Thomas LaVoy
1990 -
United States of America | MI
Thomas LaVoy (1990) is a pianist and a composer of contemporary concert music, born in 1990 in Marquette, Michigan, USA. In 2013 he graduated summa cum laude from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey where he studied composition with Joel Phillips and Benjamin C.S. Boyle and piano with James Goldsworthy. In January of 2014, he began his PhD in music composition at the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom, where he studies with the world-renowned Welsh composer Paul Mealor. Thomas’ work has been commissioned and performed by numerous choral ensembles, including the Montclair State University Singers, the Westminster Choir, the Adelphian Concert Choir, the New York Virtuoso Singers, and the GRAMMY nominated choral ensemble Westminster Williamson Voices.
| Source: | https://www.abdn.ac.uk/music/people/thomas-lavoy-351.php |
A Child's Requiem
| Period: | 21st century |
| Composed in: | 2013 |
| Musical form: | free |
| Text/libretto: | Esther Margaret Ayers |
| Duration: | 45' |
| In memory of: | the young victims of the Italian Hall disaster in 1913 |
| Label(s): | YouTube |
A Child's Requiem for Orchestra, SATB choir, children's chorus, and soprano solo. Duration c. 45'00”. Libretto by Esther Margaret Ayers. Commissioned by the Marquette Symphony Orchestra.
| Source: | https://www.thomaslavoy.com/a-childs-requiem |
In the early 20th century, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was embroiled in a bitter conflict known as the great Copper Country Strike of 1913. On Christmas Eve of that year, a party was being held for the children of the striking miners in the Italian Hall when a man shouted "Fire!" causing a panic that would leave 73 people dead on the stairs leading down to the street below. The vast majority of the victims were children, and the man who caused the disaster was never positively identified or punished. A Child's Requiem seeks to posthumously elevate the dead out of the context of the Italian Hall disaster; to celebrate them as they were in life and death and not as a statistic used to apportion blame.
| Source: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7T5tV2TU60 |
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Esther Margaret Ayers
(text)
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