Mel Lawrence
| Mel Lawrence | |
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| Born | May 17, 1935 |
| Died | November 5, 2016 |
Mel Lawrence (May 17, 1935 - November 5, 2016) was a film director and producer and former concert and festival promoter. He is best known for his role as the Director of Operations at the , his work on the Qatsi Trilogy, and for directing and producing the Emmy-nominated documentary .
'Mel Lawrence' was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Lawrence attended Lafayette High School and worked at Coney Island on the beach selling ice cream as well as Ebbets Field, where he sold soda and watched the Dodgers. In 1954, at age 18, he was drafted into the Army and served 2 years in the 82nd Airborne, after which he attended Long Island University on the GI Bill, graduating with a BS in speech pathology. In 1960 he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii to pursue a master's degree at the University of Hawaii, but soon left to work at KPOI, the top rock radio station in the city, as the station’s promotions director. In 1962, Lawrence became the Partner/Vice President of Arena Associates, Inc, a concert promotion company, where he produced over 50 major concerts in partnership with KPOI over the next five years.
In 1967, Lawrence became the Promotions director of KFRC, in San Francisco, CA, where he co-created and co-produced The Magic Mountain Music Festival and helped facilitate the Monterey Pop Festival after the success of Magic Mountain Music Festival. The Magic Mountain and Monterey Pop festivals were the country’s first pop festivals ever produced and two of the seminal moments of the “Summer of Love.” Following the success of these festivals, Lawrence went on to co-produce the Miami Pop Festival in 1968 and then became the Director of Operations for the historic in 1969.
In 1970 Lawrence moved to New Mexico, where he became the Director of Development for the Wheelwright Museum of the Indian American, a museum dedicated to Native American art. He also continued to produce music festivals, including Jamboree in the Hills, a country music festival in Wheeling, West Virginia, that became an annual festival that is still held today.
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