Tag Archives: international musician

International Musician, Recent News

CWA Asks Corporations to Make Worker Pay Pledge

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has asked companies where its members work (Verizon, AT&T, and six others) to pledge in writing that they will increase employee pay if Congress cuts corporate taxes. Specifically, CWA has asked for them to commit to giving workers a $4,000 raise for every year that the corporate rate is reduced to 20%.

“We are going straight to the people who know how corporations plan to spend the billions of dollars being handed over to them—the CEOs—and asking them if they intend to keep the promises that Trump is making on their behalf,” says CWA President Chris Shelton.

The Trump administration has claimed that, if the corporate tax rate were cut from 35% to 20%, a typical American would make $4,000 more per year. No companies were willing to make the pledge.

International Musician, Recent News

More Workers Financially Stressed

According to the 2017 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey released in late November by Willis Towers Watson, only about a third of all US employees are satisfied with their financial situation. The results demonstrate a reversal from improvements in employee attitudes since 2009.

Of the 4,983 participants surveyed in July and August, 59% say they worry about their future financial state, compared to 49% just two years ago.

A growing proportion, 34%, say current financial concerns—stagnate wages, health care costs, and the erosion of pension plan coverage—are negatively affecting their lives and ability to do their best work.

Seven out of 10 report high or above average stress levels and 30% describe their health as poor. In contract, those who have no money problems were in very good health (55%) or good health (35%), with just 5% reporting high stress.

International Musician, Recent News

FCC Chair Pushes to End Net Neutrality

At the Federal Communications Commission meeting being held on December 14th, FCC Chair Ajit Pai is expected to seek the repeal of almost all of the agency’s net neutrality regulations.

Current net neutrality regulations ensure that all web traffic is treated equally, effectively preventing Internet providers like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon from blocking or throttling traffic. Public interest groups and Democratic lawmakers are sounding the alarm. Fight for Future is planning a protest at Verizon stores on December 7.

Support net neutrality by signing this petition.

International Musician, Recent News

College Instructors Suspended Following Strike

Four instructors from La Cité Collégiale’s respiratory therapy program were suspended for “insubordination” after asserting that they would be unable to squeeze the remaining year’s material into the condensed school calendar following the five-week strike.

The francophone instructors were asked to sign a document guaranteeing the students would complete the necessary competencies to finish school by the end of April. The instructors refused to sign the contract worrying about the ethical parameters of licensing possibly unprepared respiratory therapists who could be faced with life-or-death situations.

Even with adjustments to the school calendar, the 77 students would be missing three full weeks of instruction. Following the suspensions, the school brought in two respiratory therapy clinicians and a consultant as instructors.

International Musician, Recent News

CISAC Global Royalty Collections Top $10 billion

In November, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) has announced annual royalty collections of €9.2 billion ($10.1 billion).

This represents a 6% increase for the organization that represents 239 creators’ societies in 121 countries. There was a 52% increase in digital revenues. However, CISAC President Jean-Michel Jarre said that, even with this growth, collections are nowhere near the level where they should be. “Large industries that use creative content are driving down the value of our works. A simple illustration of this is the ‘transfer of value’ in the digital market where platforms such as YouTube are paying mere crumbs to authors,” he says.

International Musician, Recent News

Cabaret Law Abolished After 91 Years

At the end of November, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation that will repeal the 91-year-old “cabaret” law that nightclub owners, performers, and the AFM have tried to eliminate since its inception.

The antiquated law prohibited dancing in bars and restaurants that did not possess a cabaret license and were originally created to curb speakeasies during Prohibition.

The law had long faced challenges and complaints about its uneven and discriminatory enforcement. All aspects of the law were repealed except for two safety requirements. Establishments must install and maintain security cameras, and if they employ security guards, they must be licensed.

“We want to be a city where people can work hard, and enjoy the city’s nightlife without arcane bans on dancing,” says de Blasio.

International Musician, Member Profiles

Daryl Davis: A Life Driven by Harmony, On Stage and Off

When Daryl Davis of Local 161-710 (Washington, DC) was 15, he did what some people say you should never to do: he met his hero after sneaking backstage at a Chuck Berry concert.

