Canadian Music Trade - February/March 2018 | Page 25

THE 2018 NAMM SHOW IN REVIEW
Sessions presented by FOH and PLSN magazines,
Dante Certification training, and plenty more. That
was in addition to special events like The 33 rd An-
nual TEC Awards and, for its first time held in con-
junction with NAMM, the live production-focused
Parnelli Awards.
Ultimately, organizers did a great job of
catering to the MI, recording, live sound, and pro-
duction technologies industries with well-
segregated exhibition spaces and educational
programming that were nonetheless united
underneath the NAMM Show banner.
In the end, The 2018 NAMM Show bene-
fitted from a significant boost in both exhibitors
and attendees, attracting just over 115,000
registrants – a nine per cent increase over 2017’s
record-breaking numbers. Included in that was an
eight per cent increase in international attendees
with 19,356 registrants representing over 100
countries. On the exhibition side, approximately
7,000 brands were represented by nearly 2,000
exhibiting companies – a nine per cent increase
from 2017’s total.
Impressive figures, to be sure.
Our team from Canadian Music Trade arrived on
Wednesday afternoon, with just enough time to
get settled into the hotel and off to Downtown
Disney for Yorkville Sound’s annual Pre-NAMM
Party at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen. As usual,
they had a smoking band onstage that got some
help throughout the night from some members
of Yorkville’s team, including an animated cover of
Beastie Boys’ classic “Fight for Your Right” that had
the room shaking. Couple the good music with
some good company and southern U.S.-inspired
eats and you’ve got the ingredients for a great
informal kick-off to The NAMM Show.
The morning of the opening day of the
show is always a busy one, with many companies
competing for the press’s attention at overlapping
press conferences. Even before the show opened,
though, we were hit with a series of major news
announcements affecting Canadian companies
or the Canadian market. Among those was the
fact that Levy’s Leathers had been acquired by
Gator Cases, while Radial Engineering had been
acquired by Ultimate Support CEO Mike Belitz.
The other big one was that MI and pro audio
giant Peavey would once again be going direct to
dealers in Canada with a new distribution hub in
Ontario. Some interesting shakeups.
Anyhow, I started my day at the Korg booth
while CMT Senior Editor Mike Raine headed over
to see what was new from our fellow Canadians at
Sabian.
Korg introduced a series of new products,
including the now-flagship Prologue polyphonic
analog synth. I quite enjoyed the short but satisfy-
ing demo performance by European artist Knobs.
Over at Sabian, we were introduced to the
new frequency-reduced FRX cymbals and the com-
pany’s new Custom Shop, launching in the spring.
We spent the next few hours walking the
expanded exhibit space, getting a lay of the land
while searching for cool things to check out over
the following few days. The main goal, though, was
distributing invitations for that night’s NWC NAMM
Canadian Reception to sponsoring companies and
other Canadian attendees we happened upon.
Early afternoon, I headed over to the ACC
North for the first time and was impressed with the
facilities and exhibit layout. Sennheiser was hosting
a press conference to introduce, among other
things, Evolution Wireless G4, the fourth generation
of the company’s flagship wireless series.
I stuck around to wander the new halls before
a meeting with the team from GerrAudio to see
what was new from their exhibiting companies, in-
cluding Clear-Com, Digico, DPA, and Meyer Sound.
They seemed quite pleased with the increase in
pro audio offerings and the space dedicated to that
(L-R) Sabian’s Mark Love, Luis Cardoso, Andy Zildjian & Stacey
Montgomery-Clark introducing the FRX series
market segment, which was good to hear.
My last appointment before heading over to
the Sheraton Park to get things going for the NWC
reception was with Efkay’s Dan Ellison, focusing
primarily on the new offerings from Tama and
Ibanez. Even though there are apparently only
four allocated to Canada, Ibanez’s 30 th anniversary
Chrome Boy Joe Satriani signature guitar was a hot
topic of conversation.
Mid-afternoon, I got to the Plaza Ballroom
at the Sheraton to meet with the folks from
Renkus-Heinz and Contact Distribution who, as
the perennial PA sponsors for the event, get to, as
Contact’s Bill Coons eloquently puts it, “play roadie
for the day.” Can’t thank those gents enough for the
time and help.
It was great to finally connect with the guys
in Toque, who were our much-hyped performers
for the evening. The group is comprised of some
Knobs performs during Korg’s press conference
CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE • 25