Music Manufacturing
Willie Hatcher gives a great deal of credit to the public-school system in Mississippi when he was growing up in the 1950s for providing a variety of shop classes. Those instructional courses included woodworking, automotive, and machine shop, and they all provided Willie with the background he...
Cornelia Kinzelmann is CEO of ESM which produces mouthpieces for clarinets and saxophones. Cornelia remembers her grandfather, Wenzel Schreiber, from the time when she was a child. Wenzel Schreiber and his sons, Ernst and Hugo, made the company W. Schreiber a great success. After the company was...
Chuck Neitzel joined Deering Banjo in January 1979 having previously been a woodworker with antique furniture. Chuck also brought with him a deep respect and passion for bluegrass music, which he had followed and played since he was a young man. Working closely with Greg Deering in the early days...
Mark Kiesel is the President of Kiesel Guitars in Escondido, California and the son of Lowell Kiesel, the founder of Carvin Guitars. When his father began making guitars in the 1930s, it was with the Kiesel name. However, he stopped using the family name when he established Carvin Guitars in the...
Paul Peace holds several patents on the cinema side of professional audio having worked with IMAX on and off for nearly 20 years. One of his many exciting projects was creating the sound for the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios in Hollywood. He continued to focus on cinema audio when he...
Bruce Howze is the founder of Community Professional Loudspeakers, which he established in 1968 after being asked to provide sound for such venues as the Electric Factory in Philadelphia. Bruce designed the first midrange sound system and later toured with rock and roll bands to test out his...
Steve Johnson played saxophone in high school and in college while earning his electrical engineering degree. He was able to apply both passions when he joined the pro audio industry working for companies such as Shure and Harman, and also while serving as CEO of Community Professional Loudspeakers...
David Duane took over as President of McMillan Music when his uncle, Don McMillan, retired in 2017. David grew up in the business as his mother, Don’s sister, brought young David to the factory at a young age. David has been involved ever since, not just filling orders of the band and orchestra...
Sally Duane was born the same year her brother started McMillan Music outside of Philadelphia. She is the epitome of “growing up” in the business and has early memories of filling bottles of the company’s valve oil and containers of cork grease for mouthpieces. She stayed on when the company moved...
John Stoner came into the music products industry as an outsider when he joined the Conn-Selmer team in the early 2000s. As a father of a band student, he took part in fundraising and supporting his daughter's musical education while, at the same time, understanding the importance of music in a...