Davis was always enamored with the blues and early rock ‘n’ roll icons, especially Berry. A child to two parents in the Foreign Service, he experienced the cultural lag of listening to international radio. “While my peers were growing up with Frankie Avalon and the Beach Boys, I was hearing Elvis Presley [and] Chuck Berry. I was kind of an anomaly when I would come back,” says Davis.

A self-taught guitarist and pianist, Davis copied the piano playing from Berry’s songs on the radio. He studied music in the library for hours, and sat in with local bands at gigs. When considering a career path in his junior year, Davis looked to Berry. What Davis really admired was how Berry touched people and brought them joy and happiness. “I decided that’s what I want to do,” says Davis. After his senior year, he enrolled in Howard University to study music.

Though his dream of someday playing with Berry seemed improbable, Davis began writing him letters. “I told him I was learning to play piano like Johnnie Johnson and Pinetop Perkins; I told him everything about me,” says Davis. Berry never wrote back until Davis’s 18th birthday when he got a message from Berry and a poster of the rock icon.

Pianist, author, and lecturer Daryl Davis of Local 161-710 (Washington, DC) has built his life around the promotion of racial and musical harmony.

Shortly after graduating from Howard, Davis joined the AFM and convinced a promoter to let him play piano and hire the backing band for a Baltimore Chuck Berry concert in 1981. At age 22, Davis achieved his dream.

“I went to his dressing room [before the show] and asked, ‘Is there anything in particular you want me to do on the piano’ and he said, ‘Well, you wrote in your letters you’ve been playing like Johnnie Johnson and Pinetop Perkins. Do that,’” recalls Davis.

From that day, Berry became a mentor and friend. Eventually, Davis acted as bandleader for Berry’s East Coast shows. “I learned a great deal, not only about music, but about life,” says Davis. “He was a shrewd businessman and I avoided some of the pitfalls that a lot of musicians fall into. He spent a lot of time with me and that’s certainly shaped who I am today.”

Thanks in part to that wisdom, Davis built an impressive career as a respected boogie-woogie and blues pianist. He has played with the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll and blues, including B.B. King, Bo Didley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Percy Sledge. He was heralded by mentors Johnnie Johnson and Pinetop Perkins for his ability to master a style of music popularized a generation before he was born.

Another key to his success was his union membership. “It’s benefitted me by being around other professional musicians—networking, getting legal advice, and contract advice. I’ve met a lot of wonderful people, serious musicians that I can call and rely upon,” he says. “It’s also a comfort knowing that there is a union that will fight for me and provide me things that I need to further my career.”

Davis also acts as artistic director for multiple groups across the country. When he’s not working, he mentors young musicians in the Artist in Residency (AIR) program at the Strathmore Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. The program teaches them about the business, including self-promotion, contracts, and booking agents.

Davis says it’s a way to give back. “[My mentors] could have easily said, ‘Don’t bother me; go learn somewhere else.’ But they sat down and showed me stuff,” he says, “and that inspires me to do the same thing for young musicians who are in the place I was some 55 years ago.”

To Davis, it means a great deal to the pass down the legacy of the music as well. Last year, he was asked to write and produce a play about the history of the blues to be shown to all fifth graders from Montgomery County School District in Maryland. “It’s important to learn the history of American music, and the blues is definitely underrated and under-taught, especially in elementary schools,” he says. “[Black musicians] have always been under-credited with the musical contributions we have made to this country. Almost every form of American music has some roots in blues, which was born out of slavery,” says Davis.

The history of blues and its roots in slavery are not overlooked when Davis talks about his decades-long mission to promote racial harmony, which has brought him face to face with white supremacists. It all began following a gig at an all-white country bar. A man came up to Davis and said that this was the first time he’d ever heard a black man play like Jerry Lee Lewis.

“He invited me to his table to have a drink,” Davis says, who explained to the man that the roots of Lewis’s music were black musicians. “The man said it was the first time he ever sat down and had a drink with a black man. I was naïve, so I kept asking why. He told me, ‘I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan,’ and when I started laughing, he produced his membership card.”

