{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/f18sb3zz66/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Edward Smaldone Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eEdward Smaldone is a retired Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Aaron Copland School of Music (ACSM) at Queens College who served as the Director and Chairman of the Faculty of ACSM from 2002 to 2016. Smaldone describes his upbringing east of Queens in the town of Wantagh from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. Smaldone explains that although he played guitar in bands during high school, he didn't consider pursuing music seriously (including learning how to read music) until his junior or senior year. After high school, Smaldone became a music major at Queens College. He later earned a master's degree in music composition from Queens College and a Ph.D in music composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eSmaldone discusses his academic interests and coursework as a student at Queens College during the 1970s, the distinguished faculty he studied under, and the supportive atmosphere among his fellow students. He also explains how he met his future wife, who was a music education major and a classmate of his at Queens College. Smaldone describes the teaching experience he gained at Queens College and elsewhere during the 1980s before joining the full-time faculty of Queens College in 1989. He also shares his memories of living in Queens (specifically Jackson Heights, Kew Gardens Hills, and Whitestone) from 1976 to 1991. Smaldone highlights some of his accomplishments while on the faculty of ACSM from 1989 to 2024, including leading study abroad programs in England and Italy, and speaks about the challenges of taking on the roles of Director and Chairman. Smaldone also describes his concurrent work composing classical music for orchestras and solo performers and getting his music recorded and released on over a dozen CDs. Additionally, Smaldone speaks about how Queens College's music program has grown since his time as an undergraduate, the talent and character of Queens College music students, and the strong camaraderie among ACSM's faculty.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["1920s-2025 (temporal)","Jackson Heights, Kew Gardens Hills, and Whitestone, Queens, NY; Brooklyn, NY; Wantagh, NY; Manhasset, NY (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2025-08-01 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Edward Smaldone (Interviewee)","Fran Kipnis (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Tags"]},"value":{"en":["Queens College Alumni"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eEdward Smaldone is a retired Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Aaron Copland School of Music (ACSM) at Queens College who served as the Director and Chairman of the Faculty of ACSM from 2002 to 2016. Smaldone describes his upbringing east of Queens in the town of Wantagh from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. Smaldone explains that although he played guitar in bands during high school, he didn't consider pursuing music seriously (including learning how to read music) until his junior or senior year. After high school, Smaldone became a music major at Queens College. He later earned a master's degree in music composition from Queens College and a Ph.D in music composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eSmaldone discusses his academic interests and coursework as a student at Queens College during the 1970s, the distinguished faculty he studied under, and the supportive atmosphere among his fellow students. He also explains how he met his future wife, who was a music education major and a classmate of his at Queens College. Smaldone describes the teaching experience he gained at Queens College and elsewhere during the 1980s before joining the full-time faculty of Queens College in 1989. He also shares his memories of living in Queens (specifically Jackson Heights, Kew Gardens Hills, and Whitestone) from 1976 to 1991. Smaldone highlights some of his accomplishments while on the faculty of ACSM from 1989 to 2024, including leading study abroad programs in England and Italy, and speaks about the challenges of taking on the roles of Director and Chairman. Smaldone also describes his concurrent work composing classical music for orchestras and solo performers and getting his music recorded and released on over a dozen CDs. Additionally, Smaldone speaks about how Queens College's music program has grown since his time as an undergraduate, the talent and character of Queens College music students, and the strong camaraderie among ACSM's faculty.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/299/348/small/smaldone_edward_20250801_portrait_aviary.jpg?1766783251","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - smaldone_edward_20250801_full.mp4"]},"duration":4726.74133,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/299/348/small/smaldone_edward_20250801_portrait_aviary.jpg?1766783251","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/299/348/original/smaldone_edward_20250801_full.mp4?1766782217","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4726.74133,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: OK. Hello, this is Fran Kipnis, and today is August 1st, 2025, and I'm interviewing Ed Smaldone for the first time. And this interview is taking place via Zoom and is part of the Queens Memory. And I want to begin by thanking you for participating in Queens Memory. And hearing about your experience as a student at Queens College and your professional experiences there will be a great contribution to the Queens Memory Archives. And, I'd like to start by asking you a little bit about your childhood and then talking about the different neighborhoods you lived in Queens, and then focusing on attending Queens College as a student and your professional career there, and also some of your incredible music experiences beyond Queens College.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2.0,58.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: OK! I presume we have two or three days to get through...[laughs]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=58.0,63.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Usually we're on for about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=63.0,68.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: We'll see. I'll try not to talk too fast.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=68.0,70.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: No, just talk as much as you want. We have plenty of time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=70.0,73.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Oh boy. Careful!","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=73.0,75.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Just a little bit first -- can we just say about how your parents ended up in Long Island. A little bit about growing up there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=75.0,83.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: My parents ended up in Long Island because my great-grandparents emigrated from southern Italy and Ireland. And like so many Irish and Italians, landed in Brooklyn. Actually, my Italian forebears landed on Jane Street in Manhattan first. But then they moved out to the country, Bay Ridge, and they lived there. My father was one of four sons and he's also a twin, and they lived in Bay Ridge. I guess I'm safe to say that my grandfather was a bookie. That's how he made his living. But his sons, one was an ABD [all but disseration] Ph.D., another one was a salesman. And then the twins, my father and his twin brother, were both lawyers and accountants. So everybody did quite well. The next generation did quite well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=83.0,148.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And my mother, she worked for the telephone company and lived in Brooklyn, a couple of blocks over, which meant a different parish altogether. And they got together at a USO dance. My father says, or said, [chokes up briefly] he danced my mother around the floor once and said, \"I'm going to marry this girl.\" And 55 years later it was over. But anyway, they lived in Brooklyn, and then when my mother was pregnant with me -- I'm the third of six -- when my mother was pregnant with me, they moved to Long Island, to Wantagh. My father loved the beach, and Wantagh is the \"Gateway to Jones Beach.\" So thank you, Robert Moses.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=148.0,207.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: They had a house in Wantagh. They were very active in the local Catholic church. My father sang and was a lector at Mass. My mother was in -- they had shows that they did. But nobody was a professional musician. We grew up there. Three more siblings arrived thereafter. And I got involved in music through the folk mass scene, which was very active in the late '60s and early '70s. This is how my mother got me to go to church. So I played electric bass in the folk mass, and I also played regular guitar. I still play the guitar. And in high school, like most kids on Long Island, I joined a rock band and we practiced in somebody's basement. So I played the guitar and I sang and I figured out songs from the records. I couldn't read music. I never took lessons. And one band led to another.