SPRING 2024 | 15 The basic facts tell much of the story. In 1979, the Department of Music had four full-time faculty and two staff. It was housed in Lamberton, a converted dining hall. There was one choral ensemble, a small string orchestra, a marching band, a concert band and a jazz ensemble. Now there are eight full-time faculty, 32 adjuncts and four fulltime staff. There are four choral ensembles, a jazz program with two big bands and four combos, a complete symphonic orchestra and three bands—marching band, wind ensemble and symphonic band. “The music department was built through the blood, sweat and tears of Paul, Steven and Nadine (Sine—1980-2019, former department chair),” says Travis LaBerge ’98, a Salerni student and close friend who now runs a music school in Colorado. Salerni arrived fresh out of Harvard, looking for a place to teach and create. He wasn’t sure about Lehigh at first, but things started looking up in 1982 with the arrival of President Peter Likins, who was committed to building up the arts and creating an arts center. Likins tapped Salerni and Ripa to help develop Zoellner. Over the years, Salerni has been conductor of the Wind Ensemble and Lehigh University Philharmonic; founder and director of the Lehigh University Very Modern Ensemble (LUVME, a place for new works); and founder and conductor of the Opera and Music Theater Workshop. He was department chair for 10 years, including this final year. He has led students on study abroad programs in Prague, Belgium and Italy. Salerni also has been a prolific composer, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, an honor he held for 18 years. Ultimately, Salerni says, the most satisfying part of his career has been working with “my very bright and talented students. I am so proud of them as people and as artists and teachers.” Salerni says Lehigh’s size and the music department’s welcoming spirit gave undergraduates the opportunity to participate in high-level music activity no matter their academic focus. “I have given Lehigh a broader range of musical styles and opportunities—more opera, more jazz, more contemporary classical music, more art song,” he says. “I hope I have made it possible for more students to have a meaningful experience.” LaBerge says Salerni saw his students as friends and family. Students regularly spend time at the home he shares with his wife Laura Johnson, an opera and stage director, cooking and sharing meals and talking about music and life. “I can think of nothing else this world needs more than for someone to care, to encourage and to coach them, and then to release them out into the world and begin the cycle anew,” says LaBerge, who has led an effort to raise money for an endowed scholarship in Salerni’s honor. Sametz’s journey mirrors that of Salerni, but in the choral arts. Fresh from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Yale, he took over as director of Choral Arts, only the fifth director in 155 years. Sametz directs Lehigh Steven Sametz directs his final Christmas Vespers in Packer Memorial Church in December 2023. DOUGLAS BENEDICT / ACADEMIC IMAGE
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