This encounter sparked Davis to seek the answer to a question that had been on his mind since childhood: How could you hate me, without even knowing me? Davis figured the best way to answer that was to get face-to-face with Klansmen and ask. He has spent around 30 years studying the Klan, attending rallies, and setting up surprise meetings with Klan leaders who were unaware of his skin color.

Not every interaction was as amiable as sharing a drink. He calls to mind an incident at a courthouse where a group of Klansmen and women assaulted him before law enforcement intervened. Eventually he published the book Klan-Destine Relationships about his experiences.

However, Davis was welcomed by many Klansmen, in part through his music. He even played piano at a Klan funeral for Frank Ancona, former Imperial Wizard of the Traditionalist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, whom he considered a friend. Davis says that 200 Klansmen have given up their robes after talking to him.

Though Davis is an in-demand lecturer on race relations, he has also faced backlash from those who believe his methods are “politically incorrect.” “People will criticize me and call me a sellout. It’s not that I support [racist] ideology. I support people’s right to speak their mind. I’m willing to sit down and listen to them and talk,” Davis says.

He believes dialogue is essential to improving modern race relations; there is no other choice. “If you and I agree racism is bad, then we don’t accomplish anything by talking to each other. We have to go out and find those that disagree with us,” he says.

For Davis, all his efforts on stage and off come down to the pursuit of harmony. “It is my job as a band leader to bring harmony among the voices on my stage,” he says. “When I step off the bandstand, I maintain that concept. I want to bring harmony among the people in the society that I want to live in.”

 

How do you connect with your community? Is there a cause that you support? Tell us about it. Please write to International Musician managing editor at: cyurco@sfm.org

Improvisation
International Musician, Member Profiles

Creating a Bridge to Improvisation

Krista Seddon of Local 92 (Buffalo, NY) is a pianist and composer whose modern arrangement of Johannes Brahms’ “Lullaby” was selected for Buffalo’s new John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, which opened in November. The hospital launched a contest for a new rendition of the old masterpiece, which is heard each time a baby is born. Her arrangement has a distinctively jazzy feel. “My objective was to take something so pure and beautiful as the Brahms’ ‘Lullaby,’ and respecting it fully, bring it into the 21st century,” she says. “It was a challenge.”

Improvisation

Krista Seddon’s arrangement of Johannes Brahms’ “Lullaby” was selected as the official recording for the maternity floor at Buffalo’s new Oishei Children’s Hospital. She is a member of Local 92 (Buffalo, NY).

A classically trained pianist with degrees from The New England Conservatory and the University of North Texas, Seddon has had a long affiliation with the Buffalo Philharmonic that includes recordings and solo performances. The Director of Ensembles at the historic Trinity Episcopal Church of Buffalo, Seddon regularly conducts dual lecture performances at schools and universities. In addition, she often collaborates with Alan Broadbent and Robert Nowak, members of Local 802 (New York City), and previously, she transcribed works for the late jazz pianist Marian McPartland.

Next year, in honor of what would have been McPartland’s 100th birthday, Seddon plans a tribute lecture tour performing McPartland’s signature portraits of artists and discussing their 10-year collaboration. Seddon’s work with McPartland included transcribing the portaits.

“I’ve always believed in totality, a universality of music. It’s a good thing for musicians to be able to improvise—and there are different ways to go about it, not only through standards, but through composing. That is Marian’s influence on me,” she says.

“Jazz is the thing that encouraged me to compose,” Seddon says, “It doesn’t have to be large scale or follow strict rules. In jazz, we’re composing more to improvise.” In her own music portrait series, Seddon takes the audiences on a journey into the lives and work of the world’s major composers, exploring the connections between classical music and jazz.

Great jazz musicians—McPartland, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, and Duke Ellington—drew heavily on classical music, she says. “Historically, in classical and Baroque—they all improvised, especially in the Baroque era. Improvisation was required, if you were to be considered a musician of any kind.”

Ideally, Seddon says, jazz techniques to support classical players could be taught and incorporated into university music departments. “I use jazz extensively,” she says. “For example, taking a big classical composition and making it into a lead sheet with just melody and chords. Instead of 20 pages of complicated music, you can boil it down to its essence. It’s the difference between reciting and telling a story.”

The strict theoretical confines of classical music restrict improvisation. She says, “I like to decode that for people, especially for classical musicians because we have so much in our toolbox. It’s a natural progression—to grow out of the classical training and take it to other places.”

There are other benefits to learning improvisation skills. Seddon explains, “If during a classical performance, a musician gets off track somehow, instead of crashing and burning, with some improvisation techniques, there is space to find your way back. Jazz teaches us to get real with the music.”

“Classical musicians tell me, ‘I wish I could improvise. Would you teach me?’ Music of the day should be flexible, improvised over, and shared with people. It’s how I live my life. I hope to teach that and bring it to a wider  audience,” she says.

Seddon is in process of recording a CD of mainly original compositions.

How do you connect with your community? Is there a cause that you support? Tell us about it. Please write to International Musician managing editor at: cyurco@sfm.org

International Musician, Member Profiles

Trumpeter Goes the Distance for Charity

Roy Wiegand’s career has crossed nearly four decades—and of late, many finish lines. For the last eight years, the Los Angeles-based trumpeter turned ultra-runner has taken on solo challenges in support of local and global charities.

Trumpeter

A busy freelancer in the LA area, Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) member Roy Wiegand’s passion for running charity ulta-marathons can sometimes have him running from race to gig.

Wiegand of Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) first collaborated with Lifewater International, a nonprofit organization that builds wells for remote villages in East Africa and Southeast Asia. In an ultra-marathon in 2013, in which he ran 250 miles over a week, he received a hero’s welcome after finishing at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Stopping at a couple of elementary schools along the way, he says, “I had a bottle of brown water from a village in Ethiopia to show people. Those kids sold cookies and brownies for a month before the run to raise money for other kids in Ethiopia.” He raised $25,000 over four years. “The disease rate had dropped 93%. Now, they can actually wash their hands.” According to Wiegand, “Between digging and maintaining the well it costs $40, which provides a lifetime of clean water per person.”

In June, for the Michael Hoefflin Foundation—a local organization for families with children fighting cancer—Wiegand ran the equivalent of four marathons in 24 hours (approximately 105 miles). He’s raised $40,000 for the organization. Roy’s Run for Christopher, now in its fifth year, is named for the 12-year-old friend of his son who died of a rare cancer.

Though Wiegand started running late in life, in his 40s, he says being a brass player pays off. “I’ve got lung capacity—and can run long distances without getting tired,” adding that it’s his colleagues who are all heart. The LA music community and the union serve him well on the trail. “Many musicians donate financially or with their music, or coming out and bicycling beside me.” During the grueling 24-hour  runs, whether it’s encouragement on the sidelines, supplying water, or a place to sit down, Wiegand is grateful for the support of his Local 47 friends. “It’s definitely not a one-man show. When you’re running through the dead of night, it’s good to have company.” One year, he says, there was a brass quintet to usher him over the finish line.

A few years back, the night before the LA marathon, he had a gig that went overtime. “I dropped off my trumpet and tux at the finish, ran the marathon—and actually, did my best time—took a nap, put on my tux, and played the next gig.” Laughing he says, “It’s typical of a freelance player who’s always trying to shoehorn in work or running wherever they can.”

Live club dates are his mainstay, but in his spare time Wiegand is a private music instructor who also coaches a high school jazz band. “Sometimes, it’s hard for parents to wrap their heads around music or the performing arts as a major and a potential career. It’s a leap of faith,” he says.

It was not much of a stretch for Wiegand whose father, Roy Wiegand, Jr., of Local 47, is a trombonist who played around the country in Stan Kenton’s and Woody Herman’s orchestras. The family moved around a bit, with stops in New York City, Miami, New Orleans, and Las Vegas. Wiegand showed prodigious talent at age seven and was naturally drawn to brass. He says his dad’s only seeming objection to his career choice was, “The trumpet, not the trombone?”