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=207.0,284.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Later in high school, I was invited to join a band that was a lot more sophisticated. They were going to do Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears and Tower of Power and groups like this, 'cause they had a three-piece horn section. The trumpet player who actually -- he was just some kid that played the trumpet in high school -- but I later learned that he went on and became a trumpet player, going on the road with people like Phil Woods and Bill Charlap and people like that -- he had a very successful jazz career. As did a couple of the other guys in the band. Who knew? We were just a bunch of kids. And so that band in high school had music. I get to the first rehearsal and they said, here, we're doing this song, and they give me a piece of paper with music on it. I couldn't read it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=284.0,338.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So I faked it, and I actually -- it was like my junior year, late in my junior year -- when I was doing this. I said, you know, this music stuff is pretty neat. Maybe I should get serious about this. And I started to take piano lessons. So I learned how to read music in my senior year in high school, and then was trying to figure out where to go to college. And all the other guys in the band -- most of them -- were going to, upstate, they went to Potsdam, another one went to Fredonia [note: both SUNY schools with strong music programs]. Nobody was going to Juilliard or places like that. And I was looking around and somebody said, oh you know, Queens College has a good music program. I said, oh, where's that? And I had no idea. And a friend of mine from high school said, well, I'm going to go and audition. I really don't want to go there, but I'm going to practice. I'm going to go somewhere else, but I'm going to go there, so would you like to come? I said, sure. So I get in the car and we go there. Now, I had started to take a music theory class in high school because I was starting to get serious and looking for opportunities, and I went to the Queens College audition. I'll never forget, Joel Mandelbaum was the chairman at the time. And I kind of had already made up my mind that this was a good fit. In fact, I think I was already accepted at this point. I was already accepted at Queens College. I could go.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=338.0,428.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: They wanted to put me in a calculus class. I had a very good education. I went to Holy Trinity High School [in Hicksville, NY]. They did very well with academics and with music. And we get to the audition, and I kind of already made up my mind, this is where I'm going to go. I don't know anything about it, but this is where I'm going. And Joel Mandelbaum was there, and he said he wanted to let us all know that this is a very demanding music program. \"Take a look around because only one in four of you that enter as music majors will graduate as music majors. There's a lot of attrition.\" So right at that moment, I looked around, I said, \"I'm going to be very sorry to see all you people go.\" I decided that this is what I was going to do -- and it was. So four years, I went to Queens College, having learned to read music six months before, and I graduated. I got a couple of awards. I mean, I was on the dean's list and I had departmental honors and I got blah, blah, blah, blah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=428.0,491.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Anyway, but I did very well. And it was also where I met my wife, Karen Ajamian. We were actually in the very same 8 o'clock in the morning sight-singing class in that very first semester in 1974. We were both 17 years old, and we didn't know each other at the time. But the music program is a very small program, and everybody gets to know everybody because it's what you call a vertical curriculum. So there's a lot of courses that everybody has to take one after the other, and once you're in class with somebody, if everybody passes, you're in the next level together. So you kind of get to know people by the time you're there four years. We had a very tight group, and Karen and I started dating probably junior year, and we got married. We graduated in '78. We got married in '79, and we've got three children. They're all married as of last June, and we've got two grandchildren, and now we live in Manhasset. So now you wanted to hear about where I lived...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=491.0,561.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: But before you do that, tell me a little bit about, overall, what you felt about the student body in Queens College.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=561.0,568.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Oh, the student body at Queens was great. I mean, there were some stars. There were some people that put themselves on a pedestal. There were some people that the faculty put on a pedestal. I wasn't one of them really. Because I think I was a surprise to them, because I was this rock and roll guitar player who did all his homework and seemed to get good grades, and they were a little surprised by the end when I was competing with and doing at least as well, if not better, than some of their stars in the academics. I wasn't the performer. I couldn't go out and play a concerto. I couldn't go out and play classical music at a level that my other colleagues, my other fellow students could. But I was very good at music theory and history and analysis and composition and orchestration. I got high marks in all of those things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=568.0,630.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And the faculty at Queens valued that a lot because especially in those days, there were quite a few composers on the faculty. Not everybody taught composition, but people like Leo Kraft and Sol Berkowitz and Allen Brings and Joel Mandelbaum, they're all composers, but they didn't teach composition. Primarily they taught music theory or they would teach analysis and that sort of thing. And so the musical thinking that I developed at the time was very much in tune with my own aspirations as a composer. So I did really well with all of that. And the students, there was a lot of support. There were always a few prima donnas, but the rank and file, the guys that I hung out with, were very supportive of one another. We would get together and have study sessions, and we'd have parties together, and there was a lot of sort of mutual support. It wasn't quite the kind of cutthroat atmosphere that is so typical at schools of music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=630.0,706.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And that's something that Queens College has maintained, I'm happy to say, to this day. There aren't too many kids with a silver spoon in their mouth that are going to Queens College. So they understand struggle. They understand earning whatever you get. Nothing is handed to you. They don't take as much for granted. And they're generally, I think, very supportive of one another. For example, when I stepped down as the chairman, or when my father died, I can't remember exactly when it was, but I started a little scholarship for my parents, in memory of my parents. And when my father passed, a few people donated some things, and we give a little prize. So it's not a lot, $400 -$500, that we give the Jane and Paul Smaldone Award every year. Well, one year I gave it to some kid who I thought was somebody...she was a Latina woman, very smart, very capable, very driven, and thought she was a great student. She had a great attitude, so helpful to her students, to her fellow students and so on. When I told her about the award, she thanked me very much. Then she got back in touch with me and told me she'd given it away. Because there was somebody else needed it more than she did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=706.0,802.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: That's amazing. Yeah, that's the kind of students.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=802.0,806.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So, there's some very special students that we have, and the support for other students is remarkable in many cases. So when I finished my undergraduate work, I immediately started on my master's. Basically -- and I've said this in other interviews -- I finished, and I decided, I'm not done with these guys. The faculty were just amazing at the time. Hugo Weisgall, George Perle, Henry Weinberg, Carl Schachter, Charles Burkhart, Henry Burnett. I mean, there was just like, the list goes on. It was just a very, very powerful group of thinkers, musicians, analysts, composers. That's what I was most interested in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=806.0,853.