Invited annually, graduate schools of music present the Presser Graduate Music Award to an outstanding graduate music student whom they select. The program is designed to encourage and support in a special way the advanced education and career of truly exceptional graduate music students who have the potential to make a distinguished contribution to the field of music. The Award is a cash stipend of up to $10,000, which is made available to a graduate student designated by the institution.
Dr. Lavell Blackwell
Dr. Lavell Blackwell received the Award in 2019-2020 from the New England Conservatory (NEC) to compose an original piece and have it played by an orchestra. In this post, he discusses the piece “The Long Walk,” the inspiration for it, and the impact of the award.
My proposal for my Graduate Music Award was to use the funds for a professionally mixed and mastered recording of my Doctoral Dissertation, which will be featured on my website and social media pages and used for applications for future commissions, grants, and applications for faculty positions. The piece is entitled The Long Walk. It is for orchestra with found objects, and constructed in 2 movements. The instrumentation is for large orchestra with found objects: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, 3 percussionists, piano, harp, and strings.
The initial inspiration for The Long Walk was my experience of walking from my school at New England Conservatory to my Dorchester dwelling, an almost 4-mile journey that takes a little over 80 minutes each way. I made the trip by foot due to financial necessity, near-penniless as a student new to Boston, yet determined to honor my commitments. It was thus necessary to get to my destination in a different way than normal. It was a taxing undertaking that forced me to reflect on the consequences of my choices. I have constructed the work in two movements which may be performed separately or together. Both movements together have a total length of 30 minutes.
Movement I is titled “Learning Curve,” and depicts my initial overconfidence and sense of adventure in taking this new journey. This manifests itself in an opening heroic fanfare, played in unison by the entire orchestra. Shortly into Learning Curve, however, the music disintegrates in much the same way as my initial confidence. As the scale of the undertaking sinks in, this grows into an alarm verging on despair. Over the course of the rest of the movement the music slowly rebuilds itself into a more complex and mature version of that initial determination and drive. Movement II, titled “Imminent Mastery,” depicts the same journey after it has become more familiar and surmountable. This movement is rhythmically steadier and driving, with only a brief lapse into fear halfway through the use of extended techniques in the strings. This movement displays the more natural confidence that was only apocryphal in the first movement.
Overall, the work is a sonic depiction of my long walk to and from home, inspired not only by observations of various landmarks but the toll it took physically and emotionally, thus creating a unique soundscape of my impressions of this specific stretch of Boston. It is a journey that feels different in warm weather than it does in the cold. It is a journey that feels very different during the day than it does at night. However, it is also a trip through a fascinating and diverse cross-section of Boston’s architecture as well as its humanity. I manifest this most directly using the found object percussion–the most unusual part of the sound world. The idea for using found objects in this piece was inspired by the stretch of Massachusetts Avenue that passes through Boston’s South End. The debris along the sidewalk and behind the yards of chain link fencing was both unsettling and strangely evocative. While it was in fact refuse, I could not help but think of the human stories behind the things they’ve thrown away.
In this piece I explore the isolation of poverty, as well as inequality, loneliness, dignity and hope. All of these things manifest themselves differently in different artists. To me, poverty and isolation are concerns not only tied to physical and financial concerns, but also to a certain psychological poverty and isolation. These were all things I had to overcome in order to keep my commitments, and complete my education–and thus have become my personal way to find dignity and hope. The piece, therefore, not only explores physical landscapes but emotional ones as well.
As I embark on my career as a professional composer and educator, the impact of this [Presser Foundation] award–even in these unprecedented circumstances–cannot be overstated. If my post-award experiences have taught me anything, it is that it’s rare that a student work of this size gets a chance to be realized by musicians of the caliber of those at NEC and professionally mastered. Even as the project turned out to be more logistically ambitious than I’d realized at the proposal stage, and took quite a long time to realize, I have already found this award and the potential of the final recording to be of consequence. I have used mention of the award to gain finalist status for teaching positions at American University and Reed College, as well as interest from the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. I have been offered a potential residency at American University, and have gotten interviews with the Cleveland Institute of Music and Chapman University. It was also integral to my getting 3 professional commissions and a fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center. I therefore suspect that once the recording is completed, its impact will be quite profound, and I will be forever grateful to The Presser Foundation.
Lavell Blackwell earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition from New England Conservatory in May 2021, studying with Dr. Kati Agócs. He was the most recent winner of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s composition competition for his chamber orchestra work Effleurage. His recent commissions include the piano trio Prelude and Counterpoint, premiered at the Curtis Institute of Music, the suite for saxophone duet Biosongs for the Jamaica Plain Saxophone Quartet which received a world premiere as part of the Boston New Music Festival, and the solo oboe work Locrian Ambulations, commissioned by Nicholas Tisherman, Assistant Principal Oboist of the Colorado Symphony in Denver.
Additionally, he holds a Master of Music Degree from New England Conservatory where he studied with Malcolm Peyton, as well as an MFA in Musical Theater Writing from New York University. His chamber opera Far Away From America was chosen for the Warning: Not For Broadway Festival at Dixon Place, and his musical Keep On Walkin’ earned the Anna Zornio Children’s Theater Playwriting Award. His music has also been performed as part of the New York Fringe Festival, the Emerging Artist Theater Festival, and the New York Theater Workshop.
