Joseph R. Gagliano, Jr.
Feb. 1960 – May 21, 2013
Joseph R. Gagliano, Jr., a longtime NPM member who served as the director of liturgy and music at St. Thomas More Church at St. John’s University, Queens, New York, died suddenly following a heart attack on May 21, 2013.
Joe earned his bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University, Queens, NY, in 1982 and his doctor of law (JD) degree from the same university in 1985. This “double alumnus” status signaled his lifelong association with his alma mater. He continued to serve the university as an adjunct professor in its School of Law, as a volunteer choir director for the university’s Sunday morning Mass at St. Thomas More Church, as a founding board member and general counsel for St. John’s Bread and Life (a soup kitchen), and as general counsel for St. John’s Student Government, Inc. In gratitude, the university awarded him the President’s Medal in 1997 and the Pietas Medal in 2010.
Joe’s full-time job was as an intellectual property, copyright, and trademark legal specialist. He was a partner and member of the Entertainment Practice Group in the New York office of Squadron, Ellenoff, Plesent, and Sheinfeld, LLP, before forming his own self-named entertainment law firm in 2002. Joe was also the owner of a talent/project development agency and a recording studio.
In his association with NPM, Joe was one of the organizers (in the late 1980s) of the MIDI Users Interface Group (MUSIG)—one of NPM’s first “interest sections”—founded to explore the liturgical use of developing electronic media, “sampled” music, synthesized sound, and music composition software. The promise that Joe held out for this new technology in 1991 (Pastoral Music 16:2, 63) might be said of all music technologies: “The potential that it holds for improving the sung prayer of the gathered faithful is limited only by the imagination of the music minister.”
Joe Gagliano’s funeral liturgy was celebrated at St. Thomas More Church at St. John’s on May 24, 2013.