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: There were also wonderful performance faculty -- Ronnie Roseman, Morey Ritt, Leon Pommers. I mean, these are all names that -- they were musicians' musicians. It's not like we had Itzhak Perlman on the faculty, but we had people that knew just about as much and were there for the students. So it was really amazing. But I wasn't really a performer, so I was interested more in the composition side of things. So I stayed for my master's; I got my master's in 1980. While I was taking my master's, I was invited to teach. So I became an adjunct lecturer teaching music theory and ear training courses that I had taken three years before, and now I was teaching them. So that was a really valuable experience, to get in front of a classroom and teach.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=853.0,915.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: OK.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=915.0,915.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And then in 1980, I started my Ph.D. at the Graduate Center because I decided I'm not done with these guys. So I started doing that, and it was in 1980 that Larry Eisman, who was the head of the music education program, started the pre-college program at Queens College. It was called at the time, the Center for Preparatory Studies in Music, and it was for students from 4 years old through high school. They came on Saturdays. It started as a program out at the Cantiague Park [note: the program was held at what is now Caumsett State Park], out on Long Island. I used to drive out there with Harriet Kapner who was another -- we were like the two faculty members who taught the theory classes. And then there were a bunch of other people that taught instruments, and they had 30 or 40 kids that came to this place in Lloyd's Neck. And it took so long to get there that they moved it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=915.0,975.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: But it was right after that...we did that one semester, I think, and then we immediately switched it to a program that was going to be at Queens College. So I was running that program. I was the associate director of that program from the beginning, and I was also teaching in the program and developing curriculum and so on. I did that for about eight years. And it went from a program -- I can still see myself the first semester, on the phone trying to convince people to show up, because we needed five more people to pay tuition so that we could meet payroll. And then it went from there to like 450 students at its height. It's taken a bit of a hit since COVID, but it's coming back. It's a very valuable program. A lot of really wonderful kids come out of there. It happens -- Juilliard has a pre-college, Mannes has a pre-college, the Manhattan School of Music, all of the major conservatories have a pre-college program. And those pre-college programs tend to be registered by people who aspire to become musicians.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=975.0,1049.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Those are the most serious conservatories. I have to say that most of the people that came through the Queens College preparatory program went on to become doctors and lawyers and businessmen and people like that. Music was an important thing, but it wasn't the only thing that they were doing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1049.0,1066.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Interesting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1066.0,1066.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And so they wanted to go someplace nearby in Queens rather than schlepping into the city, and they didn't need the high -- and again, it wasn't as high-powered as those places. It was a little kinder and gentler, and very well-suited for what we were trying to do, I think. So I ran that program with Larry Eisman. At the same time, I was taking courses for my Ph.D. I was teaching in the college -- teaching theory classes -- and going out on the weekends and playing the guitar. And I was married. We didn't have any kids at the time. But Karen, my wife, immediately upon graduation, she got a job in a public school. She was a music education major, and she got a job right away and had a very successful career for 35 years. And then she retired...by the way, this will be a different thread. She retired from the public schools after 35 years and then became an adjunct at Queens College.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1066.0,1136.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Oh, fabulous.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1136.0,1137.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Teaching in the music education program. She's still doing it. I'm retired. I'm retired, and she's still working. She's not too happy about that. So, she was working full-time. I was going to school. 1979, we got married. We moved into, well, if you want -- the apartments. I lived in Queens. I moved out of my parents' house in Whitestone. Excuse me. I'm ahead -- in Wantagh. I moved out of my parents' house in Wantagh when I was 19. I moved into an apartment in Jackson Heights, 82nd Street in Jackson Heights, and was playing the guitar. I could make my rent with one gig a month, and I was doing six or eight.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1137.0,1184.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Were you living on your own, or did you have roommates?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1184.0,1185.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Yes. Well, I had roommates. But we had a two-bedroom apartment that we eventually turned into a three-bedroom apartment, and it was kind of a frat house, kind of. It was not a very sophisticated place to live, but it was OK. I mean, I had a grand piano in my bedroom and a loft bed, and I was driving a Volvo 142. I'd park it on the street and it had a trunk that fit all my equipment, and I would go off to my gigs and come back.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1185.0,1216.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: And what was the neighborhood like?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1216.0,1217.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: The neighborhood, I really have very little idea because all I did was go to Queens College, go to my gigs, I cooked. Going out to eat was not what you did, and besides, it's not the kind of food fest that it is today. I mean, there were a couple of pubs on Northern Boulevard that I went to a couple of times, but it was not something that we did. I was going to school, I was going to graduate school. I was teaching at Queens College, I was running the prep school. I had a girlfriend who eventually became my wife. I had enough to do. And I had a car, so I hardly ever walked the two blocks down to the 7 train. I just drove everywhere. But it was a nice neighborhood. I mean, a lot of nice apartments and so on...right across, I was right across the street from a little church, had a nice little courtyard and so on. But there were no cell phones in those days. My apartment was on the first floor and, right on the corner, and my bedroom was right there -- about five feet from the sidewalk where there was a payphone. And the kids in the neighborhood knew the number of that phone. So the phone would ring at all hours of the night because they would call, \"Hey, hey, is Ricky down there? No? Yeah, yeah, man. We're hanging. Come on down.\" And the phone would be ringing, I'd be like, would you guys go to bed, please? It was fine for what it was. I was under no misapprehension that we were going to get married and move into that apartment.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1217.0,1331.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: OK, OK. [laughs]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1331.0,1331.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So we got another apartment over near Queens College in Kew Gardens Hills, 72nd Road, just a few blocks below. There was a McCrory's right there where Kissena makes a curve. And we moved in there. We got rid of one car because we were trying to economize. We also paid for a parking spot, an extra $5 a month to have a parking spot. And that was a garden apartment, which was perfect because it was dreadful, and it really encouraged us to buy our first house. So we parked the car there, and I could walk to Queens College. It was about a half a mile. So I would walk out, I would look down Kissena Boulevard. If a bus was coming, I would pay the 35 cents and get the bus. But if I didn't see one coming, I walked because by the time the next one came, I was already at the campus. And we were there for about, really only about two and a half years. In 1981, we bought our first house in Whitestone. We bought a semi-attached brick house on 24th Avenue, which was right next to a bus stop. We still didn't need another car because I could walk out to the 25/34 and go right down past Queens College. So we did that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1331.0,1421.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: And what was that neighborhood like? Whitestone?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1421.0,1423.