Veteran artist managers Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch are joining forces with Aaron Frank for a new venture — Q Prime AF.
Announced today (May 3), the fresh division will sit under the umbrella of Burnstein and Mensch’s Q Prime, the artist management company through which they guide the careers of Metallica, Muse, Foals, Disturbed, Cage The Elephant, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Three Days Grace and more.
Through the alliance, Frank will bring his Nashville-based team, plus an artist roster that includes Greta Van Fleet, Marcus King, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Houndmouth and All Them Witches.
“Cliff and Peter are the reason I became a manager,” comments Frank. “They have always been the gold standard of managers in my eyes, and their independent spirit and savviness is unmatched. I’m so excited to join their amazing team to elevate our work, and excited for what we can build together at Q Prime AF.”
The partnership is at least eight months in the making. Over lunch, “Cliff and I decided that we needed to move Q Prime past the normal standard of management company rating: Gold, platinum standard just wasn’t enough,” explains Mensch in a statement. “We wanted to establish a new standard. Tantalum, a rare earth precious metal found in eight countries and an absolute necessity in the digital world, totally fit the bill.”
Frank, with his group of “amazing artists, had a similar vision and, under the theory that the modern age needed a new standard of excellence, agreed to create the Tantalum standard of management companies.”
Frank cut his teeth in 2009 working for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s management company, Night Castle Management, in New York. In 2014, he relocated to Nashville where he co-founded ABI Management, and subsequently forming AMFM — nabbing GVF as his first client.
Q Prime also houses Q Prime South, founded 2001 in Nashville by John Peets; and Q Prime U.K., established 2007 in London and run by Steve Matthews and Tara Richardson.
