from Lois Rosow and Andrew Dell’Antonio

to AMS Council members, past and present:

Throughout its history, the Council has been essential in helping to chart the course of the Society. Many of you will remember developing new services and events for student members, initiating the outreach activities that recently culminated in the formation of the Membership and Professional Development Committee, developing the moderated listserv (AMS-L), contributing to the ethics statement, initiating the recent extensive study of the annual meeting program, nominating Honorary and Corresponding Members, and supporting myriad other initiatives that have benefited the profession and the Society. The ever-expanding list of research and travel awards the AMS offers to its members results in substantial part from Council’s vision of the Society as a welcoming place for all musicologists, whatever their career paths, personal identities, and institutional affiliations.

We Council members, then, have a special stake in the success of OPUS. What’s more, as a dedicated group within the AMS we have the opportunity to show our leadership dramatically. Let’s contribute collectively to the Society that we’ve endorsed, supported, and energized through so many of our legislative activities.

from David Gramit

to AMS 50 Fellows past and present:

I’m sure you’ll remember (even those of you for whom, like me, the event is growing more distant than you’d care to admit) the significance that winning an AHJ-AMS 50 Fellowship held for you. For most of us, it meant extremely welcome financial support at the end of a long period of graduate study. And for all of us, I suspect, it meant an even more welcome recognition of the significance of our work by the Society as a whole at a stage in our careers when we faced a great deal of insecurity. Hard as it is to believe, close to a hundred scholars have now been granted that recognition. The real diversity and overall quality of the work of the successive years of fellowship winners are genuinely encouraging signs of a strong future for our profession.

None of this, however, could have happened without the generosity of those who contributed to the original campaign for the fellowship. And to continue and expand that work—which includes, in addition to the AHJ-AMS 50 and the Society’s long-established awards, the increasing variety of awards, grants, and fellowships that have come into being in the last few years—your support of the OPUS campaign is essential. As AHJ-AMS 50 winners, we have experienced first-hand the results of the generosity and commitment of our predecessors. We must help insure that the AMS can continue to offer that kind of support to current and future scholars.

David Gramit was the first winner of an AMS 50 Fellowship, in 1984. He is on the faculty of the University of Alberta.

from ELAINE SISMAN
from JAMES LADEWIG | RICH CRAWFORD
from LOIS ROSOW & ANDREW DELL'ANTONIO | DAVID GRAMIT
from GREG BLOCH | SARAH EYERLY
from our student co-chairs:
ANA ALONSO-MINUTTI, ERICKA HONISCH, ROB PEARSON