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: It was great. I mean it was, compared to where we were...First of all, we had our own space and we had a piano, but we didn't have to listen to anybody else. My neighbors in Kew Gardens Hills were very fond of loud rock music, which I had already moved on from. So I was not really interested in listening to what they had. The walls were paper thin. There was one time I knocked on the wall to say to the guy, hey, would you knock it off? And he put his fist through the wall in response. So it was -- anyway, Whitestone was a nice neighborhood to live in. We got to know our neighbors on the block. We had a little patch of grass in the back. I had a lawn and a lawnmower, and it took me three minutes to cut the lawn because it was back forth, back forth, finished. But we had a little deck and we had a barbecue, and we had parties back there, and we had people over, and it was really nice. And then our first child arrived in 1988. After I got my Ph.D. in 1986, I stepped down from the prep school because what I really wanted, now that I had a Ph.D., I really wanted to get a regular academic job. And I did a lot of adjunct teaching at that time for a while. There was one semester where I was teaching at Queens College, at Hofstra, at SUNY Purchase and at the New School.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1423.0,1529.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Wow.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1529.0,1529.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So I had a 516, a 718, a 914, and a 212, and four sets of keys and four sets of syllabi. And I spent a lot of time in the car. When I got the -- I'll never forget -- I got the job at. it was right at 1986, I got the job at SUNY Purchase. It was a half-time position, so it paid pretty well, $13,000 for the year. That's pretty good, except I needed a car. So I bought a car. Guess how much the car cost?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1529.0,1564.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: 13?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1564.0,1564.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: $13,000. But then Hofstra came and it was OK. And then in 1988, our first daughter, Laura, was born, and we're sitting around thinking, OK, so now what does the future hold? Where we were zoned in Whitestone, she would have gone to Flushing High School. And we said, I'm not so sure I want her to go to Flushing High School. It's very big. It draws from a very broad area, and it's a little rougher than we're used to. A little more challenging. But we said, well, so we could pay -- we'll send her to a private high school. That would not be the end of the world. But we were looking around and we knew a bunch of people out here on Long Island in Manhasset. We were also trying to triangulate where would be a good place to live that would have access to Queens College, to have access to Lynbrook, which is where Karen was teaching, and have access to her mother, who lived in Flushing and was extremely helpful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1564.0,1642.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: She babysat for us in Whitestone. She came one day a week, maybe it was two, I can't remember. But I mean, she was part of the childcare apparatus that we had -- as we are now with our grandchildren, I have to say, which is great. So the Long Island Railroad to Manhasset is a hop, skip and a jump, and Karen's mother doesn't drive or didn't drive. So we thought that that would be -- well, Manhasset for a lot of different reasons. It's also very close on Long Island, not very far from Queens, not that far from the Cross Island [Expressway] so that she can get to Lynbrook. So it seemed like a good fit.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1642.0,1693.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And so we bought a little house in 1991. So the first house -- we bought the house in Whitestone. We got married in '79, bought the first house in '81, and then bought this house in '91. We did a big renovation later. And so now we have more house than we need, but what are you going to do? And then in 1992, our son was born, Gregory, and in '94, our daughter Julia was born. So we raised three kids. Karen was able to take some time off through the benefits of her union job as a public school teacher. And between that, her mother, my academic schedule, which was generally not every day, we were able to piece things together. And I mean, here in Manhasset, we're in a very affluent community. And my kids had to live through who's going to Puerto Rico over this break, and who's going skiing over that break, and who's going to Florida and who's going there and who's going here? And we went to the prep school because the kids all were enrolled. They didn't have -- it was not quite the same. We didn't belong to the country club or any of that, but it's a nice area. The people -- we've got very dear friends from the neighborhood and from the local area, and the kids did very well in the public schools. And so it's all worked out.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1693.0,1809.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: I was getting back to my academic career. I went, so '86 to '90 really, I was sort of here and there mostly doing adjunct work, but I still had some teaching at Queens. And then in 1989, I was appointed as an assistant professor and started the tenure track process. And so I started in 1989, and then I retired in 2024. So 35 years in and out. Nothing to it. I started...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1809.0,1854.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Just before you go through the specifics of it, one thing I'm curious about is how you saw the students change in that time period?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1854.0,1863.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because when I started, the students...well, when I started teaching in 1978 -- I had already been teaching college for 12 years before I was an assistant professor -- and when I started in 1978, the kids were only a few years younger than me. And I mean, I don't know -- really, I just tried to emulate the great teaching that I got. I mean, I was taught by some amazing pedagogues at Queens College. So I just tried to sort of live up to their model and lots of preparation. I was always very sympathetic to the students, especially if they were trying. If somebody was just showing up late every time, not doing his homework, I'd pull them aside and say, you know what? We got to talk about this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1863.0,1929.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And then sometimes, actually most of the time, you would find out that it had very little to do with the subject or with school, there's problems at home. They've got an ill parent. I mean, the students at Queens have, generally speaking, have a lot more to deal with then the average student that packs up, mommy drops them at the dorm, and they have a meal plan, they go to their clubs, they do whatever they want. Nobody's got a job, lots of free time. Boy, is that not the Queens College experience. I mean, you don't roll out of bed and walk down the hill to class. You get up, you take care of your mother, you get your baby brother off to his bus, then you get on your bus and 45 minutes to Queens College and you make your own lunch. And I mean, it's a different kind of experience. So some of the kids have a tough time, but some of them are just -- the best students that we have always had at Queens College are every bit as good as the best students from any other school, any other music school. I've been on the faculty with the people who were the students, they got their degrees at Harvard or Yale or Princeton. And I've held my own and gee, all I did was go to Queens College.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=1929.0,2019.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: There are smart people that learn and can learn that don't have all the advantages that people that go to all these other fancy places might have. So when I started, I mean, I do have to say that when I started, I spent a lot of time preparing for, dealing with, talking to the students. I always was available. I have to say that maybe I got a little grouchy, maybe they didn't all want to come and see me, but some of them did. I'm still in touch with quite a few of the students and I go to their concerts, and I think the students are still very good. I think we still have the same -- I've always said that the students at Queens College, the very best students, are as good as the very best anywhere. We don't have quite as many of them as they might have at other places.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2019.0,2089.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So we don't have the bench that a lot of places have, but the best ones are terrific. And we've seen students go on to outstanding graduate programs. Everybody doesn't, but a lot of them do really well. They go to Juilliard, Michigan, they go to Yale, they graduate and they go to these fancy places. And then when they go to Juilliard or Manhattan School of Music and they get in touch with me, they say, wow, the theory and the academics were more demanding at Queens College than they are at the -- go figure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2089.0,2132.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Alright, so now go back and tell me about your career at Queens College.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2132.0,2137.