Staffers celebrate 40 years at Yale

Two YSM staffers, Yale Collection of Musical Instruments Curator Susan E. Thompson and YSM Director of Student Services Susanne Stringer, have spent their professional lifetimes at the university. We spoke with Thompson and Stringer about their respective arrivals at Yale and their careers at the university and the School of Music.

Susan E. Thompson came to New Haven from Louisville, Kentucky, where she’d studied acoustics and historical-performance practices at the University of Louisville. “I wanted to study with Robert Bloom,” she said, referring to the pedagogue who taught many of the field’s prominent 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 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, Thompson studied baroque oboe with James Caldwell and, later, historical performance practices with Gerhard Herz at the University of Louisville, Bernard Krainis at Smith College, and Albert Fuller at Yale.

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 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 mid-1980s, 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 “expects to devote the last years of her career to 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 Design, and preparing a book about the history of the collection in anticipation of its 125th anniversary in 2025.” 

An area native, Suzanne Stringer first started working at Yale during high school. Stringer’s grandmother was a university employee who worked in the Yale Commons Dining Hall, which catered special events on evenings and weekends. “I would waitress those functions with her,” Stringer said. While attending the Stone School of Business in New Haven, Stringer continued working part-time in the Yale Commons, waitressing and checking students in at mealtime. It was there that she met her future husband, Michael, whom she said “came to Yale as a freshman and never left.” (Michael) Stringer was managing the Commons at the time, having earned a bachelor of arts degree in administrative sciences at Yale in 1977. He now works in the university’s Office of Facilities.

(Suzanne) Stringer left the Commons to work as a secretary for the manager of the Yale Law School Dining Hall. After taking some time off from the workplace, she returned as a university temp, working in various offices until she was offered a permanent gig, in 1981, in the Student Loan Office. In 1984, she moved to the Yale School of Music, where she worked as a department secretary. Since arriving at YSM, Stringer has held several positions, including administrative specialist and financial-aid director. In 1999, she became the school’s registrar, retaining her role as financial-aid director. Before files were moved online, Stringer “would physically see every student.”

“I knew every student’s name and instrument,” she said. 

Stringer has been part of the Yale community for more than four decades. “I’ve been doing it so long it’s my life,” she said. “I love the atmosphere of the campus. I like the academic environment.” Still, she said, when retirement is an option, she’ll be ready.