Chair of the Music Department Charles Kinzer is a man passionate about what he does and is deeply warm to his visitors. His voice is tinged with a slight Alabama dialect and his dark hair is given to peaks of grey by the temples. Some small and superficial lines accentuate across his forehead, near his eyes and around his mouth when he smiles or laughs in a vaguely characteristic manner.
If given the chance, Dr. Kinzer will tell you all you need to know about the Creole communities in New Orleans and their role in originating jazz. It is an academic streak that he didn't find until his graduate years at University of Alabama and Louisiana State University (LSU), though the subject itself was that of his doctorate dissertation and several following articles.
By extension, the Creoles' history has always been with him, since he began to learn the piano and then the saxophone, leaning into dance bands and jazz performances as he grew from high school to college. He explained it as an "easy bridge" into a career and a way to make money. However, it should be understood that his concentration in Jazz, each music history course he teaches, his 19-year tenure as a professor, and the five he's spent as Department Chair, are all extensions of a deep involvement in music.
Furthermore, this involvement with its many mixtures of background and form of his subjects, from classical to dance to the affluent musical history, is somewhat akin to Kinzer's own mixture of the near so far. Starting with his birth in Virginia, his Alabama upbringing, and grounded finally in his adult life here in Farmville, there is much to serve as an influence. Then, he seems at once to take what's external into him, converting his passion for the elements in his life into a sincere ethos.
His three children and the students who take up his improvisation class are certainly on two different levels of his personal life, but Kinzer balances them and gives appropriate care. In return, they give him something back. While the growth of his biological children is enough return for any father, his academic progeny do much the same.
Kinzer says it stems from "the kind of student" he encounters at Longwood. Despite their major, these students get interested in music, the ideas in class, and then work to develop their own. Kinzer draws these students from many "levels of involvement." From General Education, his saxophone classes, the audition-entry Jazz Band, or those looking for student tutors for a particular instrument, there is much love given back for the care Kinzer seeks to engender. He said this student outpouring is what makes him, and any teacher for that matter, feel like they create "a difference" in someone's life.
A large part of this is enhanced by the small liberal arts setting he enjoys, one that keeps him involved in the art of teaching while able to take momentary gigs as a professional musician. Kinzer even made a point of wishing that in his walks through Auburn, LSU, and University of Alabama, he had spent some time in a small school. There, he said, everyone can know everyone else and he has personally come to have friendships with department members he would have never met otherwise.
In many ways, this insistence on the student and love of the small and flexible makes Kinzer like many other Longwood professors. However, he is marked by a commitment, thoughtfulness, and humility that run through his every phrase. He is both a student of history and music, but foremost a student of life who has been taught the consideration and tact that must exist in carefully made work. If there is anything that can be bought back from Kinzer, it is to appreciate and let grow, and to study for one's own good.
