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Thomas LaVoy Biography
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Thomas LaVoy is an award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist who specializes in composing for the human voice. His work is known for striking a balance between emotional depth and compositional craft, grounded in a firm belief in the power of words and music in tandem. His music is strongly influenced by his broad performance career as a choral artist, pianist, percussionist and singer-songwriter. He received his undergraduate degree from Westminster Choir College and his PhD from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where he was a choral scholar in the Chapel Choir of King's College, Aberdeen. Thomas' choral works have been commissioned and performed by choirs across the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as in Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Recent projects have included water psalms, a multi-movement work commissioned by Edinburgh Royal Choral Union for the 400th anniversary of the founding of Greyfriar's Kirk, I Am: The Song of Amergin, commissioned for the National Youth Choirs of Northern Ireland, Your name falls like rain, commissioned for Dallas Chamber Choir, and many others. He has also served as composer-in-residence for numerous choral and instrumental ensembles and has twice been an invited guest composer of the Choral Institute at Oxford. Thomas often looks to our collective human past for inspiration. This keen interest in history began with A Child's Requiem, a 2013 commission from the Marquette Symphony Orchestra to mark the 100th anniversary of the Italian Hall disaster in Calumet, MI. Subsequently, Thomas has completed a number of other historically driven compositions; a commission for Scottish baritone Niall Anderson based on his great-grandfather's prisoner-of-war diaries from WWI, a Westminster Choir College commission setting the last letter of Sullivan Ballou from the American Civil War, and In Heaven, Hereafter, a cantata based on the life and writings of beloved folk hero Nancy Luce, the "Chicken Lady" of Martha's Vineyard. Thomas is a founding member and Composer-in-Residence of The Same Stream, a professional choir based in Philadelphia and conducted by James Jordan. This choir has recorded and performed much of his output, with the 2018 release of Songs of the Questioner and the 2021 release of To Hold the Light, which features the premiere recording of O Great Beyond. Thomas' music is primarily published by the Chicago-based GIA Publications, with additional publications from Walton Music, G. Schirmer, and Hewitt Hill Music. |
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