The Japan Association of Classical Music Presenters held its annual general meeting for FY2007 in Tokyo on Friday, May 18. The meeting installed Tokyu Bunkamura president and CEO Uzuhiko Tanaka as the association's new chairman for a 2-year term. Mr. Tanaka succeeds Mr. Mitsunori Sano, the president of Crystal Arts Inc., who has served as chairman for a full six years.

In Japan, we are seeing expanding sales of classical music CDs, a number of major hit TV anime programs and dramas having classical music story lines and a very successful music festival called La Folle Journée Au Japon. All this is having an increasingly positive effect on popular interest in classical music. Nevertheless, there hasn't been any real change in the way classical music concerts come into being, a process that places too much emphasis on the initiative of the artist and his or her presentation. The trouble with this pattern is that the concerts don't always give audiences what they are really looking for.

In his inaugural address as the new chairman, Mr. Tanaka noted that social conditions affecting entertainment industries continue to change rapidly. He expressed his hope of making classical music a much more common part of life by finding partners in a variety of different fields and maintaining a high level of understanding of the factors affecting the business.