S TATE ME N T OF AC A DE M IC PUR POS E • S ubmi tte d De ce mbe r 2 0 0 9

DAVID E. CHÁVEZ, composer

Bor n 11-05-1981
Applying to the De par tment of Music

dave@davidechavez.com • www.davidechavez.com
111 S. Purcell Ave. • Winchester, VA 22601
814-571-4216

I am a global thinker who prefers to buy locally. I am a classical musician who likes to listen to modern
rock. I am driven to succeed in a specific professional field, yet I strongly value disparate fields of knowledge.
As a student in Princeton's graduate program in music composition, I would make it my goal to be a
motivated, focused, collegial, and intellectually curious contributor to the dialogue of learning and creating. I have
identified four key strengths about myself as a potential student and teaching assistant.

A global perspective valuing diverse artistic expression

I will bring an international perspective, informed by a musically and culturally diverse set of life
experiences, to my studies, creative work, and interpersonal interactions at Princeton. My father came to America
from Ecuador when he reached college age, and I know I will realize his dreams and further my own as I earn a
doctoral degree.
From leading Spanish worship songs at a tiny rural church in Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, to hearing
and imitating 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.
As a composer, my music lives at the intersection of diverse forms of popular and classical music. My vocal
music incorporates 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, 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 varied 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.
At Princeton, I will continue to increase my skills in integrating widely varying forms of music. I want to
study in a place where I can spend my semesters examining the musicological and theoretical questions raised by
creators from Josquin to Radiohead, and applying the best of what I find to my own creative process. I plan on
also increasing my skills in using electronic and computer-based tools, both in the recording/composing studio and
in live performance. In particular, I will continue to explore how I can incorporate a background in classical piano
and composition, a love of popular music, an interest in laptop-based software tools, and the synergy of
collaboration into dynamic live performances. I am excited about doing this at Princeton because I know it is a
place where students and faculty regularly bridge the gaps between theory, experimentation, and application with the
latest music technology, without disregarding the value of acoustic music.

An exceptional skill for creative problem solving and self-guided learning

As 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 was a true cultural
value, and a necessity for survival. 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.
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-
 S TATE ME NT OF ACA DE MIC PU R POS E • DAV ID E. C HÁV E Z [1 1 -0 5 -1 9 8 1 - De pa r tme nt of Musi c ]

evolving technologies on the job. When my coworkers threw up their hands in despair, I searched and found
creative answers.

An ambitious yet attainable set of career goals

I intend to have a profound impact on the music world. What might my career path look like?
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 be performed 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 and my concert music will
be increasingly influential and adventurous.
In ten years, I will be a sought-after record 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 cooperation

As I look toward doctoral study, I have carefully considered a large number of potential schools. 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 scholars 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. While I was a graduate student, I reached out to
film majors, resulting in 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.
My work at Shenandoah University crosses disciplines daily, and faculty regularly compliment me on my
patience in explaining processes and my effectiveness in written and videorecorded communication. At Princeton, I
look forward to being a vital, contributing member of both a small cohort of composers and a university-wide
community, pursuing knowledge together.

As I have described above, my musical and cultural interests are diverse, but I have also learned through
experience the importance of not taking on too much at once. I have developed the discipline and maturity to
carefully select and focus on a reasonable number of adventurous yet attainable projects and goals. I am ready to
earn my doctoral degree, and I am would be privileged to earn it at Princeton.

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