ASMAC Honors our Own

ASMAC’s May 18th luncheon was a special “Honor Our Own” event, where we proudly acknowledged two excellent composers/arrangers who have excelled in both their careers and their support of ASMAC.

First up to be introduced by President Kim Richmond was Duane Tatro. After we celebrated his 89th birthday with a cake and candles, Duane treated the audience to a brief retrospective of his career. Duane, who has composed extensively for television and film as well as written live concert media works for orchestra, wind ensemble, chamber ensembles, and electronic instruments. In his early career, he worked professionally as an instrumentalist, playing clarinet, saxophone and bassoon. It all began with some great mentors, and being on the road in his mid teens, much to his parents’ initial chagrin, with the Stan Kenton Orchestra. That was just the beginning of a lengthy and productive career, and now he looks back on film and television credits that include work on Hotel, Dynasty, Loveboat, Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, Streets of San Francisco, M.A.S.H., Mission Impossible, and many “Movies of the Week.” Duane has been focusing his recent efforts on concert works, many of which have been performed across the country. It was also great to see his wife, Francoise, and family in attendance.

Glenn Jordan was our second honoree — an award-winning songwriter, composer, producer, singer and performer whose music is heard every day by millions of people. Many of you may not know that Glenn Jordan is a former member of the group Sha Na Na. He toured the world with the group, and performed for audiences as large as 135,000 people. Since that chapter of his life ended, Glenn has been known for scoring and providing music for over a thousand episodes of television programs and films over the last 15 years, including The X-files, Millennium, Biography, Doug, 101 Dalmatians, and Something About Mary. Glenn was nominated for 4 Emmys and won the Emmy Award in 1991 for PeeWees Playhouse, as well as a Genesis Award in 1996 in recognition of his work to increase awareness of the plight of endangered species. He scored nine feature length documentary films for Enduring Freedom Productions over the last 5 years including Betty White: Champion for Animals, The Clintons: An American Odyssey, The Reagan Legacy, and JFK Remembered: 50 Years Later for Warner Brothers. Glenn reminisced about meeting Spud Murphy, a meeting which evolved into Glenn’s long friendship with him, and the fact that he is one of only nine people in the world qualified and licensed to teach The Equal Interval System of Music Composition created by “Spud.”