Studio Monitor: With Mpga On Track, Stone Rolls On; Re-pro, Aprs Split

Set In Stone: Industry veteran Chris Stone, executive director of the Music Producers Guild of the Americas (MPGA) since its inception 18 months ago, is stepping down from day-to-day duties at the guild in order to focus on other projects. The parting was amicable, according to Stone and MPGA founder Ed Cherney.
"When Ed Cherney approached me in August 1997 and asked me to help him make MPGA a reality, I told him it would take until the millennium to accomplish his goals," says Stone. "We had no idea what excitement we would generate in the audio engineer/music producer community and among the leading pro audio manufacturers. It has been simply phenomenal."
Since it was founded in September 1997 in New York at the Audio Engineering Society Convention, the MPGA has enlisted 160 members‹including such industry legends as Phil Ramone and Arif Mardin‹and 32 corporate sponsors. Furthermore, the guild has held educational programs in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville.
Cherney credits Stone with being the catalyst in getting the Los Angeles-based organization off the ground.
"Without Chris Stone, there would have been no MPGA," says Cherney, the guild's chairman. "Chris mobilized the forces of music producers and audio engineers with an energy and effectiveness that is incredible. The infrastructure is solidly in place, and it's time now to refine our programs and policies."
On Jan. 1, Stone began serving as a consultant to the MPGA's board of directors and will contribute to the guild's activities on a project-specific basis. The MPGA‹which is headed by Cherney, president Nile Rodgers, and national project director Tim Heile‹has discontinued the position of executive director.
Stone‹who owned and operated the Record Plant studios in New York, Los Angeles, and Sausalito, Calif., before divesting himself of his studio holdings in 1991‹says he's looking forward to taking on new projects and refocusing his attention on the World Studio Group, an elite network of recording facilities he founded in October 1992.
"I've been asked by a leading publisher to write a book about the business of audio recording facilities; I will now have time to accept [the offer]," says Stone. "I've got some entrepreneurial consulting projects in the works, and I'm looking forward to getting back to managing the World Studio Group. I'm a start-up guy, and it's very gratifying to have the MPGA in excellent health and firmly on its feet."
On the other side of the Atlantic, the British producers' organization Re-Pro has split from its longtime studio counterpart, the Assn. of Professional Recording Services (APRS), and renamed itself Music Production Group (MPG), according to a Re-Pro newsletter with the headline "The Last Re-Pro News." Under the new structure, the