Glen Cove teacher is a pro musician who teaches kids it's OK to be beginners

Pasquale Iannelli tells his fourth and fifth grade students that the first time they pick up an instrument the notes might sound a little raw. But he assures them that's OK.

“I let them know that the sounds they are about to make in the next couple of weeks are the sounds I made when I first started,” said Iannelli, 40, of Bayville, band director at Glen Cove’s Connolly and Landing elementary schools.

Before he came to Glen Cove, Iannelli performed professionally, playing saxophone on college campuses with the band Stealing Jane, and opening for established rockers Blues Traveler and The Wallflowers.

The 2004 Glen Cove graduate credits his high school band director, Rich Roselli, with inspiring him to become a music educator.

“I remember how seriously he took maintaining his own musical abilities, or his ‘chops,’ as we musicians like to say,” said Iannelli.

Along with performing in Stealing Jane, he booked and managed the band for as many as 130 performances a year. He stopped touring in his late 20s to focus on preparing his private music students for their New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) auditions and completing his own music education.

In 2015, while earning a bachelor’s in music at Hunter College in Manhattan, he said he interned with the Saturday Night Live Band, working with longtime SNL music director Lenny Pickett, and escorting rock stars such as Paul McCartney to the stage. He earned a master's degree in education from LIU Post in Brookville in 2020 and was hired as a Glen Cove public school teacher later that year. At the time, COVID-19 pandemic precautions required his band students to sit six feet apart, wear masks with slits for their mouthpieces and put bell covers on their instruments.

Today, his students submit recordings through technology such as Google Classroom allowing him to listen and provide personal feedback. In the classroom, he said, “I spend an inordinate amount of time in getting them to read music. I really want to set the foundations so as they move up to high school, they can build on those skills.”

Anthony Dahne, 14, of Glen Cove, a ninth-grade trombone player with the high school marching band, studied with Iannelli in elementary school. “I enjoyed band more than any other subject,” Anthony said. “It was a breeze learning how to read music with him as a teacher.”

Glen Clove Superintendent of Schools Alexa Doeschner said in an emailed statement that Iannelli’s “love of music is contagious.”  “He finds simple, clever ways to help kids remember how to make a sound, then holds them to a high standard because he knows they can get there,” she said.

Iannelli still performs, playing his saxophone with a Sea Cliff band.

At school, he’s looking forward to conducting the annual May concert, when fourth graders showcase their own musical chops for the first time.

“By then they are usually rolling," he said.

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