ABOUT US

The Local 802 Musicians’ Emergency Relief Fund provides Local 802 members with reliable assistance in times of trouble and dire need. This need may arise from catastrophic illness, dramatic career downturns, or due to demonstrable financial hardship. Many musicians suffer from episodic employment and lack health insurance, pensions and other benefits found in most full-time jobs, and as a result this career is often a difficult one, lived without a safety net. The Emergency Relief Fund can offer:

• Financial assistance

• Mental health support

• Addiction and recovery aid

• HIV/AIDS services

• Senior services or caregiving support

• Services due to chronic health, illness and injury 

• Career support

• General social service help

As Local 802 member Bob Dylan – who also serves as an honorary advisory board member – famously wrote, “The times they are a’changing.” This has never been more evident than in the lives of musical artists who are aging and face declines in health and financial security. When they need assistance, our Emergency Relief Fund is there for them, providing support and assurance that they are not alone in their later years. The ERF needs the sustaining support of music lovers and patrons of the arts to ensure that no deserving member goes without aid in times of crisis. Your tax-deductible contribution will ensure that the music will play on!

Ron Carter is a jazz double-bassist, cellist and educator, considered to be among the greatest accompanists of all time. Mr. Carter has performed with symphony orchestras all over the world and has appeared on over 2,500 albums, making him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history. His accomplishments got him inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 2012, and he was honored as an NEA Jazz Master in 1998. Mr. Carter continues to record and has an active college and university teaching career, most recently at the City College of New York.

Rosanne Cash is a singer-songwriter and author whose music draws on many genres ranging from country to blues. Ms. Cash’s accolades include eleven No. 1 country hit singles, twenty-one Top 40 country singles, four Grammy Awards and two gold records. The River and the Thread, her most recent album, is considered “a kaleidoscopic examination of the geographic, emotional, and historic landscape of the American South” and was the Number One album of 2014 on Americana radio. Ms. Cash supports several charitable organizations, is a dedicated supporter of artists’ rights in the digital age and sits on the board of the Content Creators Coalition.

Ray Chew is a producer, composer, and music director who has helmed award- winning musical events featuring the world’s most popular artists including Rihanna, Prince, Justin Bieber, Aretha Franklin, and Barry Manilow. Mr. Chew is sought after for prestigious music specials and historic landmark events, including the 65th Annual Emmy Awards, the Grammy Awards, and President Obama’s Inaugural Neighborhood Ball on ABC. Mr. Chew was the musical director for three seasons of American Idol and is currently the orchestra leader for Dancing with the Stars.

Bob Cranshaw In Memorium

Glenn Dicterow is a violinist and former concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. After his solo debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 11, Mr. Dicterow quickly became one of the most sought-after young violinists, appearing as soloist from coast to coast. He went on to win numerous awards and competitions, including the Bronze Medal in the International Tchaikovsky Competition (1970). Mr. Dicterow has been a guest artist with symphony orchestras around the world and can be heard in violin scores of several film scores, including Aladdin and Interview with a Vampire. He is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and is the Chairman of the Orchestral Performance Program at Manhattan School of Music in New York.

Paquito D’Rivera is an alto saxophonist, clarinetist, and soprano saxophonist. The winner of thirteen Grammy Awards, Mr. D’Rivera is celebrated both for his artistry in Latin jazz and his achievements as a classical composer. His discography includes over 30 solo albums and reflects a dedication and enthusiasm for Jazz, Bebop and Latin music. Mr. D’Rivera’s contributions to classical music include performeances with the London Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, among many others. He is considered to be a “consummate multinational ambassador, creating and promoting a cross-culture of music that moves effortlessly among jazz, Latin, and Mozart,” according to the National Endowment of the Arts.

Bob Dylan is a singer-songwriter, artist, and writer. Mr. Dylan’s recording career, spanning 50 years, has explored the traditions in American song while his lyrics have incorporated various political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his greatest contribution is considered his songwriting. As a musician, Mr. Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time; he has received numerous awards including a Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award. In May 2012, Mr. Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.

Michael Feinstein is a singer, pianist, and music revivalist. Mr. Feinstein is a multi-platinum-selling, two-time Emmy and five-time Grammy Award-nominated entertainer, considered to be one of the premier interpreters of American standards. More than simply a performer, he has received national recognition for his commitment to celebrating America’s popular song and preserving its legacy for the next generation. In 2007, he founded the Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative, dedicated to celebrating the art form and preserving it through educational programs and the annual High School Vocal Academy and Competition. Mr. Feinstein’s additional credits include scoring the original music for the film Get Bruce and performing on hit television series such as “Melrose Place” and “7th Heaven.”

