Composing his future with James Lavino ’91
“The timeless qualities are still the most important qualities,” says composer James Lavino ’91. “What matters is being collaborative, being kind, and forming solid relationships with mutual respect.” Lavino’s life story is best traced through the friendships and connections he has nurtured, beginning with those at The Haverford School. Lavino enrolled at Haverford in ninth grade after attending St. Peter’s School in Philadelphia. Music played a significant role in shaping his outlook and his future. “Michael Stairs loomed large in my Haverford experience,” he says. “It was a nice bridging of different groups of students. “Music builds connections. It’s good for group solidarity. Choral singing, for example, is very helpful from a physical and emotional point of view. At Haverford in those days, Centennial Hall was this kind of refuge for misfits in some ways.” He found Edward Hallowell and Dr. Robert Peck to be particularly inspiring teachers. “Along with Mr. Stairs, the influences of these men still shape my life today,” says Lavino. “I recall a particular snapshot in time: Dr. Peck doing the scene from “Macbeth” in which Macduff finds out that his wife and children have been killed and he doesn’t respond, except to pull his cap down over his eyes a bit … even for Shakespeare, the master of language, there were some experiences that couldn’t be articulated. “At their best moments, the teachers at Haverford created a scenario almost like when a bunch of kids are playing by a river, and someone gets a frog and cups it in their hands and everyone leans in to look – that’s what learning was like at Haverford. It had that sense of something amazing being revealed.” In addition to singing in The Notables and playing music, Lavino also found fulfillment and success in crew. He recounts a story that began with him being ousted from the team as a stubborn 17-year-old, but that ended with a lesson in character. “I clashed with one of the coaches and was kicked off the team as a junior,” he recalls. “It was humiliating, but also a weird badge of honor. Then, in my senior year, Dean of Students Russell
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MacMullan invited me back onto the crew team on a probationary basis. He taught me a lesson about mistakes and redemption. I had to row for the first part of the year with the freshmen. By the end of the year, though, I rowed in the varsity quad and we won the national championship. After that, MacMullan wrote me a letter and said I had showed true character, and told me that’s what was so important about Haverford.” After graduating from Haverford, Lavino attended Boston University and spent his junior year abroad at the University of Oxford, studying British poetry, politics, and history. He earned a master’s degree in English from Yale University and then moved to New York City in 1999, working as an associate editor for the acclaimed literary magazine The Paris Review. If the English and music faculty were the first connections of inspiration, Lavino’s time at The Paris Review spurred the next. “George Plimpton was the editor of the magazine,” he says. “He was a wonderful and fascinating person who had gone to the bullfights in Spain with Hemingway, who watched his friend Muhammad Ali at the Rumble in the Jungle, who allegedly dated Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, and who wrestled the gunman to the ground who assassinated Bobby Kennedy. His offices were in the basement of his townhouse in the Upper East Side and he would have parties where Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer would show up. It was the end of an era in New York literary life, and that was really neat to be part of.” Also while in New York, Lavino joined a band. The power of connection surfaced once again when a friend hired Lavino and one of his bandmates to write music for a Disney show called The Book of Pooh. “I had fun, and got paid a little money,” Lavino said. “There it was – Tigger and Piglet on the television, singing words and music I had written. That planted the seed that maybe I could do this.” He began writing music for friends’ short films, and quickly realized he needed more formal instruction. He attended an evening program at The Juilliard School, studying theory, composition, and