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This is a tribute to my music teacher, Al Longo, who died on June 4, 2025 at the age of 82. He had been a member of Local 802 since 1967.

Music was the most important activity in the home I grew up in. Dad was a club date drummer and a member of Local 802. Mom didn’t play or sing, but knew every song in the fake book. During my practice sessions in the basement, whenever I started playing a standard, Mom would come down the stairs singing the words and telling me what movie it was from. My brother was a talented drummer, taking after Dad. He made it to All State in his junior year. My sister cringed when I practiced long tones and scales on the clarinet, but could sing the solo part to the Mozart clarinet concerto whenever I put it on the hi-fi. She later introduced me to Led Zeppelin.

Growing up in Central Islip on Long Island in the 1960s, I started taking accordion lessons at age 8 and piano at 12. I wanted to join the school band. So I started clarinet lessons in 8th grade. Al Longo was one of the band directors at Mulligan Junior High. The year I moved up to high school, Mr. Longo was promoted to be one of the band directors at Central Islip High School. One day after band class when I was in 9th grade, he asked me what kind of college I wanted to go to. I said, “Juilliard.”

“What instrument are you going to audition on?”

“Accordion.”

“No. You cannot be an accordion major at Juilliard.”

“Piano?”

“How long have you been studying the piano?”

“Two years.”

“You’ll never pass the audition three years from now.”

“So I should give up the idea of going to Juilliard?”

“You can get in on the clarinet.”

“But I just started it last year.”

“If you practice three hours a day for the next three years, you can make it into Juilliard.”

I started private lessons with Mr. Longo the next day.

Mr. Longo was a taskmaster. He inspired me to practice three hours every day during the school year and four hours every day of the summer. He told me that he had to practice the clarinet six hours every day in his freshman year at Ithaca College because he was accepted as a saxophone major. He needed to change his major to clarinet to be a more desirable band director candidate.

Long tones, scales, LOTS of scales, the entire Klosé Clarinet Method. I remember one intense lesson when he required me to play through the entire Klosé Study #1 without missing a beat. At the end, I was sweating as if I just mowed the front lawn in 90-degree heat.

Mr. Longo came to my house once a week after teaching all day at Central Islip High School, where I was his band student. He was a phenomenal band director at the junior high school, but he really impressed our audiences at the high school concert band performances with works by John Phillip Sousa, Vincent Persichetti, Alfred Reed and Karel Husa. He was the conductor for the high school productions of “Guys and Dolls” and “West Side Story.” (Wow! That Bernstein score conducted by Al Longo was out of this world!)

And since he was a professional saxophonist (first alto in Pat DeRosa’s Jazz Ensemble, among others), our jazz lab that he directed was the pride of the county.

During one of the band classes he shared with co-director Fred Belec, the subject of private lessons came up. Mr. Belec said that he and Mr. Longo were not permitted to teach the high school students privately, because it was a conflict of interest. Mr. Belec went on further to say that neither he or Mr. Longo taught private lessons at all.

At our next lesson, I asked Mr. Longo if it was true that he didn’t give private lessons to anyone else and he said it was true.

“But you’re teaching me!”

“You’re a different situation.”

After the lesson, I told my Dad what Mr. Longo said. My father then told me that Mr. Longo came to my house every week and expected no money. Dad said he insisted that he give Longo $5 every week as a token of appreciation. The going rate for private lessons in 1969 was $20 to $25.

In addition to being a monumental influence on me becoming a clarinetist, Mr. Longo also helped me understand jazz by lending me his record of Miles David’s “’Round About Midnight” when I was in 10^th grade. After I listened to it a few times, he asked me to play piano in jazz lab.

I remember what Mr. Longo wrote in my 10^th grade yearbook: “Don’t Stop!”

That’s because I still have that yearbook! (See photo below.)

When I was going into 11^th grade, my family moved to a different school district. And Mr. Longo took a band director position in Middle Country Schools, Centereach, New York. I then traveled to his home for lessons once a week. He prepared me to get a “6A+” grade to make All State, plus audition for colleges, plus master the Rose Études, Klosé Method and solo concerto repertoire.

In the end, I decided not to audition for Juilliard so that I could follow in Mr. Longo’s footsteps of becoming a high school band teacher. I spent a year at SUNY Potsdam. I became discouraged being trained to teach music instead of perform music. After one year, I went to see Mr. Longo, who gave me one last lesson on the Weber Concerto No. 1. My audition at Mannes College awarded me with a scholarship to study at a conservatory.

Upon graduation, I began the tough existence of working as a freelance clarinetist, making most of my money by playing piano in restaurants. I joined Local 802 in 1976 at the age of 22. Mr. Longo helped me by sending several of his high school clarinetists to me for private lessons. During this time, I remember him telling me how proud he was of me for “making a living as a musician.” But after seven years of struggling to pay the rent, I decided to go back to college to become certified to teach in a public school.

Suddenly, Mr. Longo became a wonderful advisor for matters that I encountered as a high school band and orchestra teacher. While maintaining a busy schedule of performing in jazz ensembles, arranging and composing, he had become the director of music and art at Middle Country Schools, Centereach. There were many times that I called Mr. Longo for his guidance on how to negotiate various issues with parents, administrators, board members and other educators. He was a tremendous resource.

When Al Longo retired in 1992 and moved to Florida, I kept him updated with my activities as a performing clarinetist and music educator. He read the articles I wrote and listened to the recordings of my school orchestra and band concerts.

During the pandemic, I managed to create a weekly Zoom performance of my chamber music class on Friday mornings. In January 2021, we dedicated our performance of music by Miles Davis to Mr. Longo. He was touched by the testimonial my students presented to him. You can watch the clip.

When I retired in 2022, I made it a point to call Mr. Longo once every two months to see how he and his family were doing, and share with him the musical pursuits I was continuing. These were such heart-to-heart conversations between two retired music educators separated by a generation. We shared inspiring stories of our students, ensembles and well as frustrating episodes with some administrators who didn’t understand what music meant to kids.

The last time I spoke to him was Tuesday, June 3. He said he was not feeling well and I told him that I’d call him again. The next day, his wife Barbara texted me that he passed away.

I am so glad I got to hear his voice that Tuesday.

Rest in peace, Mr. Longo.

POSTSCRIPT

Mr. Longo is survived by his wife Barbara, daughters Dina and Kim, sons-in-law Mark and Mike, and grandchildren Raina and Adam. Here’s some more about Mr. Longo:

• “How Should We Raise the Children (Musically)?” (This is an essay I wrote for Allegro in 2023 with more anecdotes about Mr. Longo.)
• Alfred Longo obituary published by Sun City Center Funeral Home
• Alfred Longo bio at Prabook.com

Joseph Rutkowski Jr. , an Honor member of Local 802, first joined the union in 1976. (His late father Joseph Sr. was also a longtime member.) Rutkowski won the U.S. Presidential Scholar Teacher Award in 2004 and has also won teaching awards from the Long Island Music Hall of Fame and the Harvard Club of Long Island.