Wiegand moved to Los Angeles after high school and attended Los Angeles City College. After a year, though, he started getting calls to go out on the road. “Being paid to play was too strong a lure,” he says. “Plus, years ago, there was a lot of work out there.” He’s a versatile session musician, who plays jazz, classical, klezmer, bebop, mariachi, Dixieland, even salsa. He is also principal trumpet for the Desert Symphony in Palm Springs, California.

Trumpeter

(L to R) Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) members Angela Wiegand and Roy Wiegand, and their daughter Sophie, pose for a photo midway through his 105-mile run to benefit the Michael Hoefflin Foundation for children’s cancer.

In 1997, a unique opportunity came up. After a symphony performance, he heard that The Who needed brass players for a revival of their 1973 rock opera, Quadrophenia. “A guitarist whose wife was a bassoonist in an orchestra I played with got the call for brass players. She happened to be near the phone and said, ‘Give them Roy’s number.’” Wiegand says. That call led to a year-long tour that took him around the US and throughout Europe.

This past September, 20 years to the day, he played again with The Who at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. “It was a reunion of sorts,” says Wiegand, who was joined on stage by his wife, Angela Wiegand, a Local 47 member and flutist for the Los Angeles Opera. 

One of Wiegand’s regular gigs these days is performing with the band, Jack Mack and the Heart Attack, a longtime LA rock and soul band. In between concerts, he is planning his next charity initiative, collaborating with Shelter to Soldier, a nonprofit that adopts dogs from local shelters and trains them to become psychiatric service dogs for combat veterans dealing with PTSD and other challenges. Their mission is: “Saving lives, two at a time.”

How do you connect with your community? Is there a cause that you support? Tell us about it. Please write to International Musician managing editor at: cyurco@sfm.org

International Musician, Legislative Update

Federal Government Tax Reform: What It Means for You

The Republican-led Congress and administration have now embarked on a debate over another feature piece of legislation promised during the 2016 campaign: tax reform. At this writing, the Republican-led House of Representatives has introduced its far reaching reform proposal, which it claims focuses on a tax savings for middle-class Americans. Along with White House regulatory reforms, the House says the bill will provide tax savings and incentives for American businesses, especially those with overseas or offshore operations.

Working alongside the majority party in Congress, the White House is expecting delivery of a complete tax package to the President’s desk before Christmas. The steady grind of the legislative machine in both the US House and Senate since the end of the August recess may drive this package through (loopholes and all), especially if the House and Senate can make a final deal with disgruntled Republicans and some nationally recognized outside groups like the Mortgage Bankers Association, national real estate organizations, and others who are on the fence.

Though the philosophy of the majority party is to move this process through before too many stakeholders weigh in, there are those who believe that the package as written, containing a limit on interest deductions for new home purchases of $500,000 or more and an expansion of the standard deduction (as outlined in a November 3 New York Times article), is a losing proposition, too difficult to sell to their constituents. In the same New York Times article, others, including Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation and the independent Tax Foundation, find that America’s highest earners would receive at least twice the tax cut that middle-class workers would get, as a percentage of their income.

Democrats, along with other outside groups who sit in opposition to the package, say that the plan is not well thought-out and is moving too quickly. It will harm, not help, middle-class Americans because it will raise taxes. Meanwhile, it will eliminate some much sought-after and expected annual tax staples such as state and local tax write-offs (businesses will continue to be able to deduct state and local taxes incurred in the conduct of a trade or business) and House reductions in the mortgage interest cap. Also, it will use funds from the elimination of important programs, such as the CHIP and state Medicaid Expansion, which were put in place to help middle-class Americans. Opponents say this, along with other loopholes, is all to help pay for a tax reform package designed to help wealthy taxpayers.

Concerns for Members

A look at the tax reform package reveals some issues—changes for the average American and for musicians and others in the media and entertainment fields.

