Salvatore Minichini strikes a dashing pose as a young maestro in his mid 20s (c.1910).
[Photo from the collection of Jean and John Higgins, New City, NY. Used with permission.]

Salvatore Minichini was born in Corbara (Salerno), Italy on August 1, 1884. The son of a furniture maker, Minichini began clarinet lessons with Giuseppe Landi at age seven. Two years later he joined the Concerto Musicale Citta di Angri (Salerno), which his teacher also directed, on E flat clarinet. The band toured cities in the Mezzogiorno (southern Italy) and earned several honors in the 1890s. Minichini completed his musical studies at the San Pietro Majella Conservatorio in Naples. He married Domenica Nasta in 1904 and came to America in 1905 with a music library and uniforms to start his own band.

His first band in the United States was the Banda Bianca. In 1908, this group was selected as the best band in New York City's Columbus Day Parade and earned praise from President Woodrow Wilson. Minichini changed the band's name to the Italian Royal Marine Band in 1915. On March 2, 1922, he became a naturalized American citizen. From 1923 through 1929, Minichini's Italian Royal Marine Band made several recordings of Italian symphonic marches and Minichini's own arrangements of operatic literature for the Victor, Columbia, Brunswick, and Okeh labels. In 1929, the band broadcast Sunday afternoon concerts on New York's WOR radio for two months, alternating weeks with Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra.

The band changed its name in late 1929 to the American Aviation Band in response to Mussolini's rise to power and the popularity of aeronautics at the time. Under this name, the band captured the grand prize at the 1931 New York Evening Graphic Music Festival at Madison Square Garden with John Philip Sousa and Edwin Franko Goldman among the judges.

In 1932, the band became known as the New York State Symphonic Band, a name that was retained for the rest of Minichini's career. For promotional purposes, the band occasionally performed under various other names, such as The Super Introdacqua Symphonic Band, The Brooklyn Philharmonic Concert Band, Home Making Center Band, and the Roma Imperial Band. Throughout his long career (1905 - 1976), Minichini led numerous concerts for the New York City Parks System, the W. P. A., radio stations WNYC, WDCA, WFLA, and for countless Italian religious festivals (festas) in New York City and the surrounding region.

During the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, Minichini also taught at several institutions, including the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Power Memorial Academy and Rice High School. His many honors included the title of Commendatore from the Italian government and a citation from New York's Mayor Beame (1976) for his outstanding musical contributions to the city. He died on November 26, 1977 in New City, New York.

Minichini's extensive personal music library, the largest private collection of Italian band music in America, is housed at the American Bandmasters Association Research Center at the University of Maryland.