— LISTEE'S SPOTLIGHT —

Marilynn J. Smiley, PhD, is a professor emerita at the State University of New York at Oswego, where she taught for nearly four decades. Musically inclined since childhood, Dr. Smiley began playing piano at age seven and flute by age 12. She earned a Master of Music from Northwestern University and a certificate from the Ecoles d’Art Americaines in Fontainebleau, France, before completing her Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois in 1970. She began her career as a public school music teacher and joined the SUNY faculty in 1961. Dr. Smiley was named a Distinguished Teaching Professor in 1974 and became chair of the school’s music department in 1976. Dr. Smiley taught music history and theory from antiquity through the present with an emphasis on Baroque and Renaissance music and the work of female musicians and composers. She has written extensively and presented at conferences worldwide and holds leadership roles in numerous organizations and committees in her field. Dr. Smiley has been a member of the board of the Oswego Opera Theater since 1978, and she has recently completed state-funded research and reconstruction of “The Golden Cage,” a historical operetta written by refugees in the 1940s, in preparation for a new staging in late 2022.