August 9, 2004
The Society of Singers, a Los Angeles-based non-profit that helps professional singers cope with financial, medical, family or other crises, is celebrating its 20th anniversary with the release of a benefit CD featuring performances by such top singers as Tony Bennett, Celine Dion, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. The organization was founded in 1984 by Ginny Mancini, a singer who was married to the legendary movie composer Henry Mancini, and Gilda Maiken Anderson, lead singer of The Skylarks. The organization's president and chief executive officer, Jerry Sharell, told United Press International Mancini and Anderson put the Society of Singers together because they knew from personal observation that it was necessary.
"Ginny being an ex-big-band singer and Gilda being a band singer and studio singer, they were discovering all these friends of theirs who had similar backgrounds who were pretty busted, pretty broke," he said. SOS -- as the organization refers to itself -- defines a singer as someone who has earned a living being a singer for at least five years. "He or she could have been doing backups for Bette Midler or Ray Charles," said Sharell, "or continuously employed at the local Holiday Inn."
Sharell said SOS provides emergency financial aid to about 250 professional singers each year and provides vocal scholarships for young, aspiring singers to an array of institutions including the University of Southern California and the University of California-Los Angeles. The group's annual budget is approximately $900,000. Funds are mainly raised through memberships, which are open to singers and non-singers alike. Membership packages range from $50 for the basic, no-frills deal -- what SOS calls the "Sixteenth Note" -- to $10,000 for the top of the line "A Cappella" membership.
The new CD, entitled "Society of Singers Presents: Great Voices/Great Songs," is a 20-song collection that Sharell produced with Shawn Amos, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter-producer who doubles as a vice president of artists and repertoire at the Los Angeles-based Shout! Factory record label. SOS does not have a projection in mind for sales of the release but officials said they would like to outdo the performance of the two fundraiser CDs they released in 1999. Those two discs sold more than 500,000 units combined. Sharell said he hoped the CD would also raise awareness about the organization, particularly for professional singers who may not know what it does for people in their field.
"I would ask them to take a look at us, some of the people they knew in their careers who aren't around anymore -- or who are around and can't really make a go of it," he said. "When you look at our other friends in the foundation business, their coverage is very generous and they do great work. So is ours, but ours is guaranteed to only be directed at singers."
Posted by acapnews at August 9, 2004 9:32 PM
