HOLLYWOOD --

The Production Music Association (PMA) announced and honored recipients of its third annual Mark Awards this week (10/4), kicking off the three-day Production Music Conference in Hollywood.

The Mark Awards honor excellence in the production music community. Named in honor of the late Andy Mark, who was a library owner and founding member of the PMA, the Mark Awards competition recognizes the very best in production music. 

Here’s a category-by-category breakdown of the 2017 Mark Award winners:

2017 MARK AWARDS–WINNERS

Best Non-Categorical / Wildcard Music Track
“Clockwork”
Richard Pryn
Immediate Music (Immediate Music)

Best Production Music Library (PML) Artist In Pop / Rock
Monica LaPlante
Black Label Music (Black Label)

Best Cover Art
Cry Baby
Ryan “Roadkill” Quickfall
Sonic Quiver (5 Alarm Music)

Best PML Artist In Country
Christopher McDonald
Black Label Music (Black Label)

Best PML Artist In Folk
Hanging Lanterns
A-List Records (A-List Trailer Music)

Best PML Artist In Hip Hop / Urban
Vylan Lyf
A-List Records (A-List Trailer Music)

Best PML Artist In Indie / Vocal
Horses Heaven
Bodan Kuma (Bulletproof Bear)

Best PML Artist In Jazz
Leigh McAllister Gracie
KPM (EMI Production Music)

Best Production Music Track in Ambient
“Peaceful Inner Feelings”
Sylvain Ott and Gilles Laurent
AXS Music (AXS Music)

Best Production Music Track in Country
“Good Life”
Christopher McDonald
Black Label Music (Black Label)

Best Production Music Track in Dark/Mysterious/Investigative
“SkyNet”
David Arkestone
Legacy (APM Music)

Best Production Music Track in EDM
“Summer Dance”
Frederic Le Quere
Super Pitch – Entertainment (SuperPitch)

Best Production Music Track in Film Trailer
“Legions of Oceania”
Yoav Goren
Immediate Music (Immediate Music)

Best Production Music Track in Folk
“No Better Place To Go”
Jonathan Monroy, Claire Barnhart, Chris Mathieu and Matthew Naylor
Surefire (APM Music)

Best Production Music Track in Hip Hop / Urban
“Play With Fire”
Nicolas Boscovic, Ashley Clark and Tom Hillock
Justement Music (APM Music)

Best Production Music Track in Jazz
“Steppin’ Out”
Robert J. Walsh
5 Alarm Music (5 Alarm Music)

Best Production Music Track in Orchestral
“Adventure of a Lifetime”
Colleen Sharmat
Scoring Stage (Warner/Chappell Production Music)

Best Production Music Track in Pop / Rock
“City Lights”
Nicolas Boscovic, Tom Hillock and Jennifer Jordan
Justement Music (APM Music)

Best Production Music Track in Vocal
“I’m In Love With You”
Kate Paxton and Charlie Silver
Nightingale Music (APM Music)

Best Production Music Track in World
“Ole Bongo”
Norbert Galouo, Jose Ortegon Tovar and Francisco Smith Angulo
Cezame (APM Music)

Best Usage of Production Music in Theme Song in TV Programming
“The Toy Box”
Jonathan LaCroix and Jason Moss
Super Sonic Noise | VTown Cartel (Bulletproof Bear)

Best Usage of Production Music in a Commercial Advertisement
“Sainsbury’s Food Dancing”
Alan Hawkshaw, Keith Mansfield and MysDiggi
KPM (EMI Production Music)

Best Usage of Production Music in Theatrical / Video Game Trailer
“Fairy Dust” in Mad Max Fury Road
Bruce Hall
Cute Music Library (Cute Music Library)

Best Usage of Production Music in On-Air Promo
“Waves of Emotion” in This is History
Steward Winter and Joseph Saba
VideoHelper (VideoHelper)

Best Usage of Production Music in Online / Digital Advertising
“The Passing of Time” in ACTIVIA InSync Ingrid
Johann Sebastien Bach and Matteo Locasciulli
SuperPitch (SuperPitch)

Special honors
During the course of the Mark Awards at the Production Music Conference, special honors were also conferred upon Romano Di Bari, Alison Smith and Dr. Lynne Lummel.

Di Bari received the 2017 Mark Awards Hall of Fame honor. Di Bari, at 24 (1960) began his career working for RCA Italiana, at the time the top record company of Italy and among the biggest ones in the world. In 1966, Di Bari accepted the direction of Ariston Records in Milano, and in 1968 he launched his independent business: Canopo Music Publishing in Rome, shortly to become Flippermusic Publishing. To this day, Flippermusic is the leader of Italian and international dealings in production music. Over the years, the Flippermusic catalog has spread all over the world and today reaches 39 countries where its repertoire is exploited. Today Flippermusic owns a catalogue of about 20,000 original titles and releases seventy to eighty new albums each year, with over 1,000 new titles. Flippermusic also represents more than 100 foreign libraries with over 400,000 titles in total. The company maintains a continuous flow of original music ideas to match the new requests of production music in domestic and international markets.

Meanwhile Smith was named honorary recipient of the 2017 Mark Awards Ambassador Award. Smith is EVP of distribution, publisher relations & administration services at Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). In this role, Smith works closely with BMI’s publishers on their royalty distributions and administration needs, while streamlining the flow of information and developing new data streams, bonus structures and payment methodologies across all music delivery platforms. She oversees all of BMI’s domestic and international royalty distribution and administration services to its more than 750,000 members.

As an expert on performing rights administration, Smith has been a featured speaker at events by groups including the Society of Composers & Lyricists, the Association of Independent Music Publishers (New York and Los Angeles), the California Copyright Conference, the Church Music Publishers Association, the Production Music Association, as well as many performing rights organizations around the world.

And Dr. Lummel earned the 2017 Mark Awards Visionary Award. Lummel recently retired from ASCAP after 28 years. Her last assignment was as EVP and chief transformation management officer, responsible for supporting the execution of ASCAP’s six-year plan and strategic objectives. Prior to that, she was responsible for distribution and repertory, overseeing the matching of hundreds of billions of TV, radio, Internet and other musical performances to ASCAP repertoire and the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. 

Lummel has been instrumental in bringing video and audio pattern recognition technologies to ASCAP, expanding ASCAP surveys, streamlining operations, improving accuracy and reducing costs. Papers on her work creating self-managing, virtual licensing teams at ASCAP have been published in the Journal of High Performance teams and Reward and Recognition for Teams.

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