Paul Gemignani is a musical director. His career on Broadway and West End theatre spans over forty years and includes many Tony Award-winning productions, such as Sweeney Todd, Kiss Me Kate, and Into the Woods. He was also the recipient of a 1989 Drama Desk Special Award and a 2001 Tony Award for Special Lifetime Achievement. Mr. Gemignani has recorded numerous cast albums and albums featuring musical theatre and opera singers with American Theatre Orchestra and other orchestras. He has been a guest conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and New York City Opera, among many others. He has conducted such films as Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Reds (1981), and Sweeney Todd (2007), as well as many television specials, including several installments of Great Performances. Mr. Gemignani was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2010.

John Leventhal is a musician, producer, songwriter, and recording engineer. He has produced numerous albums for artists such as Michelle Branch and Marc Cohn and as a songwriter has had over 100 songs recorded by various artists. In 1998, Mr. Levanthal won a Grammy Award for Record and Song of the Year for producing and co-writing the song “Sunny Came Home.” Albums he has produced have been nominated for a total of 14 Grammy Awards. Mr. Leventhal recently produced and co-wrote all of the songs on Rosanne Cash’s 2014 release, The River & the Thread, which won 3 Grammy Awards in 2015.

Joe Lovano is a jazz saxophonist hailed by the New York Times as “one of the greatest musicians in jazz history.” Mr. Lovano’s work with Blue Note Records led to eight Grammy Award nominations, including a win for Best Large Ensemble (2000’s “52nd Street Themes”). He has been honored by DownBeat magazine as “Jazz Artist/Musician of the Year,” “Tenor Saxophonist of the Year” and “Album of the Year.” Additionally, he has won multiple Jazz Journalist Association Awards—given yearly to honor the best in jazz music and journalism—including “Multi-reeds Player of the Year” and “Tenor Saxophonist of the Year,” both in 2014. His 2008 Grammy-nominated release Symphonica paired him with the world-renowned WDR Big Band and WDR Rundfunke Orchestra and showcased him performing some of his most acclaimed and cherished compositions. Mr. Lovano is a long-time Local 802 AFM member and endorser of the union’s Justice for Jazz Artists campaign.

Galt MacDermot is a composer, pianist, and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song “African Waltz” in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair (1967; its cast album also won a Grammy) and Two Gentlemen of Verona (1971). Mr. MacDermot has also written music for film soundtracks, jazz and funk albums, and classical music, and his music has been sampled in hit hip-hop songs and albums. His other work also includes ballet scores, chamber music, the Anglican liturgy, orchestral music, poetry, incidental music for plays, band repertory and opera. In 2010, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from SOCAN and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Elmar Oliveira is a violinist. His best-selling 1997 recording of the Rautavaara Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic (Ondine) won a Cannes Classical Award and has appeared on Gramophone’s “Editor’s Choice” and other best recordings lists around the world. He remains the only American violinist to win the Gold Medal at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1978. He was also a Grammy nominee for his 1990 CD of the Barber Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony. Mr. Oliveira’s commitment to a wide spectrum of the violin world manifests itself in numerous ways, such as consistently expanding repertoire boundaries as a champion of both contemporary music and rarely-heard works of the past, devoting considerable energy to the development of younger artists, and enthusiastically supporting the efforts and art of modern violin makers.

Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, and peace activist. She is known for her work in avant-garde art, music, and filmmaking. She brought feminism to the forefront in her music, influencing artists as diverse as the B-52s and Meredith Monk. Retrospectives of Ms. Ono’s artwork have been presented all over the world, including the Whitney Museum branch in New York City in 1989 and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain in 2013. Her work often demands the viewers’ participation and forces them to get involved. She received a Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale in 2009 and the 2012 Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria’s highest award for applied contemporary art. She has made significant philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace, Philippine and Japan disaster relief, and other causes. Ms. Ono continues her social activism, inaugurating a biennial $50,000 LennonOno Grant for Peace in 2002 and co-founding the group Artists Against Fracking in 2012.

