“Now, honey, I want you to sing that again, and this time I’d better feel ‘blessed with the sound of music.’”

I began once more, thoroughly chastised. I was 19 and in my first musical theater class with B. Michael Howard; I was the only English major in a room full of voice and musical theater BFAs. I chose a song I thought was “safe.” I quickly learned that in Mr. Howard’s class, there was no such thing as a safe song.

B. Michael Howard, beloved music faculty member, the former Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music, associate professor emeritus and longtime artistic director for Summer Lyric Theatre, died on Aug. 12, 2023, in New Orleans. He was 79.

Howard was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and attended the University of Southern Mississippi, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. He began his teaching career at R. H. Watkins High School in Laurel, Mississippi, and in 1975, he was named Mississippi Educator of the Year. He became an assistant professor of music at Tulane in 1978, was promoted to associate professor in 1986 and taught until 2018.

Howard’s impact was felt nowhere more than Summer Lyric Theatre at Tulane University. In 1968, SLT’s inaugural season, he played Buffalo Bill in “Annie Get Your Gun.” He was part of many Summer Lyric shows as an actor, director and vocal music director, and in 1997 as artistic director. Howard was known to be a perfectionist, requiring precision from actors, musicians, costumes, props, designers and crew. His efforts garnered him the 2004 Big Easy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Mayor’s Arts Award. He directed his final show for Summer Lyric — “Les Misérables” — in 2014 and retired as artistic director at the end of that season.

Howard pushed professional performers and students alike into a deeper understanding of a rich and layered American art form. He put particular care into examining lyrics, paring a character’s thoughts and feelings down to a single phrase or word in an effort to lay bare meaning and motivation. I do not know if he felt “blessed” at that performance my sophomore year, or at the recital I gave five years later as an MFA in Musical Theatre, but I know he believed music and the myriad ways we experience it to be a blessing. It is that belief he taught his students for over 50 years, and for that lesson I will always be grateful.

—Arynne Fannin (NC ’06, G ’08) is the communications coordinator for the Newcomb Department of Music. She studied with Michael Howard for five years and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre.