Ron Alexenburg has over 50 years of experience in the music industry. In 1965, he joined CBS Records and soon moved onto Columbia Records, where he became the youngest head of promotion in the company’s history, working with the label’s top talent. He rose through the ranks at Columbia, eventually becoming senior vice president and general […]
Read MoreSam Ashkynase was born in a small town in Austria-Hungary and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1907, settling in Brooklyn. With a passion for the violin, Ashkynase set out to make his career in music. After working with various groups, he decided to strike out with a band of his own, […]
Read MoreIn the early 1970s, Bob Buchmann founded Half Hollow Hills’ community radio station and also built an AM station in his basement. After a knock on his parents’ door from the Federal Communications Commission, Buchmann went legit, converting the pirate AM station into America’s first mass-distributed cable only radio station, based in Commack. While at […]
Read MoreIra Maltz started in the security business in 1972 at the Academy of Music on 14th Street in Manhattan as a security guard. In 1975, he founded CSS (originally Concert Service Specialist, Inc.) at the Calderone Concert Hall on Franklin Avenue in Hempstead. A short time later, Maltz received calls from various venues. Promoter Larry […]
Read MoreBrooklyn-native Clive Davis has had a profound effect on the world of music. He served as general counsel of Columbia Records before being appointed vice president and general manager in 1966. In 1967, he was named president. He personally signed Janis Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Company to Columbia. After that, he was directly […]
Read MoreBrooklyn-born Charles Koppelman serves as chairman and chief executive officer of C.A.K. Entertainment Inc., a leading brand development and advisory firm. He served for six years as the executive chairman and principal executive officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and seven years as a director of the company, but Koppelman’s previous business experience was largely […]
Read MoreSteve Martin started in the music business at the age of 17, booking bands into eastern Long Island venues such as Hot Dog Beach, The Barge, Artful Dodger, and the legendary OBI. His professional career in New York City began in 1979 as a concert promoter, producing shows in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., […]
Read MoreBorn in Brooklyn in 1944, Michael Lang is a music industry icon and promoter best known as the co-creator of the Woodstock Music & Art Festival in 1969. In 1968,after promoting a series of concert events in the Miami area, Lang (together with Marshall Brevetz) produced the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, which drew around 25,000 people on its first day […]
Read MoreBorn in Brooklyn in 1942, “Father of Woodstock” Arthur “Artie” Kornfeld would become one of the most respected composers, publishers, producers, and promoters in the history of rock and roll. In the early 1950s, he was raised in Levittown, New York, but his family moved constantly (he attended six different schools). Kornfeld started playing symphonic […]
Read MoreLegendary music executive Seymour Stein was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942. He began his career in music as a high school student, interning in the summers of 1957 and 1958 at King Records in Cincinnati. He took on a clerk position for Billboard magazine in 1958 and, starting in 1961, worked for two years at King. In […]
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