The recently hired director of music at St. Bernardine Parish in West Baltimore needs to update his résumé; he’s been nominated as a quarterfinalist for a 2023 Grammy music educator award.
Tony Small, who has 35 years of experience teaching and developing arts programs, says a Grammy nomination was never a goal – he was too busy writing curriculum, directing musicals, taking students to see musicals in New York, designing camps and composing, including an opera commissioned by the Smithsonian.
“I’m thankful I was able to touch someone’s life,” he said.
Nominated by his former students, he was delighted to learn that one of his students – “that kid was so bad in the seventh grade” – now teaches music at his old school, the Academy of St. Benedict the African in Chicago.
“It’s full circle now,” said Small, who also directs the Pallotti Arts Academy in Laurel.
A piano prodigy at age 4 in Springfield, Ill., he was a music director by 11 and after college taught for 10 years in Chicago.
“I’m more a writer and composer and I let the young folks perform,” he said. “I love educating, especially arts education – you go from being a classroom teacher to running arts programs regionally – but I’m back to my first love, directing an arts academy. I’m still running programs, but I get to design and teach. I know God has placed me right where I need to be.”
St. Bernardine feels like a homecoming.
Small’s mother attended the Church of God, his grandmother was a Methodist and his dad was Pentecostal, and all shaped his music. But in 1997, St. Benedict Catholic Church in Chicago needed a musician with a classical background but versed in a variety of styles, and there he piloted a summer camp, a first step in a career marked by innovative youth programs.
He moved to the Baltimore region so his daughter could attend the Baltimore School for the Arts; she later graduated from Juilliard. Small held several positions, including 14 years with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington; founding the Teen Arts Program (TAP) that received a 2017 White House Top Arts Program Award; creating a holiday series for the Kennedy Center; and artist-in-residence at the Baltimore School for the Arts.
He started at Pallotti in August 2021.
He was excited by St. Bernardine’s history of renowned choirs in the 1970s and ’80s, a history he hopes to repeat.
“I’m thrilled about what we are doing at these two Catholic institutions,” he says, “It’s wonderful – there’s so much history in the Catholic Church. At St. Bernardine, I get to do a mix of everything, gospel and classic, and I love it.”
Monsignor Richard J. Bozzelli, pastor of St. Bernardine, said, “Tony has brought new energy, new creativity and new possibilities to St. Bernardine’s – especially as we rebuild ministry in a COVID world. His musical skill and adeptness with young people is a special blessing to us and the people we serve.”
So just how does Small get students interested in classical and church music?
“The most important thing – it has to be a part of the culture and the environment,” he said, adding, “but you do have to use today’s music as bait to whet their appetite.”
Students bring in a favorite song and then analyze it: what chords are used and how it compares to older music. “There’s so much we can talk about – melody and pitch and harmony. You have to take them to the opera, but you have to attend their concerts, too – I would take kids to Taylor Swift concerts. Integrate it and they’ll listen to it.”
His approach is reflected in a course he’s developed, “From Bach to Beyoncé.”
His favorite song, “Hear Our Prayer,” is one he composed for his opera. “It can be done in classical, it can be gospel – I like it because anyone of any faith can use it.”
His biggest challenge, which he didn’t think he could have met without three decades of experience, was teaching music during COVID lockdowns. He reached out to some 100 artists who were former students and asked for a video series from each of them.
The result was Project 31.
“They put together more than 100 videos, and I put the curriculum behind it,” Small explained. “What made it personal was all of these artists were live; it felt like they were in the students’ home talking to them.”
He uploaded it to YouTube, and even though schools are back in person, educators across the country still use it.
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