PERSONAL STATEMENT • November 2009

DAVID E. CHÁVEZ, composerdave@davidechavez.com • www.davidechavez.com

111 S. Purcel l Ave. • Winchester, VA 22601814-571-4216

I am a global thinker who prefers to buy locally. I am a classical musician who likes to listen to modern rock. I came to college thinking I didn't really like football, but before I left, I was sleeping outside of the stadium before games for front row seats. I am driven to succeed in a specific professional field, yet I strongly value an education in a large research institution that is strong in widely disparate fields of study.

I have identified four key strengths about myself as a potential student and teaching assistant.

A global perspective valuing diverse artistic expressionI will bring an international perspective, informed by a musically and culturally diverse set of life

experiences, to my studies, creative work, and interpersonal interactions as a student and (hopefully) teaching assistant at UMD. My father came to America from Ecuador when he reached college age, and I know he will be proud to see me become the first in the family to earn a doctoral degree.

From leading Spanish worship songs at a tiny church in a rural corner of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, to hearing and imitating Spanish flamenco and zarzuela in Barcelona, to presenting a paper alongside college music professors in Croatia, my travels have taught me how to be open to a wide variety of artistic and cultural points of view. I strongly believe that, in art and life, our core ethical and moral values should remain solid and only change after careful consideration, but our artistic and aesthetic values should be highly flexible and frequently open to new and unexpected influences. This is a set of beliefs I live out in both peer-to-peer and student-teacher relationships.

As a composer, my music lives at the intersection of diverse forms of popular and classical music. My vocal music calls on the rhythms of rock, and my orchestral music echoes the beats of hip-hop. The living composers I admire most hail from four continents. I hope to embody the ideal that being open to an eclectic mix of influences can strengthen and even focus an artist's own creativity without watering down his or her uniqueness. My first opera Overtones, premiered at Penn State in 2004 and revived at Shenandoah University in 2009, called on classical musicians to sing in the style of Handel on one page, and then “rock out” a few pages later. I drew on influences as diverse as modern art song and conga music in my children's opera The Wolf and the Lamb, which was premiered at Penn State and later presented at a national conference of the National Opera Association in New York, NY.

An exceptional skill for creative problem solving and self-guided learningAs an undergraduate and graduate student at one of the country's largest universities, I learned by

experience the value of being self-determined. At Penn State, independently finding answers (as opposed to having them fed to you) was a true cultural value, and a necessity for survival. As one among thousands, I learned to find my own answers and to ask the right questions of the right people, whether I was registering for classes or successfully applying for a fully-funded summer residency. I took advantage of face time with excellent faculty, but I also learned to take initiative and not wait to be lead by the hand. In today's world, where the amount of recorded data (knowledge) is increasing almost exponentially, the transferrable skills and the motivation that lead to finding relevant information may soon separate leaders from followers as never before. I have the skills to be a leader.

Since finishing my coursework at Penn State, I have had the privilege to supervise a staff department at Shenandoah University. Prior to Shenandoah, I worked in a retail/production setting for a document and shipping services company. In both of these jobs, I proved myself an exceptional problem solver, learning constantly-evolving technologies on the job. When my coworkers threw up their hands in despair, I searched and found creative answers. I was asked to create a work order system for Shenandoah Media Services similar to systems other departments paid for, but I found and implemented a cost-free cloud-based (web-based software-as-a-service) solution that was both simpler and more flexible. I read documentation, watched video tutorials, and essentially taught myself the new skills I needed to customize the system for my use.

An ambitious yet attainable set of career goalsI plan to change the music world, and I can do it. What might my career path look like?

PERSONAL STATEMENT • DAVID E. CHÁVEZ • NOVEMBER 2009

In three years, I will hold a doctoral degree from a prestigious university where I will have distinguished myself as a student and a teaching assistant, and contributed to the vitality of the arts community and the university community as a whole. My music will have continued to be performed increasingly often by universities and opera companies throughout the country.

In five years, I will have a faculty position teaching composition, theory and related topics at an institution of higher education.

In seven years, my songwriting will have permeated the world of popular music as my opera and classical music continues to permeate those respective worlds.

In ten years, I will be a sought-after producer and songwriter who also happens to write operas performed at the largest houses in the country and eventually across the world. I will be on the cusp of earning tenure in my academic job, and I will perform regularly as a classical piano accompanist and a rock keyboardist. My music will help to redefine genre boundaries and build bridges between audiences—between people—who never thought they had anything in common. I will have the kind of relationships and reputation that I can leverage to help my students launch their own careers.

Throughout my life from today onward, I will be a committed family man. No matter how far my career takes me, I will consistently offer my talents and time as a musician and mentor in my local church and as a volunteer in my community.

A commitment to interpersonal and interdisciplinary collaboration and cooperationAs I look toward doctoral study, I have carefully considered a large number of potential schools. Time and

again, I have found myself drawn to large universities. Why don't I want to go to a small conservatory focusing only on music? While I plan to carefully focus my doctoral studies in my field of music composition, I have seen the value of being surrounded by a variety of professors and students in both related and seemingly unrelated fields.

At Penn State, I formed a friendship and had fascinating conversations on a wide variety of topics with the head of the math department, a distinguished scholar in his field. We played music together, went rock-climbing together, and were both richer persons because of our friendship. While I was a graduate student, I reached out to film majors and struck an agreement to write a film score for a senior project in exchange for getting a well-produced video of one of my operas. After I finished my coursework, collaboration between film majors and composers became more common and even departmentally organized, but I successfully reached across disciplines before the structure was in place.

At Shenandoah University, I developed and have maintained a reputation being collegial and cordial, and I have been able to build and maintain successful working relationships with people and departments whom I was “warned” about as being difficult. My work crosses disciplines daily, whether I am provided videoconferencing help to respiratory care faculty in two locations at once, microphone advice to the athletics director, or SMART Board training to history professors. Faculty regularly compliment me on my patience in explaining processes and my effectiveness in written and videorecorded communication.

I am ready to earn my doctoral degree, and I want to partner with a school that carries itself with pride and confidence, a school like the University of Maryland. Not a week goes by in which I don't speak highly of my previous alma mater to someone. I look forward to shining the same positive light on my new alma mater by my words and my actions, throughout my matriculation and onward for the rest of my career.

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