Jason Smoller ’09

Arlene was like everybody’s “den mom” in the Brown University Music Department. She took all of her students (music concentrators and non-concentrators alike) under her wing and patiently taught us to speak another language fluently. Nobody felt inadequate in her classes, even when the exercise was reading four clefs at the piano. She was kind and generous, supportive of her music department family, and an institution who linked older generations of Brown students to younger ones. Everyone remembered and loved her, and we will every time we sit down at a piano going forward.

Jason Smoller