AIMP Panel

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Lawry's The Prime Rib
100 North La Cienega Blvd. (near Wilshire)
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

From left, Dan Coleman/Modern Works Music, Derek Crownoever, Esq./Dickinson Wright, AIMP Treasurer Cedar Boschan/Boschan Corp., Jason Somerville/EIG, Josh Gruss/Round Hill Music and AIMP President Michael Eames/PEN Music Group.

 Photos by Diego Lopez & Liz Redwing, courtesy of Lawry's Beverly Hills.  

Additional Speaker Information

Dan Coleman was born in New York City and educated at the University of Pennsylvania and the Juilliard School. He is the Managing Partner and co-founder (with Bob Donnelly) of Modern Works Music Publishing, which has offices in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, and Tucson. Modern Works represents over 30,000 works including “Misty” by Erroll Garner, “From a Distance” by Julie Gold, “Rockit” co-written by Michael Beinhorn for Herbie Hancock, and the catalogs of Bootsy Collins, Alison Krauss, Andy Summers, and Michael Giacchino. As an independent consultant, Dan has represented owners of music copyrights for valuation and sale. He is also a member of the board of the BMI Foundation, and co-founder of the Tucson Jazz Festival.

Derek Crownover is the Practice Leader for Dickinson Wright's Entertainment Law practice, counseling various entertainment and media executives and company owners. He represents some of the hottest songwriters, publishers and producers in the country as well as some the most active entrepreneurs in the entertainment and IP sectors around the country. He works with each client as a “primary care physician” of sorts assisting with LLC funding deals, real estate sales, asset purchase agreements, recording agreements, audits, employment agreements as well as tax and wills and trusts matters. He is “go-to” counsel for mid-sized publishing companies, indy record labels, songwriters and artists who own their copyrights, and mid-sized worldwide publishing administration companies, advising each on licensing, lawsuits, and liability issues daily. In his 21 years as a lawyer, Derek has been involved with over 40 publishing and/or master catalog sales, 30+ audits, and has recently been hired as an expert witness for valuation disputes.  Assisting publishing companies and writers in all genres is his daily grind. In the last year alone, he has brokered catalogs valued in total at over $70 million. And Derek is currently representing the BMI country songwriter of the year in 2013, Dallas Davidson, with his catalog sale which goes to market this winter.

Josh Gruss was previously a partner at Gruss & Co., a private investment firm based in New York City. Prior to working at Gruss & Co., Joshua worked in investment banking at Bear Stearns & Co. Before his career in finance, Josh worked at Sony Music, Atlantic Records and Clear Channel’s Live Music Division. Mr. Gruss earned his BA from Trinity College in Hartford, CT and an MBA from both Columbia University and London Business School. He served 6 years in the U.S Coast Guard.

Jason P. Somerville is a media and entertainment investment banker with nearly 20 years of experience, and is considered a leading banker to independent music companies. Over the past decade, Mr. Somerville has advised owners and investors of music rights on over 50 sales, acquisitions and capital raising transactions. His recently completed transactions include the sale of FS Media’s (S1 Songs) song copyright catalog and the sale of the rock band BUSH’s master recording catalog. Mr. Somerville currently serves as Managing Partner of EIG, a boutique investment bank he founded in 2010 to provide investment banking and strategic advisory services to media and entertainment companies. Previously, Mr. Somerville was a Team Leader in J.P.Morgan’s Entertainment Industries Group, where he founded the firm’s music practice and built it into the industry leader. While at J.P.Morgan, Mr. Somerville syndicated the first-ever and largest-ever senior debt facilities for independent music rights companies. In total, he structured and syndicated over $1 billion of investments in a broad spectrum of music rights companies.

Cedar Boschan has 14 years of music accounting experience. Cedar and her forensic accounting firm – Boschan Corp. – audit major companies for music rightsholders including talented composers, publishers, recording artists and their heirs. She also consults on community property and estate matters concerning music royalties, and she values damages and gives expert testimony in litigation matters. Cedar currently serves the Association of Independent Music Publishers as its national treasurer. She earned a BS in Music Industry from USC in 1999 and has been a featured speaker at The California Copyright Conference, The Beverly Hills Bar Association, The GRAMMY Museum, SXSW, Loyola Law School and USC. Cedar is a resource to the media, from Billboard to The Wall Street Journal, while interviews with Cedar have been featured in Accounting Today, The Daily Journal and KTLA-5 News.  Follow Cedar on Twitter @Auditrix.