MANAGING YOUR OWN MUSIC PUBLISHING:
Practical Help for Composers and Arrangers

Panelists:
Abby North, Jillian Ferguson, Dave Black, and Gregg Nestor
Moderator: Jeannie Gayle Pool.

This panel will discuss issues facing composers and arrangers related to publishing and how to make their music available to a wider audience. Changes in music publishing, recording, and distribution over the last two decades have some composers stymied, but some of the basic principles and business models still hold true. We will offer practical advice and solutions to address some of the problems we currently face (including some “work a-rounds”), and will cover topics such as self-publishing, promotion, marketing, distribution, and music licensing. We have plenty of ideas to share regarding how creative musicians can monetize their years of hard work in order to improve their income stream, and promise to keep the complaints and doomsday scenarios to a minimum.

Wednesday, Sept 6, 2017 

7:00pm Check-In / 7:30pm Program

Abby North is a music publisher and rights administrator working with composers, estates, artists and labels to maximize the revenue of their music catalogs. In addition to working with legacy artists and composers including The Ventures, David Rose, Powell St. John, and Snuff Garrett, Abby manages the catalog of her father-in-law, fifteen-time Academy Award nominee (and the first composer to win a Lifetime Achievement Oscar) Alex North, composer of film scores including “Spartacus,” “Cleopatra,” “Death of A Salesman,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and more. Abby’s production music libraries have recently contributed music to Nightwatch, The Age of Us, Hollywood Medium, Wahlburgers, Donnie Loves Jenny, Killer Kids, Lockup, Nightwatch, TD Jakes Daytime Talk Show and more.

Abby received a BA from UCLA and later completed UCLA Extension’s Film Scoring program led by renowned composer/conductor Don Ray. Although her current focus is rights management, Abby has 20 years of experience working as a composer, producer, sound mixer and music supervisor and she continues to compose production music cues. She is currently music supervising A&E’s two-time Emmy-nominated series Wahlburgers.

Jill Ferguson was born into a gifted, multi-generational musical family, just a year behind older brother, Dan. She studied flute, harp, and voice. Throughout her childhood and teens, Jill sang with The Jimmy Joyce Choir on numerous commercials, specials and TV/Film soundtrack recordings, and continued writing, arranging & singing.

In the 1980’s, Jill worked side by side with her father, Allyn Ferguson, co-founder of ’The Foundation for New American Music’, to commission new American works; and with The Orchestra, helping to contract, manage works, players, sessions, and concerts. Jill served as associate producer with her father on projects, such as Freddie Hubbard ’StudioLive,’ a glimpse inside a ’live’, ’direct to disc’ recording studio with Allyn conducting. The show originally aired on BBC TV in the UK.

Currently, Jill heads up Allyn Ferguson, Inc. as President, striving to protect and preserve the legacy of her father’s numerous TV/Filmscores; compositions, jazz arrangements, and concert works, some never before recorded. Allyn’s foray into the early poetry & jazz movement, with his Chamber Jazz Sextet, and poet Kenneth Patchen, as well as his pop, gospel and jazz arrangements for such greats as Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Mathis, Pointer Sisters, Andrae Crouch, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme, have culminated in thousands of works, when coupled with his hundreds of TV series, specials and Film score cues and compositions.

Dave Black received his Bachelor of Music in percussion performance from California State University, Northridge. A prolific composer and arranger, more than 60 of his compositions and arrangements have been published by most of the major publishers, many of which have been recorded. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, including 26 consecutive ASCAP Popular Composer Awards, and two Grammy participation/nomination certificates–one for his performance contribution on Anita O’Day’s Grammy-nominated album In a Mellow Tone, and the other for his contribution as album-track composer on Louie Bellson’s Grammy-nominated album Airmail Special. In addition, many of his compositions have been used as source/background music on numerous TV shows including All My Children, Coach, The Drew Carey Show, General Hospital, Ellen, Grace Under Fire, Nightline, Roseanne and Good Morning America. In addition, he co-wrote the “Final Rudimental Solo” featured in the 20thCentury Fox hit movie, Drumline.

Dave has been with Alfred Music for 32 years in the capacity of Vice President/Editor-in-in-Chief, School and Pop Publications, and Editor-in-Chief, School Method Strategy.

Gregg Nestor is an internationally-acclaimed guitarist, prolific arranger of solo and ensemble music, excellent accompanist and featured artist on numerous recordings. He was a finalist in the New York Concert Artist Guild Competition at Carnegie Hall. He has recorded and broadcast in Holland, Belgium and Spain, and for the BBC (England). Early on, Gregg developed a great fondness for playing in ensembles. Subsequently, Gregg started to create his own arrangements. To date he has published over 50 of them, including works from famous composers such as Cimarosa, Vivaldi, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann, Schubert, Albeniz, Granados, Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Grieg and Bartok. He has also arranged works by motion picture composers Rozsa, Mancini and Steiner and popular artists such as Scott Joplin.

Now, in collaboration with Clear Note Publishing, Gregg is putting together a very substantial Gregg Nestor Edition of ensemble and solo music for guitar. This is a remarkable collection that will be a festival of music for all manner of ensemble players including singers, violinists, cellists, flautists, oboists, chamber orchestras and, of course, guitarists. There are pieces for all levels of players, from beginners to advanced.

Jeannie Gayle Pool is a composer, filmmaker, musicologist, film music consultant, and producer. In recent years, her compositions have been heard throughout the U.S. and Europe. Her feature-length documentary, Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band, narrated by Lily Tomlin, is screened regularly worldwide. She has composed music for several documentary films and short films. Her music publishing company, Jaygayle Music (ASCAP), publishes the music of Zenobia Powell Perry (1908-2004), among other composers. She is currently digitizing 20 years of radio broadcasts from her award-winning show on KPFK, “Music of the Americas,” for release as podcasts. As a music historian and producer, she served as Exec. Director of the Film Music Society from 1990 to 2002 and lectures and writes frequently on film music history and preservation, contemporary music, and women in music. She has produced numerous recordings for Cambria Master Recordings, and recently produced an album with the African American Composers Initiative (her second for them), at Stanford.

As an independent music consultant for Paramount Pictures from 1995 to 2012, she did the original score restoration forWings (1927) for the studio’s 100^th anniversary celebration; and her book, written with H. Stephen Wright, A Research Guide to Film and Television Music in the United States is used as a graduate textbook in film music history. Her company, Music Legacy Services, assists heirs in documenting and appraising music estates for donation to libraries.