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Well, so I started as an assistant professor. And I mean, when I was appointed to the full-time faculty, I felt a shift, a change. It was right about the time -- I mean, the very first year that I was appointed, we were still in Rathaus Hall, but the second year already, we moved into the new building. It's now 35 years old, but at that point it was the new building. And we suddenly had this beautiful Lefrak Concert Hall. We had beautiful classrooms. Everybody had their own office. In the old building, in Rathaus Hall, you would have senior faculty -- Hugo Weisgall was a distinguished professor. He was at the rank of distinguished professor, and he had a desk in what was essentially an alley with five other desks and other faculty sharing the same office. It looked like the typing pool in a third-rate office building.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2137.0,2206.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: But in the new building, everybody had their own office. Everybody had a piano in the office. It was amazing. It was great. And I was the baby and I had my own office. So it was very nice. And the facilities were great. And I kind of just put my nose to the grindstone and I prepared and taught my classes, and I had to do -- my version of publish or perish was primarily composition. I was hired to be a theory teacher. I taught theory, I taught ear training. I taught the entire sequence; there's 10 different classes in that sequence. And I taught all of them. I taught orchestration. I taught the class in composition, and I taught music appreciation. So I taught all kinds of different things, but I did not have -- especially at the beginning -- I did not have private students in composition, even though that's what I was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2206.0,2270.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Queens always valued having composers teaching these other subjects. The composers are the ones that knew how to do all this stuff. So for my -- to get tenure and promotion -- I had to write music. So I wrote music. In 1990, I was talking to a pianist named Michael Boriskin, who had been a student at Queens. He was a master's student, but he was a professional pianist touring all over the world. And he said, I'm working on some concerts. I said, oh, I'll write you a piece. He said, oh, OK. And that's how I got my first commission. So I wrote him a set of piano etudes. And I knew that I -- first of all, he's an amazing pianist -- so I knew I could write just about anything I wanted. And I also knew that if I wanted to get promoted and considered, thought of, as a serious composer, I had to write a big, serious composition. So it's available, you can go and find it. Just search my name and \"Etudes\" and you'll find it on Spotify or YouTube or Apple Music or whatever. It's called \"Transformational Etudes.\" And they are a set of etudes that are inspired by paintings by a Long Island artist named Irv Abram. Irv Abram was the husband of Blanche Abram, who was a pianist and a colleague when I taught at Hofstra. You never burn your bridges.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2270.0,2386.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So Blanche played a piece of mine when I was teaching in Hofstra in the late '80s, and I went to her house for a rehearsal and there were these beautiful paintings on the wall of her house. I said, \"Wow, these are nice. Who did these?\" \"Oh,\" she said, \"oh, my husband did them.\" I said, oh. He was an abstract painter in the '50s. He knew people like de Kooning and Pollock and others, but he decided with the GI Bill, I'm going to go to school. He went to school, became a dentist, and became very successful and painted on the side. But I found, I used four paintings from his early 1950s career and used them as kind of the inspiration for these etudes. And they were, it's not like I was telling a story, they're just very generally related to that. It was useful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2386.0,2446.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And then I wrote sort of an introduction and an epilogue that go with it. So there's six movements. There's six etudes. Michael Boriskin performed them all over the country, and then he was putting a CD together and he said, \"I'd like to record them.\" I said, \"You don't have to ask me twice!\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2446.0,2465.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Go for it!","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2465.0,2466.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So when it was time for me to report to my chairman, what have you done to work towards tenure and promotion? I said, well, I wrote this set of piano etudes, and this guy performed them 10 times all over the country, and he's recording them over at the American Academy, and they're going to be released on New World Records. And New World Records was one of the top -- it is not a vanity label or anything like that. It's the real deal. And I was on the same CD with Leonard Bernstein and Richard Danielpour and Lowell Liebermann, and those two are major composers of my generation. And that set of etudes also was instrumental in getting an award around the same time from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, because George Perle, who was one of the people that I studied with in my time at Queens College, was on the faculty. He had just retired. He went on after he retired, it was when he got a MacArthur and a Pulitzer, and he was a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters. And they invited me -- he'd heard the piece, he invited me. Michael Boriskin had recorded quite a bit of George Perle's music. So Michael Boriskin was also a connection with George Perle. And George Perle was on the -- a member of the Academy, and I was invited to submit things for -- and so I got the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, which is a big fellowship for a young composer. So it was...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2466.0,2591.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Congratulations.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2591.0,2593.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Thank you. The stars all aligned. It was very valuable. I mean, I had gotten some other small awards of various kinds, but this was a big thing. And shortly after -- oh! During this, kind of the same time, from about '85 or '86 into the early '90s, I was running something called Sounds From the Left Bank, which was a new music series that was sponsored by the Queens Symphony Orchestra. And the Queens Symphony Orchestra -- David Katz was the conductor. His daughter is Melinda Katz, who was, I don't know -- she was the Borough President for Queens [2014-2019], and now she's the District Attorney [as of 2020]. She was married to Curtis Sliwa [note: Katz and Sliwa were not married but were in a relationship and have two children together]. Yeah, she was just a kid in the '90s when I knew her father.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2593.0,2657.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: But the Queens Symphony was a pretty conservative organization, because the people in Queens were not that interested in contemporary music. They wanted Beethoven and Brahms and Tchaikovsky. They wanted those kinds of things. So the Queens Symphony was kind of looking for a way to increase their profile with some contemporary music. So I came along and I suggested to them that I would run a concert series with chamber music. So it's not as expensive. You don't have as many people to pay, and I'll run that. So I did three concerts every year for seven or eight years, and we did all the concerts at PS1 in Long Island City before it was MoMA Queens.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2657.0,2703.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: I mean, it was a pretty gritty neighborhood. It's still a little gritty, but it was even more gritty at the time. And we would go in there and we'd rent a piano and bring it in and put on a concert. They were usually free. So the Queens Symphony simply put up the money to make these things happen. And I wrote music for those concerts. Michael Boriskin came and gave a concert, and other people. And they got a new conductor at the time. It was Arthur Fagen, who started there probably in '91 or '92. And we got to know one another, and I said, \"Why don't I write Michael Boriskin a piano concerto for the Queens Symphony?\" And he said, \"Oh, that's a good idea. Go ahead. Let's do that.\" That's how I got that commission. And I wrote a piano concerto. I spent a year doing it. I wrote it for Michael Boriskin and the Queens Symphony Orchestra. It was premiered by the Queens Symphony Orchestra. It was very well received. And then Arthur said, \"You know, I have contacts in Munich. We could get this thing recorded.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2703.0,2783.