OH Taxonomy
Ann Jones was interviewed alongside Dick Dolan, the president of QRS, a company known around the world for their piano rolls. As CFO, Ann has been with QRS since the 1980s. She has played an important roll in the expansion of QRS into DVD products for a new generation of player pianos. Under Dick...
Peter Giles, the founder and president of Giles Communications, celebrated 20 years in business at the 2007 NAMM Show. During his interview, Peter proudly recalled his work in promoting the benefits of music making. Over the years, he has worked closely with many industry companies. For 15 years...
Takashi “Hagi” Hagiwara has been called the “godfather of Yamaha drums” as the unofficial ambassador of the company’s percussive products around the world. His father was a silversmith in Tokyo, a profession he was thought to continue, however he decided to take a part time job as a teenager in a...
Bill Wellborn was honored with the National Piano Traveler’s Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 for his dedication to the industry. As a piano salesman, Bill has traveled the country for a number of different piano manufacturers such as PA Stark, Story & Clark and Young Chang. His...
Tony Acosta had a dream to make the world’s finest classical guitar strings. He began working nights to perfect his product and build relationships within the industry and slowly gathered the needed equipment. Several years later, when he quit his day job working for an airline, his friends...
Gary Kilday took a chance on an old piano bench maker in 1988 that had fallen on hard times. Since that time the company, renamed GRK, has kept the tradition of customer service and quality product that traces back to the original business, the Manual Arts Furniture Corporation formed in 1915....
Vinny Testa was the founder of Testa Communications, which he established in 1984 to provide the music products industry with such trade magazines as The Music & Sound Retailer and DJ Times. Vinny enjoyed pioneering new ways of connecting with his readers including being one of the first to...
Helene La Faro has been asked countless times to recount the short but extremely influential musical career of her brother, jazz bassist Scott La Faro. In fact, she began collecting the notes of her many responses and compiled them into a book on Scott’s life. Nearly all jazz bass players can...
Prescott Niles was the original bassist for the Knack. His driving licks can be heard on the classic recording of “My Sharona” and his strong rhythmic teaming with band drummer Bruce Gary has been the source of inspiration for a generation of garage bands the world over. Prescott endorsed several...
John Bowen was an engineer at Sequential Circuits during the early days of the synthesizer boom of the late 1970s. John worked with founder Dave Smith, who later went on to develop the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) specifications. John helped write the MIDI code and went on to design...