September ATOS Happenings
Fall is arriving. Here are some notes regarding the theatre organ related to ATOS and its activities.
Beginning Fall Program Season
As many members are aware, September begins the programming year for many Chapters and affiliated organizations. If you have not visited the ATOS Events List, please check here:
If you are responsible for events and publicity, please make sure coming events are properly listed on this directory. This information can be of interest to others and is particularly useful if fall travel is in your plans, as well as for the general audience.
The events listing is totally dependent on sponsoring organizations to list their events, and greatly helps with the promotion of theatre organs.
Chapters Efforts
As previously announced, Taylor Trimby has assumed the task of Chapter’s Liaison. Taylor is planning a year of activities to support chapters. The first of his events will be a Chapter Leader’s Conference to be held on September 20th. It will be via a virtual conference on the internet and planning for the meeting is underway. There will be a series of current topics presented, and time allowed for Q and A as well. To participate in this event you must be on the Chapter Contacts e-mail list to receive the connection information.
Taylor may be contacted by his e-mail address, t.trimby [at] atos.org or you may utilize the following URL to register for the Chapter’s e-mailings: http://eepurl.com/cZgcrn.
As with the past several years, the 2017 Chapter’s Showcase has been posted on the ATOS website at http://www.atos.org/video/atos-2017-chapter-showcase. Making next year’s showcase more extensive is one of Taylor’s goals for this year and will be discussed during the September conference.
2018 ATOS Convention
During Mark Herman’s program at the 2017 ATOS Convention, Mark (Convention Co-Chairman) presented a preview of 2018 ATOS Convention to be held in the Los Angeles area, based in Pasadena, CA. The Committee have finalized several items in the plan including an “early-bird” (January only) registration price of $329. Each of the next few monthly these messages will highlight or preview aspects of the upcoming convention, prior to the official beginning of publicity in the January-February 2018 ATOS Journal.
2017 Convention CD
The producer of the 2017 Convention CD has been busy with the effort of coordinating this year’s disk. As in past years, this process includes providing artists with preview material from which they make their nominations for the disk and then the task of making final selections to fit within the constraints of the media. The goal for this effort is to have disks in production in October.
ATOS Archives
ATOS has now appointed Mark Renwick to be the Program Leader with respect to the ATOS Archives at the Oklahoma University American Organ Institute. (The archives web address is
http://www.ou.edu/content/aoi/resources/archives-and-library.html ).
This effort will include working with the archivist, Ms. Baily Hoffner, with planning the digitizing of content, and the promotion of efforts to document and provide on-line theatre organ related information. The catalog of materials is now being built with plans to create a useful “front-end” application for easier access to it’s contents.
Other activities
Several activities internal to ATOS operations continue in the planning and development stage. These include expanding use of the ATOS website for news and features. Anyone interested in becoming a contributor should make themselves known to the Chairman, who is spearheading this long-term effort to make the site more current and useful. Planning for our annual fundraising effort is underway - for the usual fall effort as well as significant efforts to simplify our banking and account procedures.
As always, we are looking for you input, and welcome volunteers to participate in conducting our various chapter and other program efforts. Contact information for many of these efforts can be found on the ATOS Programs page of the ATOS home page.
Richard Neidich
Chairman, ATOS
r.neidich [at] atos.org