tion gave the floor to sev­er­al speak­ers, in par­tic­u­lar David White (Executive Director, SAG-​AFTRA), Kate Shindle (President, Actors’ Equity), Mike Huppe (President and CEO, SoundExchange), Dan Beck (Music Performance Trust Fund), Dennis Dreith (Executive Director, AFM & SAG-​AFTRA Fund), Benoît Machuel (General Secretary, FIM).

The days were very inter­est­ing and men­tioned cam­paigns cur­rent­ly being car­ried out by the AFM, in par­tic­u­lar Fair Play Fair Pay (remu­ner­a­tion for acts of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic by Hertzian radios), Fair Trade Music (fair con­tracts) as well as pro­vi­sions applic­a­ble since 2015 to air com­pa­nies with regard to trans­port­ing music instru­ments on planes.

The Convention re-​elected International President Ray Hair for a third term of office of three years. Delegates also elect­ed Jay Blumenthal (Secretary-​Treasurer), Bruce Fife (International Vice President), Alan Willaert (Vice President for Canada) as well as the fol­low­ing International Executive Board mem­bers: John Acosta (Local 47, Los Angeles), Tino Gagliardi (Local 802, New York City), Tina Morrison (Local 105, Spokane), Joe Parente (Local 77, Philadelphia) and Dave Pomeroy (Local 257, Nashville).

We wish President Hair and all oth­er mem­bers of the AFM exec­u­tive team every suc­cess for this new term of office.