S CHOOL NEWS
Staffers celebrate 40 years at Yale
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wo YSM staffers, Yale Collection of Musical Instruments Curator Susan E. Thompson ’79MM and YSM Director of Student Services Suzanne Stringer, have spent their professional lifetimes at the university. We spoke with Thompson and Stringer about their respective arrivals at Yale and their decadeslong careers at the university and the School of Music.
Susan E. Thompson came to New Haven from Louisville, Kentucky, where she’d studied oboe, music history, and acoustics at the University of Louisville. “I wanted to study with Robert Bloom,” she said, referring to the pedagogue who taught Suzanne Stringer, left, many of the field’s prominent and Susan E. Thompson musicians, including current YSM faculty oboist Stephen Taylor. In New Haven, Thompson also studied with Bloom’s wife, oboist Sara Lambert Bloom ’68MM. Prior to enrolling at the Yale School of Music in 1977, Thompson held positions with the Louisville Orchestra, Louisville Bach Society, and New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Having become interested in early music during her undergraduate years at the Oberlin Conservatory, she studied baroque oboe with James Caldwell and, later, recorder (Blockflöte) with European artists. Thompson’s oboe studies with Robert and Sara Lambert Bloom convinced her that Yale had much to offer. While continuing her oboe training with Ronald Roseman, who succeeded (Robert) Bloom at YSM, Thompson studied with faculty harpsichordist and Yale Collection of Musical Instruments Director Richard Rephann, whom she eventually married. She also took classes in the history of musical instruments and the art of continuo playing and worked as an assistant at the collection. Thompson earned her master of music degree from YSM in 1979. That year, Rephann offered her an opportunity to work at the collection full-time. Thompson’s work at the collection was born of need. Rephann and the collection’s associate curator, Nicholas 8 Music at Yale
Renouf, were keyboard players, the latter a pianist who earned his master of musical arts degree at YSM in 1971. “What was needed was someone who had an expertise in either wind or string instruments,” Thompson said. “I was invited to join the staff as a curatorial assistant in the former category. Since then, my areas of expertise have broadened considerably.” With the exception of a short hiatus in the mid1980s, during which she studied at the University of Chicago, Thompson has herself been an institution at the collection. “I’ve found my niche here,” she said. “The work has always proven to be stimulating, as well as challenging.” Thompson plans to spend the last part of her career at Yale “writing about select objects in the collection, furthering collaborations with colleagues in Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage and its Center for Engineering and Innovative
I love the atmosphere of the campus. I like the academic environment.
suzanne stringer
