James Byo, the director of the LSU School of Music, was inducted into the Louisiana Music Educators Association’s Hall of Fame in recognition of his over four decades of service to musicians across the U.S.

Byo, an oboe player, has been teaching in Louisiana for 38 years. He began teaching music at a high school in his home state of Ohio, where he spent seven years before earning his doctorate at Florida State University.

While in Tallahassee, he was an undergraduate teaching assistant and fell in love with higher education, despite earning a master’s degree in performance.

“I always enjoyed playing,” Byo said. “Switching brought me more into teaching and conducting. I enjoyed conducting, I enjoyed teaching, I just enjoyed it all.”

Growing up, Byo was a piano player and a baseball player. He played for the Detroit Tigers’ minor league baseball system for a couple of years while in grade school, but coming from a family of musicians, he learned double-reed instruments like the bassoon, English horn and his instrument of choice: the oboe.

“My parents were musicians, serious athletes,” Byo said. “To me, they’re the same thing, because in music, you develop skills like crazy. Skill development, how that happens, is really the same in both places.”

Byo was surprised to receive the accolade, but he was very honored to receive it, emphasizing that he would have never gotten to this point if it were not for his colleagues at the School of Music.

“I have a great appreciation for all my colleagues over the years,” Byo said. “I was out there much with student teachers, and I was out there directing honor bands and orchestras, and so I’ve gotten to know those teachers, which makes me and us in the School of Music cut somewhat differently from other professors on campus.”

Byo’s impact can be seen in the impact his former students have had on music education across the country. Joseph Nassar, the band director for St. Amant High School is one of those alumni. St. Amant’s band won the LMEA Standard of Excellence Award in 2023, the highest distinction given to a concert band in Louisiana.

Nassar recalled a time when he was not living up to his own expectations and was neglecting his work. Byo called him into his office to talk about his missteps and how best to rectify them.

“He spoke candidly about my shortcomings, but he also challenged and encouraged me to do better in a way that felt deeply personal, much like a father would,” Nassar said in an email. “That conversation changed the trajectory of my academic career and set me on a path toward what would become a deeply fulfilling professional life.”

Years later, Nassar’s daughter Kaitlyn also studied with Byo. Now, she is a band director at Dutchtown Middle School in Ascension Parish.

Another former student and colleague of Byo, Jeremy Lane, is the director of the school of music at Belmont University, a private Christian university in Nashville, Tennessee. Byo was his dissertation advisor, and both were in the same doctoral program from 1999 to 2003.

“Most of my foundational knowledge of higher education came from him,” Lane said in an email. “His understanding of the underlying principles of why music in higher education is necessary, what it is designed to do and what it contributes to society are deeply ingrained into my work as [a] collegiate administrator.”

Lane said that Byo treated his students with respect and had high expectations for them, a model of professionalism that he still follows to this day. He taught him to think things through and to avoid rushing.

“Learning this from him and seeing him model it consistently has made me a better writer, teacher and administrator,” Lane said. “He is also one of the more well-read individuals you’ll ever meet — I can’t recall how many conversations he started by saying, ‘Hey, did you see this in the paper this morning?’ or something like that.”

Another notable alumnus, John Schuesselin, studied with Byo twice in his life. The first time was in 1986 as a graduate of the Wooster City Schools Music Program in Wooster, Ohio, where he says that Byo taught him every day from freshman to junior year. Byo’s influence helped him get into the Eastman School of Music, a private research university in Rochester, New York, to pursue a trumpet performance degree.

Their paths crossed again at LSU, where Schuesselin pursued his doctorate in music arts. Byo’s mentorship inspired Schuesselin to pursue music education as his focus, and he now works as a professor of trumpet studies at the University of Mississippi at Oxford.

“I am not sure I would be in this career if I did not have Dr. Byo in my life,” Schuesselin said. “The Wooster High School band program was a special program. He helped guide us to be our very best in a healthy way. This remains with his students, no matter their chosen career path. The education classes I completed at LSU were looked upon with deep respect during the hiring process at the University of Mississippi.”