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: You don't have to ask me twice. So he actually was hiring Michael Boriskin to go to Germany to play probably the \"Rhapsody in Blue\" for a German audience with a German orchestra. And Arthur's plane ticket and Michael's plane ticket were being paid for by the orchestra that was hiring them for this other concert. So he said, we're already going to be there. Munich is not too far away. You come over, and we already have our plane tickets paid for, and then this is how much it would cost to hire the orchestra, blah, blah, blah. So we did it, and I had to find the money to hire the orchestra. And part of that came from a PSC-CUNY grant, which I got, and some of it came from my bank account, and I left my wife and probably just one, maybe there were two children. I can't remember exactly what year it was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2783.0,2853.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: But we went over there, we recorded the thing, we came back, and then I got some other grants and I organized some other chamber pieces, and I released a CD on the CRI label, the Composers Recordings label, which is a kind of prominent label in New York, funded by the Ford Foundation and big grants. And it was a label that professional contemporary composers were very well represented. And so that got released -- actually it didn't get released until almost 2000, I think. It took a while for it to -- but it was done and it was in process. And so I had a CD that was in the works. I'd written a piano concerto that had been performed -- commissioned, performed and recorded. I had a set of etudes that had been commissioned, performed and recorded all over the country. And I had written some other chamber pieces as well. And that whole package went in and I got tenure and got promoted. So I became an associate professor somewhere in there along that line.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2853.0,2933.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And then I started working on more recordings. I had a little cottage industry going. I would talk to somebody -- wouldn't you like to have a piece? They'd say, oh, that's a good idea. So now I have a commission and I'm going to write the piece. And I would only have these conversations with really terrific musicians, and they would perform them, and then I'd get them recorded. I had several of my CDs were recorded and engineered by Adam Abeshouse, who was a dear friend and a Grammy-winning recording engineer in the classical world. And he would come to Queens College and Lefrak. And I didn't have to pay for a studio because I was a faculty member and we could use Lefrak. And Lefrak has spectacular sound. So you find a way to do it a little bit here and a little bit there. And you keep building it up, one brick at a time. And when the house is ready, you move in. So at this point, I have followed that. I've got a little more than a dozen CDs that I'm on, and five of them are full-length CDs of just my music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=2933.0,3017.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Wow.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3017.0,3017.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: In fact, I got one here and I'm still making CDs. That's how old I am. This is a CD [holds up a copy of the CD \"What no one else sees...\"] that includes four orchestral pieces. And those are the most expensive to do. It's a lot easier to hire one pianist to play a piece. But there's four orchestral pieces and a woodwind quintet. And this actually has another piano concerto on it that I wrote just a couple of years ago and was performed by a spectacular pianist by the name of Niklas Sivelöv. He's Swedish. And I met him in Copenhagen where he's a professor at the Royal Danish Academy. And that actually segues into another aspect of my later career. Because in the '90s, I was just working my way up. I was assistant, then I got tenure, then I got to associate professor. And I also -- one of the things that I did, starting in 1999, was I became involved in study abroad programs.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3017.0,3085.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So I led study abroad programs in Chichester, England, in Florence, and in Perugia. And among those three locations, I led seven different study abroad programs. Always a summer course where -- and this is how I felt I was making up a little bit for my kids who didn't get to go to Switzerland to ski or Puerto Rico for spring break. They went to Europe five or six times. They didn't all come to every single one of them, but they went to Europe for a month and followed Daddy around as he was teaching. And then we would always -- what usually happened was I would go and start teaching for a week or 10 days, then the family would come. I'd have another 10 or 12 days where we're kind of juggling everybody's schedule and I'm finishing up the course. And then we'd stay for a week or so afterwards. And they went to Paris and they went to Florence and they went to Rome, we went to the Vatican, we did all kinds of stuff. And they still talk about it. It was great. And it was wonderful for the students.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3085.0,3161.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: The School of Music has -- because I think, largely because of my efforts -- there have been also others who have led study abroad programs in other places like Thailand -- not Thailand, Bali. Michael Lipsey has done programs in Bali. Emily Wilbourne has gone to Italy as well, and led courses there. So the study abroad program idea is a terrific one. The students really learn about themselves, and even when they go to another country and speak nothing but English and mostly talk to their own colleagues, they still learn a lot. That is very formative for them. And the piano concerto -- this gets back to the piano concerto, the one that I wrote for the Swedish professor from Copenhagen. We didn't have a study abroad course that I led there. But I also got involved -- especially once I became the chairman -- I got involved in student exchange programs. At one point, we had student exchange programs with the conservatory in Perugia, the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen and the China Conservatory in Beijing. And I went to these places and visited and supervised concerts and wrote pieces.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3161.0,3254.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Fascinating.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3254.0,3255.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: I got to know the woodwind professor at the Royal Danish Academy, and I said, gee, I could write you a piece. Oh, OK, well, there you go. Now I wrote a piece for 15 players. And we combined Queens College faculty, Royal Danish Academy faculty, and students from both places. And this was the group. And they performed a Mozart partita, and they performed a piece that I wrote for the same ensemble. And they're on YouTube. And we've still got these exchange programs. And some students from Queens College will go to Copenhagen or to Italy and study for a semester. And students from those places can come to New York and study. That's been pretty cool.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3255.0,3305.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Fabulous. Yeah!","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3305.0,3308.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So I was just coming back actually in 2001. In August of 2001, I came back from a study abroad program in England, the second one that we had run there. And I was asked to become the next chairman. I was an associate professor, and they asked me to become the next chairman. And I said, well, I really would like to get promoted to full professor, and I've got a couple of projects that I need to work on, and I'm not going to have the time to do both of these things. I said, I'll become the chairman, but somebody else do it for a year. And then I'll start the second year of the term. So the guy that was the chairman at the time was Hubert Howe, who's also the chairman who hired me. And it was Hubert Howe and Rufus Hallmark who were the chairmen...one or the other of them was the chairman from something like 1983 until 2002. It was like a hot potato. They kept -- no, now you do it. No, no, no. Now you do it. And they would just trade it back and forth. Nobody really wants the job.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3308.0,3385.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: I learned this later. Nobody really wants the job of chairman. It's very demanding. But I said, I'll do it, but somebody else has to do it for a year. So Tuck Howe, Hubert Howe, his nickname is Tuck. He did it for one more year. And then I started in 2002. And the piece that I wrote -- the big piece -- I was working on a big piece at that time for piccolo and orchestra. I wrote another concerto because there was a graduate of our program named Jill Sokol. Jill Sokol was a lovely young lady, played the flute. She got into Peabody [Institute, part of Johns Hopkins University] to do her master's, which is a very strong school, very good school. And I said, oh, that's terrific. And she came over to my house, we had dinner, and she showed me her new piccolo. I said, oh, that's beautiful. Let me hear that. And she played a little bit. And I said, I should write you a piccolo concerto. She said, OK. And that's how I got that commission. And she showed up in Baltimore and went to the guy who conducted the contemporary chamber ensemble, a guy named Gene Young, and said, \"I have a former professor back in New York that wants to write me a piccolo concerto. Can we play it?