
Amro Music of Memphis, Tennessee, began its experience at The 2022 NAMM Show by celebrating its centennial anniversary at NAMM’s Milestone Awards. Beyond the excitement of celebrating a century of providing music-making opportunities to its community, the NAMM Member also added to its list of achievements as it was honored with the Innovation Award at The Top 100 Dealer Awards.
The Innovation Award recognizes a retailer’s commitment to “re-imagine the retail experience and focus on the consumer.” Operations that take home this coveted award “look beyond price and service to create an immersive shopping experience.” Examples include creating comfortable hangouts and welcoming spots where customers can enjoy live music, filling a musical void in the community, and strengthening the marketplace by bringing consumers together with music. Past winners of the Innovation Award include Royalton Music Center (2020) and Zeswitz Music (2019).
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Amro Music has recognized the struggle that faced music educators and set out to develop tools and resources to aid educators and re-invigorate their music programs as they returned to their classroom and in-person instruction.
Fast-forward to the spring of 2021, when the retailer brought together a group of expert music educators and manufacturing partners from across the industry to collaborate on the “Post-Pandemic Planning Guide.” Organizations like Hal Leonard, the Music Achievement Council, and Yamaha joined Amro Music to share ideas, content, and strategies to produce a series of eight email newsletters that aided in reopening music programs and safely bringing music back to schools.
The eight carefully curated emails included timely information to help teachers navigate returning to the classroom. Topics included strategies to discuss risk mitigation and research with administrators and decision-makers; recruiting new students in a digital or hybrid setting; requesting Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) for programs; summer recruiting ideas; and working with your school counselor to overcome scheduling challenges, among others.
Educators, schools, and districts received the emails in an “open-source” HTML format, which allowed them to copy the content, add their logos and contact information and distribute it throughout their communities. The campaign resulted in meaningful and well-timed content reaching more than 500,000 music educators nationwide.
Of the recognition at The 2022 NAMM Show, Amro Music’s Vice President, Nick Averwater, said, “Being recognized with the Innovation Award at the NAMM Top 100 banquet is a tremendous honor for Amro Music. The Post-Pandemic Planning Guide was an incredible collaboration of industry partners, including Amro Music, Yamaha, Hal Leonard, the Music Achievement Council, and a group of amazing educators. I am grateful to each of them. This award is a true reflection of a great team that came together to provide meaningful content to educators in a challenging time.”
For more information on Amro Music and The Top 100 Dealer Awards, please visit https://www.amromusic.com/ and https://topdealer.namm.org/.

The Adam Hall Group and its brand, Cameo®, played an integral part in the Queen’s Jubilee celebration earlier this summer. The NAMM Member and its products were critical in producing a dynamic and visually stunning event for the world to see.
In 1975, Mr. Adam Hall founded Adam Hall Ltd. in the English city of Southend-on-Sea, just outside London. While the company initially produced high-quality, robust flight case fittings, today, the Adam Hall Group has grown into a global manufacturer and distributor, providing comprehensive solutions for the event technology industry. With its headquarters in Neu-Anspach, Hesse, Germany, the group includes over 30 well-known brands, including Adam Hall Hardware, Adam Hall Stage Equipment, Cameo®, Defender®, Gravity®, LDsystems®, and Palmer®, among others. Today the Adam Hall Group offers more than 7,000 products, including audio and sound technology, professional LED lighting solutions, cables, moving lights, power amps, speakers, and stands and stage systems.
Cameo, as part of the Adam Hall family of brands, “offers powerful, easy-to-use, state-of-the-art products that allow concert stages, theatres, discotheques, and architecture to be seen in the very best light.” The products, developed in Germany, include everything from modern moving heads, PAR spotlights, LED Fresnels and lasers, and effects machines.
In June, the people of Great Britain flocked to the over 16,000 events to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s time on the throne. Despite the numerous celebrations, the biggest show took place in front of London’s Buckingham Palace. An estimated 22,000 people gathered in front of three stages and an additional 13.4 million tuned into BBC's live coverage to watch performances by some of the world’s biggest acts, including Alicia Keys, Queen & Adam Lambert, Ed Sheeran, and Rod Stewart, among others. Version 2 Lights, a UK-based lighting rental specialist, provided more than 600 Cameo spotlights to illuminate the main stages, Buckingham Palace, and the Tree of Trees sculpture.

Adam Hall Group CEO Alexander Pietschmann shared his thoughts and said, “Adam Hall Group was delighted and honored to be entrusted with delivering lighting fixtures for the Queen’s 70th Anniversary Celebration. Our lighting brand, Cameo®, is dedicated to providing dramatic, beautiful light to any event it touches and arousing great passion and deep emotion. These elements certainly were present at the Queen’s Jubilee, an occasion that served as so much more than a royal anniversary, but as a worldwide beacon of hope and a reminder that good can prevail through challenging times. As a longtime player in the live events industry, this is something we firmly believe at Adam Hall Group—that as long as we continue to gather in observance and celebration of our humanity, we will continue to thrive as a global people.”
For more information on Cameo and the Adam Hall Group, please visit https://www.cameolight.com/ and https://www.adamhall.com/.
All Photos Courtesy of Getty Images