Bernard Purdie is a prolific session drummer and exponent of funk whose style has been described as the “funkiest soul beat” in the business. Mr. Purdie spent several years working with Aretha Franklin in the 1970s, launching his career as a performer of jazz, soul, and rock music. He has anchored recording sessions with legends like the Rolling Stones, James Brown and Tom Jones and has never limited his talents to the realm of jazz but rather has sought out new and enriching musical experiences. His appearances on over 3,000 albums a leader, co-leader and sideman have garnered Mr. Purdie the title of “The World’s Most Recorded Drummer.”

Marc Ribot is a guitarist and composer who’s released 20-plus albums under his own name over a 35-year career and is renowned as a fruitful collaborator with other musicians. Rolling Stone magazine credited Mr. Ribot with helping “Tom Waits refine a new, weird Americana on 1985’s Rain Dogs,” and he has worked with artists including Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, Elvis Costello and John Mellencamp. Mr. Ribot is known for his dexterity and his work has touched on diverse styles including no wave, free jazz, rock and Cuban music. He has explored the pioneering jazz of Albert Ayler with his group “Spiritual Unity” and riffed on the son music of Arsenio Rodríguez on two critically-acclaimed releases for Atlantic Records under “Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos.” He also has a career working on film scores, having contributed to movies like “Walk the Line,” “The Kids Are All Right,” and “The Departed.”

Sonny Rollins is a jazz tenor saxophonist. Mr. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including “St. Thomas”, “Oleo”, and “Airegin”, have become jazz standards. In 1957 he pioneered the use of bass and drums (without piano) as accompaniment for his saxophone solos, a texture that would come to be known as “strolling”. In August 2010, Mr. Rollins was named the Edward MacDowell Medalist, the first jazz composer to be so honored. Yet another major award was bestowed on Mr. Rollins on March 2, 2011, when he received the Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence. He continues today to release his music on his own label, Doxy Records.

Pete Seeger In Memoriam

Paul Shaffer is a Canadian-American singer, actor, voice actor, author, comedian, and multi-instrumentalist. He served as David Letterman’s musical director, band leader and sidekick on the entire run of both Late Night with David Letterman (1982–1993) and Late Show with David Letterman (1993–2015). He is also known for his work on Saturday Night Live, for which he played keyboards, composed special musical material and, in 1980, became a featured performer. His impressive live features including leading the band for the “We Are the World” finale of Live Aid, hosting CBS’s 1994 New Year’s Eve special from New York’s Times Square and acting as musical director of the closing concert at the 1996 Olympic Games. Mr. Shaffer was recently inducted into the National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame. In 2008, he received the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor.

Paul Simon is a musician, actor and singer-songwriter. Mr. Simon’s fame, influence, and commercial success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Mr. Simon wrote nearly all of the pair’s songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: “The Sound of Silence”, “Mrs. Robinson”, and “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. He has been the recipient of many honors and awards including 12 Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as half of the duo Simon and Garfunkel. He is a member of The Songwriters Hall of Fame, a recipient of their Johnny Mercer Award and is in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Simon and Garfunkel and as a solo artist. Mr. Simon co-founded The Children’s Health Fund and has raised millions of dollars for worthy causes as varied as AMFAR, The Nature Conservancy, and Autism Speaks.

Charles Strouse is a composer and lyricist. Mr. Strouse’s first and most well-known success, Bye Bye Birdie, was responsible for winning him his first Tony Award. He would soon rack up numerous awards, including several Emmy Awards, the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers Award, and the Oscar Hammerstein Award. Mr. Strouse’s songs have been heard on the radio throughout his career and have run the gamut from girl-band pop to hip hop. Most notably, the quadruple platinum Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) by artist Jay-Z (which sampled “It’s The Hard Knock Life” from Annie) was the winner of a Grammy for Best Rap Album of the year & the Billboard R&B Album of the Year in 1999. He has contributed to a number of film scores, including the classics Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and the popular animated movie All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). Mr. Strouse is a member of the Theater Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Jonathan Tunick is an orchestrator, musical director, composer, and arranger. Mr. Tunick is one of twelve individuals to have won all four major American show business awards: the Tony Awards, Academy Awards, Emmy Awards and Grammy Awards. Most notably, Mr. Tunick won the first Tony Award for Best Orchestrations that was awarded, in 1997, for Titanic. Altogether, Mr. Tunick has orchestrated, re-orchestrated, or composed for nearly sixty musical stage shows, thirteen films, and two dozen scores for television. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2009.