\" He said, yeah, sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3385.0,3487.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And that was that. And I wrote the piece. Not only did -- I wrote the piece, the guy played it. He liked it so much, he took it to another college and had another -- he was a guest at another college -- and there was another piccolo player that played it a week later. And I went down to the performances and I got to know him, and he invited me back to perform several other pieces that I had written. And it was wonderful. And so that happened, and then I was working on some other things. So I became the chairman, director of the School of Music in 2002, but I was an associate professor. So it was probably a year or maybe a year and a half after I started that I went up for the final promotion. And because I had all this backlog of stuff that I had done, it was all fine. So I was promoted, and then I stayed as the director for 14 years. So it was really five terms. The reason it's not a multiple of three, it would've been 15 years except I asked for that first year off. And they would've been happy for me to continue to this day. I mean, they just kept saying, please, no, run again Ed, would you please?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3487.0,3575.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And at a certain point I said, you know what, basta. Basta cosi, it's enough. So I said, no, no, you got somebody. So a young colleague, David Schober, who was somebody that I had hired -- and in fact, over the 14 years, I had hired 13 or 14 of the 26 faculty members that were on the faculty at that time. So I had a lot to do with who it was that I was leaving behind. It's hard finding somebody that can balance managing a department, and also the job, it simply gets harder every year. There's just more things that the administration says, no, no, we need you to do this now.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3575.0,3633.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And they're going to give you less support. And how about we reduce the budget again, and we've already cut it to the bone, so now let's take some of the bone out. I mean, it gets harder and harder. So I have sympathy for my colleagues who have followed me. But David Schober, another composer, I thought he was going to be terrific, and he did a very good job. But after one term, he said, \"You know what? I can't do this.\" So he stepped down and Michael Lipsey, who's another colleague, somebody else that I hired, became the chairman. He did two terms, so he did six years -- it's been nine years since, those are the two that have been the chairman since I retired [as chairman]. And Michael just finished his second term. And we have a new colleague, Emily Wilbourne, who is going to start in the fall [of 2025].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3633.0,3695.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And Emily is a musicologist. So, she has a lot more experience writing letters, writing words, making convincing arguments than Michael Lipsey, who is a very talented percussionist and performer. But his focus in his career has been more about the music on the page and the performance and that sort of -- and he's excelled at all of that. It's a different kind of skill and experience talking to people, writing a convincing argument, working with the administration, working with people from other departments. It's like the diplomatic corps, and it's a tough job. I think Emily's going to do great. I have high hopes and we'll see. And I mean, the fact is, it's time to let the next generation take over.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3695.0,3754.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Exactly.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3754.0,3758.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: But all through my directorship, we were expanding the school. I stepped down three years before COVID, four years before COVID. I stepped down in 2016. And I also had a fantastic president for most of that time. James Muyskens was the president for most of my tenure as the director, and he was very, very supportive of music. And I hasten to add that all of the other presidents that we've had are all very, very supportive of music. The big difference with Muyskens is that he actually was supportive with money.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3758.0,3809.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And that makes a different -- that's a different kind of support. Emotional support is very nice, but giving us money to spend on the things that we need. And you can't just make it about personalities, because a lot has to do with what's available at the time. Every president is faced with a certain number of resources and a certain number of places where he's got to economize, and they each make their own decisions. I'm not criticizing anyone. All I can say is that Muyskens came across with funding in a way that really helped. We were able to build the college, we hired people -- when somebody retired, we got a replacement right away. Two people retired, we got two replacements. Three people retired, we got three replacements. We needed pianos, he gave us $400,000 to buy new pianos for the School of Music. They had never bought pianos since they had -- probably since 1950. I mean, we had these old instruments, broken down. We got rid of a lot of things. It was quite amazing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3809.0,3880.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: The building needed a roof, he spent the money and we got a new roof. I mean, it was money for the things that we needed, and it was very helpful. I was able, while I was the director, I worked with the president and with the development office, and we were very fortunate. We got a lot of gifts that increased our endowment accounts. Queens College has always been tuition-free, or it was tuition-free until 1976, and the tuition was also very modest for a long time. Now it's still modest, it's still a lot less, but it's like $8,000 a year for an undergraduate. Now that's cheap compared to 50 or 60 if you go to a fancy Ivy League school. But $8,000 is not chump change. That's something to come up with.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3880.0,3943.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So, the students really need scholarship support. The School of Music now -- and I'm proud to say that it's, a lot of it was because of efforts that I was able to help with -- we've got an endowment of $5.5 million just for the School of Music. That's our money. And it's endowed, which means it earns interest, which means it'll never go away. We can spend the interest every year. So what does that mean? It means we can give -- maybe we have $200,000. That sounds like a lot of money, but if you divide that by eight, you don't get all that many scholarships.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3943.0,3987.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And we tend to squeeze it out a nickel at a time. You get a $500 scholarship, you get a $1,000 scholarship, somebody gets a $2,000 or $3,000 scholarship -- wow. So in retirement, I'm still actually working with the development area to try to help that along and build that. We've been very, very fortunate. Larry Eisman, who was the music education professor, he left us his house. I was talking to Larry one day and he said, \"What could I do? I don't have a lot of money. I wish I could help.\" I said, \"Larry, give us your house.\" He said, oh OK.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=3987.0,4044.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: I should have said, Larry, I want to write a symphony, and he would have...But, he left it in his estate, and he passed away [in 2021]. And so now we have that. His other colleague was David Walker. His wife Bunny Walker passed away just a few months ago, and she left a substantial amount of her estate. I mean, they're going to sell the house, they're going to sell the contents. She's got money she's going to give to a bunch of people, and then half of it's going to go to Queens College, to the School of Music. Bill Rorick was a music librarian in the School of Music for a long time. He just left a substantial part of his estate to the music library.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4044.0,4094.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: It's fabulous.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4094.0,4096.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: While I was the director, a woman named Beatrice Schacher-Meyer left $1.6 million to the School of Music. We don't even know who this lady was. She had no surviving relatives. We couldn't find any connection directly to Queens College anywhere. She wasn't a student. We don't really know why, but we cashed the check. And so there's an endowment. These million-dollar gifts provide endowments that can then -- a million dollars spins off about $35,000.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4096.0,4131.