In April, Focusrite Audio Engineering Ltd was one of over 200 organizations to be nationally recognized with the prestigious Queen’s Awards for Enterprise for excellence in international trade.
Focusrite “believes in enriching peoples’ lives through music,” and they achieve their goal by manufacturing audio interfaces. For those unfamiliar, audio interfaces serve to pass audio from the musician to the computer and back out again, bringing recorded sound to the world. The manufacturer says, “The best interface should help you record your sound exactly as it is. It should be ready to go when you are, never skipping a beat. It should be easy to use, removing pointless technical barriers that get in the way of you enriching yours and others’ lives through music.”
The English music and audio products group began in 1985 and was founded by legendary audio pioneer Rupert Neve. Before the easy and affordable access to computers, Focusrite built consoles. One of the manufacturer's first contracts was a commission from Sir George Martin to build an extension to AIR Studios’ custom Neve console. In April 1989, audio industry entrepreneur and co-founder of Soundcraft Electronics Ltd, Phil Dudderidge, purchased the company and established Focusrite Audio Engineering Ltd. With its continued expansion over the past four decades, Focusrite now houses eight brands, including ADAM Audio, Amplify Music, Focusrite, Focusrite Pro, Martin Audio, Novation, Optimal Audio, and Sequential and manufacturers analog EQs and channel strips, audio interfaces, consoles, digital audio processing hardware, and software, and microphone preamps.
Now in its 56th year, the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the country’s “most prestigious business awards.” The 2022 program marked the fifth award received by Focusrite and the third acknowledgment the company received for “outstanding and sustained growth of their international sales.” The NAMM Member successfully “increased order volumes while dealing with disruption to deliveries and for growing their overseas orders by 145% in the six years, with top markets to include Austria, Australia, Benelux, France, Germany, North America, and South Korea. Of the recognition, Dudderidge said, “Thanks go to our amazing team in the UK and overseas for developing and selling the world’s leading audio interface brand, Focusrite, and sister brand Novation.”

With the award, Focusrite can use the Queen’s Emblem for the next five years. For more information on Focusrite, please visit https://focusrite.com/.

Since 1901, NAMM has been serving companies operating throughout the musical instrument industry. Today NAMM serves over 7,000 active member companies and is continuously seeking to expand its reach to better serve the music products industry and promote music-making.
Originally comprised of 52 members, the National Association of Piano Dealers of America was renamed in 1919 to the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) to represent the growing markets within the music products industry. Today NAMM is a nonprofit association that promotes the benefits and pleasure of making music and strengthens the $17 billion global music products industry.
Like the first decade of its existence, NAMM continuously strives to serve a growing and diverse marketplace. With the additions of the pro audio and live entertainment professionals within NAMM’s membership base, and innovations that have allowed for music-making to become more widespread, the organization is again broadening the scope of music makers it serves.
In 2021, NAMM opened its membership communities to include pro audio and live sound professionals, music educators, and other professional groups. This includes new and exciting membership opportunities and benefits and direct access for industry professionals to attend The NAMM Show, June 3-5 in Anaheim, California.
General Benefits of Membership: Besides attending The NAMM Show, individuals who become NAMM Members have year-round access to NAMM events, career-building professional development, networking, and resources. In addition, NAMM also represents the industry's most pressing issues in Washington D.C. and beyond, “advocating for free trade, informed regulations, funding for the arts and music education, and more.”
Educators: While The NAMM Show typically occurs in late January, The 2022 NAMM Show offers a unique opportunity for music educators to attend. NAMM is excited to offer educators their own path to membership via individual memberships. Not only will teachers kick off summer by heading to Anaheim June 3-5 and become inspired for the school year ahead alongside leading professionals but they will also have yearlong access to the invaluable resources that NAMM provides. Sessions of particular interest include the Music Education Days and its “Improv Comedy & Music Education,” “Rethinking Music Education in the Post COVID-19 World,” “The Grand Rally for Music Education,” and more. Please visit https://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2022/education/music-education-days for the complete Music Education Days schedule.
Pro Audio and Live Sound Professionals: Those who work in pro audio, from the emerging professional to the seasoned veteran, are invited to join NAMM as individual members. Whether you are a hobbyist, work within a house of worship, or are a full-time engineer, all are welcome to join NAMM and attend The NAMM Show. The 2022 NAMM Show is offering a wealth of events for the pro audio community, including training certification from Dante (additional registration required at https://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2022/education/dante), the Loud Speaker System Showcase (https://www.namm.org/exhibit/wn22/loudspeaker-system-showcase), NAMM TEC Awards (https://www.tecawards.org/), Pensado’s Place Residency at NAMM, the Pro Audio Pool Party, and dynamic sessions like “Get a Room: Recoding in a Commercial Facility Versus at Home,” “How AI is Changing EDM Production, Mixing, and Mastering,” and more.
Live Event Professionals: Those working within the realm of live events at any level or affiliation are welcome to join NAMM and attend The NAMM Show. The 2022 NAMM Show will offer a host of events geared toward your community, including educational sessions like “Loud: A Conversation with Tana Douglas, the First Woman Roadie,” “Show Stop: The One Agreement Everyone Must Agree On,” and “Working at Height Safely,” among others. Also included are education sessions with NAMM’s partners, the Entertainment Services and Technology Association (ESTA) (https://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2022/education/esta), and Event Safety Alliance (ESA) (https://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2022/education/esa), the LSA/ESTA Welcome Reception, and the Parnelli Awards (https://parnelliawards.com/).
The best part of all of this is that your membership is included alongside your NAMM Show badge, ensuring that you have access to everything NAMM provides beyond The NAMM Show. NAMM Show badge fees help fund the work of The NAMM Foundation, which, through research, advocacy, and grants, helps to create a world with more music makers. For more information on individual memberships, please visit https://www.namm.org/attendee/articles/introducing-individual-membership, and to register for The 2022 NAMM Show, please visit https://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2022/badges.
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