President Carla Lehmeier-Tatum
On behalf of the ROPA Executive Board, I welcome you to the new ROPA website. Twenty seven years ago ROPA was formed by a group of regional orchestra musicians who recognized the need to improve their working conditions and industry standards of pay.
This mission proved to be successful as musicians across the country created networks within ROPA and shared their valuable information with their colleagues.
The annual ROPA conference has created one of the most invaluable resources for our orchestras. Throughout the years, ROPA Delegates have come together at each conference to face challenges and celebrate successes within the orchestral industry.
The 2010 ROPA Conference brought focus on potential new media outlets and how they can assist both our orchestras and musicians increase their relevance within their communities. During our exploration, the ROPA Executive Board received input from conference participants on how we as an organization could improve our connection with regional musicians through our web-site. This message provided inspiration and vision for the ROPA Board that led to the development of the new website.
We are thrilled that ROPA Webmaster, Bruce Hembd, has shared his creativity and knowledge to develop this amazing new resource for our ROPA membership.
The ROPA Executive Board recognizes the huge impact the ROPA website will have on our networking capacity. I welcome you to explore what ROPA has developed over the past twenty seven years: ROPA’s newsletter, conductor evaluation data base, regional orchestra emergency relief fund and many other assets available to our membership.
The website is the latest addition to the long list of resources that has served the 5,000 members ROPA is proud to represent.