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So if we had 20 million, we'd be doing pretty well. So we keep trying. We built new programs while I was the director, we built towards NASM certification, the National Association of Schools of Music, which is a national organization that certifies schools of music, which was kind of necessary for us to continue our music education program. But also brought us in line with places like Eastman and Potsdam and Fredonia and lots of others that we're in competition with. When people -- it's like the [Good] Housekeeping seal of approval. And then when people are looking for that -- a lot of people are looking for that. So we had to make some adjustments. There's always adjustments we had to make related to general education requirements. There's a lot of curricular stuff that we had to deal with. We started new certificate programs. I mean, the school grew in enrollment significantly. We were up over 400 students. And then COVID hit, and COVID knocked the socks out of everybody for four or five years. And not only that, but there just aren't as many 17-year-olds looking to go to college as there were five years ago.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4131.0,4234.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: So the competition is very tight, and the budgets are very lean, but somehow I have to say the school is still doing really well. I've been to see opera productions, I've been to see the orchestra, I've been to see chamber music, and the performances are on a par with everything that's been going on. We've come back in an astounding way. So I think the future is secure if we can just keep doing what we're doing. And one last thing I'm going to say about the faculty at Queens College, which is true when I was the youngest kid and true as I walked out the door. And that is the camaraderie and the esprit de corps that exists among the faculty in the School of Music is something that is the envy of most departments at Queens College, as well as most music departments around the country. We're at such a high level, and yet people get along. It's kind of astounding.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4234.0,4316.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: It's fabulous.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4316.0,4317.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: When the level's very high, the primadonnas - nobody wants, I'm not talking to this one, she's not talking to that one, they're not talking to anybody. And we kind of don't have that. Because I think we all know that we're not on a luxury liner. We're on a workhorse. This is a place that produces in a certain way and has for a long time. And the way we do it is by putting our shoulder through the wheel and...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4317.0,4350.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Working hard.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4350.0,4351.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Exactly. And we're all kind of in the same boat as far as that's concerned. So that's a really terrific thing. That's the part that I miss. After 35 years, my patience, I think, for students -- because the students have the same problems every year. I can tell you -- you could take a paper from a theory class in 1982 and one from last week and at the same level, and they're going to have the same mistakes, because there's just a certain brain way that you approach the subject and students have the same problems. I mean, I can just imagine that a golf pro or a batting coach is telling every single -- there's one way that you make contact with that ball and the coach's job is to tell you how to do it. And he's been telling people the same thing for his entire career. No, you got to move -- I don't know what they are. I don't know what the things are. But I know, he doesn't tell this guy one thing and that guy something. There's one way to do it. And that's what we've been trying to teach. I think science professors probably have a similar frustration because - no, no, it says four milliliters. It's got to be four, you can't have four and a half, it's not going to work. So put four in there. And he's been telling these stupid kids the same thing for his entire career. So that part I kind of lost a little patience for.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4351.0,4449.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Yeah, no, that makes sense.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4449.0,4451.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: I've given my diminished seventh lecture enough times. Basta.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4451.0,4457.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: So just one final question, because we're getting to the time, and I think you've sort of said it throughout, but what are your hopes for the future of Queens College and the music department in the next five years?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4457.0,4469.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: I just hope that they have the resources to keep doing what they've been doing, because to lose the market value that they've had for who they are, which is to not try to be something they are not, for starters. They're not Juilliard, they're not the Manhattan School of Music. Maybe -- I don't think they really want to be. There might be some professors that think that that's what they should do and that's what they should be, but that's not what I think. There's a certain kind of a kid that finds his way to Queens College on the bus, or from China or from Europe or anywhere, and they don't have quite the resources. They don't need that. But what they find out is that the monetary resources are not as important as the intellectual and artistic fire in the belly. If you've got some talent and you're willing to cultivate it, you can succeed. Are they going to become the next superstar? I don't know. But you can be very successful in the music business, playing on Broadway, playing in concerts, playing in orchestras, starting your own concert series, giving private lessons, performing, commissioning -- aging professorial composers. You can do things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4469.0,4569.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: And in music education, especially, Queens College has had the most success. We have something like a 100 percent placement rate of students that graduate with a degree and a certification to teach music and then look for a job. If you don't look for a job, you're not going to get one. But just about everybody that looks for a job gets one. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that so many of the people on Long Island and in the metropolitan area came from Queens College. So very often we send a young student teacher out and they're doing their student teaching with somebody that went to Queens College. And then they're interviewing for a job with somebody that went to Queens College. So not only do these people understand what education the students received, they also understand what it's like to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get from one place to another.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4569.0,4644.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Right. What it took to get there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4644.0,4645.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: That's right. So they do really well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4645.0,4650.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Alright. OK, any final thoughts before we...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4650.0,4654.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Yes, I can be reached. Anybody that would like to commission a symphony, I'm available. I'm actually -- I'm very busy right now. I'm working on several different pieces that I've got deadlines. We're in the sweet spot because the deadlines are like 10 months and farther away, so I'm not panicking yet. But I'm working on concerts, on CDs, I'm promoting the CDs that I have. Trying to get ahold of people to have more performances. And I still play the guitar once in a while and do a gig. So I'm having fun and enjoying my family.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4654.0,4703.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Right, right, exactly.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4703.0,4704.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: We're headed to vacation tomorrow for two weeks and the whole family's coming.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4704.0,4711.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Fabulous, fabulous. OK, I'm going to stop the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4711.0,4716.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Edward Smaldone: Thank you for this, by the way, Fran. I appreciate the opportunity to...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4716.0,4721.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348/transcript/88044/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: It's great. So just hold on and we'll go through what's going to happen next. So let me just stop the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/164456/file/299348#t=4721.0,4726.74133"}]}]}]}