The House Ways and Means Committee, the committee that oversees the drafting and implementation of tax legislation, has outlined what the new tax law does. You can read the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at https://waysandmeans.house.gov/taxreform/. The committee states that the bill:

Lowers individual tax rates for low- and middle-income Americans

Eliminates special-interest deductions

Establishes a new Family Credit, which includes expanding the Child Tax Credit

Reduces the tax rate on the hard-earned business income of Main Street job creators

Significantly increases the standard deduction

Takes action to support American families

Preserves the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit

Lowers the corporate tax rate to 20%

Opposition forces say that the bill falls short of all these goals and leaves the average American subsidizing proposals that only benefit the rich.

Yeh Shen of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA) states, “Under GOP’s tax plan, all of the necessary costs associated with maintaining a freelance career and professional activities are not tax deductible, if players continue to be paid as W-2 wage [earners].”

Winners v. Losers

But, who are the winners and losers? An article from The Hill  describes who stands to gain and who stands to lose. Here’s a summary:

Winners—Corporations will see their tax rate go down from 35% to 20%. Companies would be allowed to deduct the full costs of buying new equipment for five years. And businesses that had been keeping profits overseas to avoid the 35% tax rate would be able to bring the money back, or repatriate to the US, and pay only a 12% tax for cash assets. Major business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers back provisions to lower rates for businesses, in order to move to a “territorial” tax system that exempts dividends from companies’ foreign subsidiaries and to enhance expensing of capital investments.

Super wealthy individuals will keep the top tax rate in place, but they have a lot to gain from the bill.  First off, the income tax bracket thresholds increase, which will accrue savings at the top. Second, the bill would double the limit on the estate tax and then phase it out altogether. Currently, the estate tax only applies to estates of $5.5 million or more, and twice that for couples. The bill would immediately double that, giving tax shelter to anyone with an estate between $5.5 million and $11 million (or, again, double those amounts for couples). After a few years, the tax would be eliminated altogether, meaning that the very wealthiest in the country could receive their inheritances tax-free. Third, the plan would lower the taxation rates of “pass-through” corporations, or S-corps, to 25%, allowing certain business owners to claim part of their income at the lower rate. Fourth, it would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which was intended to create a floor on tax exemptions.

Losers—Blue states, the budget deficit, universities, homeowners, and nonprofit organizations.   

House v. Senate Bills

As for House and Senate bill comparisons, Sarah Babbage from Blumberg outlines direct differences in the bills. You can read her analysis at: https://about.bgov.com/blog/bgov-onpoint-comparing-house-senate-tax-bills/.

For musicians, the tax plan in its earliest form hit on two issues that would have directly impacted artists and their supporting institutions. The first was a provision in the code that provided the time and manner rules for electing capital asset treatment for certain self-created musical works. The original temporary regulatory proposal was published in the Federal Register February 8, 2008. No comments appeared in response of the proposed rulemaking and no request for a public hearing was received. The Treasury then decided to adopt the proposed regulation with some minor changes. However, on November 6, 2017, the provision was removed from the Ways and Means Manager’s Report. The Manager’s Report would have allowed a taxpayer to treat the sale or exchange of a musical composition or a copyright of their personal musical work as a capital gain or loss.

Secondly, the House bill eliminates certain language referring to business entertainment write-offs. This could mean fewer business professionals using theater, restaurant, and other performance venues as write-off activities for their clients. Section 3307 entitled “Entertainment, etc. Expenses,” denies a business deduction for entertainment, amusement, recreation, and other fringe benefits in the media and entertainment industry to embrace or entice business partners. The provision goes on to say: “No deduction otherwise allowable under this chapter shall be allowed for amounts paid or incurred for any of the following items … this may impact any entertainment, amusement, or recreation activity; membership dues; amenities not directly related to the taxpayers trade or business; or on-premise athletic facilities, not related to a trade or business.” 

The Senate bill, introduced November 14, is currently under debate. We must consider that, at this writing, the House bill is still under consideration and the Senate bill, though just introduced, has additional changes. No new policy is set in stone until the chamber has a final vote on it. However, we expect those votes very soon. The AFM will continue to work with its affiliates and outside partners to help mitigate the negative effects of this legislation.