The Billy Joel Symposium

A Two-Day Academic Conference
Presented by the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame Stony Brook, NY
June 6-7th, 2026

Overview

The Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHoF) invites proposals for individual papers for The Billy Joel Symposium, a two-day conference devoted to the music, lyrics, themes, and cultural impact of Billy Joel. As one of America’s most influential songwriters and performers — and Long Island’s own — Joel’s body of work offers a unique lens through which to explore popular music, regional identity, and American culture. This symposium will gather scholars, critics, musicians, and students to engage in critical analysis of Joel’s artistry, life, and legacy.

A weekend of academic dialogue, keynote conversations, and special events, including a reception and formal induction honoring:

Dennis Arfa
Chairman, Music Division, Independent Artist Group
Longtime Booking Agent for Billy Joel
Saturday Evening, June 6 • 7 PM
LIMEHOF Billy Joel Symposium Speakers

Featured Keynote Speaker: Jon Small, LIMEHOF Inductee, founding drummer for the bands The Hassles and Attila, and an acclaimed director and producer whose credits include projects with Billy Joel such as the concert film Billy Joel: Live at Yankee Stadium and the documentary The Last Play at Shea

Featured Keynote Speaker: Wayne Robbins, LIMEHOF Inductee, music journalist for Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, The Village Voice, Creem Magazine and Newsday, author of several books, writer of numerous album liner notes and booklets including his essay for the DVD Billy Joel:The Bridge to Russia
-BILLY JOEL’S MUSIC: HIS LIFE, MY JOB

Featured Keynote Speaker: Jason Hanley, Ph.D. Vice President of Education and Visitor Engagement at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, author of Music Lab: We Rock, and recipient of the LIMEHOF Long Island Sound Award.
– The Piano Man’s America: Memory, Story, and History in the Songs of Billy Joel

Clive Young, Adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s University New York in Patchogue, Co-editor of Mix Magazine and editor of MixOnline.com.
-Billy Joel and the Death of Analogue Recording

Amy Tenney Curren, Co-creator of History Ignited, a children’s history podcast built entirely around the lyrics of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”
-“We Didn’t Start the Fire” as a Living Curriculum: History, Human Behavior, & Billy Joel Across Generations

Nora Cronin, Adjunct Professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice
-The Outsiders: The Long Island Youth of “Captain Jack”

Francis X. Altomare, Ph.D., Professor at St. Thomas University and frontman of award-winning experimental rock troupe The Zoo Peculiar
-Piano Man as Ethnographer: Billy Joel and the Anthropology of Deindustrialization

Bradley Hartman, Ph.D. Candidate, Composition and Arranging, Five Towns College and Associate Conductor of the Five Towns College Wind Ensemble
-A Comparative Analysis Between Billy Joel’s Nocturne and Fryderyk Chopin’s Nocturnes

Joshua S. Duncan, Ph.D., Professor of Music and Associate Chair of the Department of Music at Wayne State University and author of Billy Joel: America’s Piano Man (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) and “We Didn’t Start the Fire: Billy Joel and Popular Music Studies (Lexington Books, 2020)
-Nostalgia in/for Billy Joel

Jestin Pieper, Adjunct Professor at Long Island University’s RocNation School and Five Towns College
-The Architect of Stylistic Synthesis: A Musical and Historical Analysis of Billy Joel’s The Stranger

Rita Jones, Hobbyist fiction writer/blogger and educator at Bakersfield College
-Sadness or Euphoria: Emotional Extremes Given Structure in Billy Joel’s Work

David Das, Grammy-nominated composer/producer
-Studio Techniques in Billy Joel’s Classic Songs

Dr. Tom Rizzuto, Adjunct Assistant Professor of music and education at Molly University and SUNY Old Westbury
-Billy Joel and the Italian American Experience

Dr. Frank Doyle, Professor of Music Theory and Jazz History at Five Towns College
-Chord Choices as a Character: Emotional Narrative in Billy Joel’s Music

Kenneth Brown, Ph.D., Composer, pianist, music scholar and Director of Music at the historic Park Avenue United Methodist Church in New York City
-The Melting-Pot Keyboard: Culmination of Style in the Piano Works of Joel and Gershwin

Kristen J. Nyitray, Director Special Collections and University Archives at Stony Brook University and Dana Reijerkerk, Independent Scholar
-Slow Down, You Crazy Child: Gen Z’s Affective Archive of Billy Joel’s “Vienna”

Pablo Arguelles, a Mexican photographer and writer based in New York whose work has appeared in El Universal, Este País, Enquirer and New York Times Magazine
-The Mexican Connection

Kendall Biehl, Law student at Brooklyn Law School
-Billy Joel’s Musical Narratives and the Tapestry of Collective Memory

Stephanie LeBlanc, Actor, novelist, director, playwright and higher education professional at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
-It’s Still Rock and Roll to Us: Billy Joel, Cultural Memory, and Intergenerational Rhetoric

Blake Love, PhD candidate, English Literature, Washington State University
-Smashed Glass Houses: Suburbia, Choice, and Illusion

Gina Mingola, PhD candidate, English Literature, Stony Brook University
-We would all go down together: Trauma, Mundanity, and Community in “Goodnight Saigon”

Mack Paprott, PhD candidate in German Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
-Vienna Waits for You: Haunted Family Histories in The Joel Files and The Paper Bridge

Patricia Salkin, Senior VP of Academic Affairs and Provost of Touro University, Irene M. McDermott, Director of the Gould Law Library and Associate Professor of Law at Touro Law Center, and Darren Stakey, a litigation and real estate Partner at Certilman Balin Adler & Hyman
-Billy Joel, The Chronicler of the Suburbanization in New York

Kara Russell, PhD., Lecturer, Department of English, Central Connecticut State University
-Uptown Girls and Upstart Crows: Parallel -Insecurities in Billy Joel’s Lyrics and Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Darren Rovell, Memorabilia Collector, Publishes cllct.com, the number one memorabilia and collecting journalism website in the world
-Billy Joel: Tickets and other Artifacts

The Billy Joel Symposium