The Billy Joel Symposium Schedule

Saturday Billy Joel Symposium Schedule

11:10 Tom Needham, Executive Director Billy Joel Symposium, LIMEHOF Vice Chairman
Opening Remarks

11:15-11:45 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

11:55-12:25 Blake Love, PhD candidate, English Literature, Washington State University
-Smashed Glass Houses: Suburbia, Choice, and Illusion

12:35-1:05 Bradley Hartman, PhD 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

1:15-1:45 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

1:55-2:25 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

2:35-3:05 Kenneth Brown, PhD, 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

3:15-3:45 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”

3:55-4:25 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

4:35-5:05 Dr. Tom Rizzuto, Adjunct Assistant Professor of music and education at Molloy University and SUNY Old Westbury
-Billy Joel and the Italian American Experience

5:15-5:45 Featured Keynote Speaker: Jason Hanley, PhD, 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

5:55-6:25 Featured Keynote Speaker: Wayne Robins, LIMEHOF Inductee, Independent music journalist at Substack. Former pop music writer for Newsday(1975-1995), Village Voice, Creem, and dozens of others. Adjunct Professor at St. John’s University (2013-2024), author of several books, writer of numerous album notes including his essay for the DVD Billy Joel: The Bridge to Russia.
-BILLY JOEL’S MUSIC: HIS LIFE, MY JOB

7:00 The Induction of Dennis Arfa/Reception

(Separate ticket required)

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Sunday Billy Joel Symposium Schedule

11:15-11:45 David Das, Grammy-nominated composer/producer
-Studio Techniques in Billy Joel’s Classic Songs

11:55-12:25 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

12:35-1:05 Gina Mingola, PhD candidate, English Literature, Stony Brook University
-We would all go down together: Trauma, Mundanity, and Community in “Goodnight Saigon”

1:15-1:45 Francis X. Altomare, PhD, 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

1:55-2:55 Featured Keynote Speaker: John Jackson, Director, Billy Joel Archives
-From the Vault: Treasures from the Billy Joel Archives

3:05-3:35 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 Generation

3:45-4:15 Kendall Biehl, Law student at Brooklyn Law School
-Billy Joel’s Musical Narratives and the Tapestry of Collective Memory

4:25-4:55 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

5:05-5:35 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

5:45-6:15 Nora Cronin, Adjunct Professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice
-The Outsiders: The Long Island Youth of “Captain Jack”

6:25-6:55 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

7:05-7:35 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

7:45-8:15 Closing Night Speaker, Joshua S. Duchan, 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

8:20 Tom Needham, Executive Director Billy Joel Symbosium, LIMEHOF Vice Chairman
Closing Remarks

Schedule subject to change without notification

For more information contact: Tom Needham, Executive Director, Billy Joel Symposium info@limusichalloffame.org

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