The Pen Woman, Winter 2024:

Cinzi Lavin: Musical Dramatist

By Elizabeth Lauer, Music Editor

“Let me write the most gorgeous, soaring music…”

Cinzi Lavin’s website gives clear, ample evidence of the broad landscape of her life in creating art. Her in-music activities include composer, performer (vocalist and pianist), producer, conductor, teacher. She was a well known and loved member of her home base, Hull, where she lived for 13 years. Indeed, she was valued throughout Massachusetts. She currently resides in Connecticut, where her many activities are front and center.

Not surprising, Lavin has many awards to her credit, most in reference to her (quoting from NLAPW stated goals) “promot[ing] the arts” and fostering “outreach programs in the arts.” Several are testaments to her local activities; others — Yellow Rose of Texas, Golden Shield, DAR Women in the Arts — are from farther afield. Another honor: performance at the White House with singer Jennifer Love, featuring the works of Lavin’s treasured Stephen Foster, repertoire that these performers have recorded.

“It all begins with a story.” Since 2010, she has completed four musical dramas, three of which have been presented in performance. In each case, Lavin has fully participated, wearing her many hats. A remarkable quality of her works is the multiplicity of her imagination: the widely divergent subject matters, the range of characters, her varied use of language, the multifaceted moods, and her spot-on choices of idiomatic musical voices and styles.

“The Nantasket Trilogy” is a cycle that comprises three musical/theatrical works. The first, “On This River” — a kind of ecological panegyric — was created to bring awareness to Hull’s Weir River Estuary. One of its nine diverse songs, “Wewes, Wawpatucke” (“Owl, Canadian Goose”) is in the Wampanoag language; the finale is now Hull’s official city song, “Underneath a Hullonian Sky.”

Next, Lavin produced “Toilers of the Sea: The Life of Joshua James,” a biographical drama. Its nine songs — several referring to sailors and the sea — tell the story of Joshua James, a lifesaver famous for having rescued more than 600 people from drowning. The composer and lyricist says of her hero that his salient quality is “his unwillingness to allow himself to be defined by his tragedies.”

Indeed, this idea, this belief is a constant for Cinzi Lavin — in her art, in her life. To complete her trilogy, she produced “Where the Fun Begins,” set in a Boston area amusement park in which — among many characters — are featured a pickpocket, a physically challenged girl, and a crime lord. How is that for variety? Charting the highs and lows over 80 years, starting in 1905 —“the triumph of faith during hard times” — the music reflects the several stylistic changes that occurred during those decades.

It is clear that Cinzi Lavin’s choice of subject matter is drawn from real-life experiences. She presents human drama that is not ripped from headlines, but rather is steeped in the struggles and victories, the heartbreak and glories that have heretofore been unknown — one might posit: unsung.

For her newest completed musical drama, “Hidden Hope,” Lavin chose the setting of Japan during World War II. The work is drawn from reality and has yet to be staged. The music seen here is the opening of a powerful song — a paean, an anthem — of fear and resoluteness.

Sung by the protagonist, Seo, a Japanese animator, a pacifist, the words and music express the artist’s turmoil: Will his artistic response to an irrefutable command to produce images to accompany pro-war propaganda be discovered? Is he courting danger and demise with his resplendent summoning of peace, his animation — actually “drawing” his demise?

The lyrics published below show the opening and the ending of the song. Lavin’s music intensifies the expressive content of her words — words of purpose, of doubt, of resilience, of dread, of hope. From the very first bar is heard the ground that drives and anchors the piece: the bass line (lowest staff). It is easy to see here the intricate design of the rhythmic pattern. Set in a composite time signature, it is complex, and yet crafted so that it is immediately recognizable by sight and by ear. It is repeated in the first four bars; it returns in bar 7; and in bar 8, it is there, all-hands-on-deck. Lavin’s opening bars — especially as heard in the powerful bass rhythmic expression — are a harbinger of the entire setting and a touchstone for the character: resolute repetition, brief surcease, resolute repetition.

Drawing My Demise Now is my chance to tell my story and all it implies. I’ll animate my nation’s glory drawing my demise! Here all my dreams appear so plainly right before my eyes; Here all my fears arise profanely drawing my demise! – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – May heaven’s divine intervention raise us to the skies And realize my true intention drawing my demise! Creating this unholy mixture, I fall or I rise— Staking my life upon a picture, drawing my demise!