Mark P. Musico '07

Most musicians view music in creative terms; it’s a medium that’s emotional and moving. But to senior Mark P. Musico ’07, winner of the Radcliffe Doris Cohen Levi Prize for musical theater, music isn’t limited to aesthetics—it’s also a science.

“In science, you think of inputs,” he says. “In theater, these inputs are lighting, music, and the like.” His view of music as an “input” has enabled him to give the position of “music director” a whole new meaning.

For Musico, musical direction entails more than merely assembling and rehearsing an orchestra. He treats the job as a means of helping performers to reach their acting potential. By controlling the musical inputs, he is able to tease a specific emotional response out of performers.

“There are deliberate music choices that can take a scene or its actors to another level,” says Musico. “As music director, I’ll change something in the orchestra that will inspire actors to push their emotions until they reach that level.”

These subtle changes in music are key to the emotional heart of the play, he says. They allow a singing actor to start shouting, or a shouting actor to begin crying.

Musico has directed the music for a cornucopia of on-campus musical productions, including the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s “The Pirates of Penzance” and Harvard Summer Theatre’s “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.” He has also directed one show of his own (“The Last Five Years”) and composed the music for this years’ Hasty Pudding Theatrical.

Jennifer L. Brown ’07, who has worked with Musico on 11 productions, praises his ability to direct music.

“Mark doesn’t just plunk a piano,” she says. “He’s really interested in getting a performance out of performers.”

Musico’s view of music stems largely from his studies, he says. As a Philosophy concentrator on the Mind, Brain and Behavior track, he has taken classes related to musical cognition. In one class, he studied the neuroprocesses of music and emotion. Similarly, he enrolled in a psychology seminar on music and the mind.

“In my seminar, I learned that music is an aesthetic experience, but also just particles hitting the air,” he says. “It has so many cultural, physical, and biological sources.”

Musico didn’t start out in musical theater. “I am a pianist, by trade,” he says. “I grew up in a traditional Italian family that felt wholesome kids should play an instrument.”

He began playing the piano at age five, and studied classical artists until high school. It was then that he began to explore jazz and musicals.

The experience that would lead to Musico’s continued involvement with the performing arts occurred when he participated in Harvard’s Freshman Arts Program (FAP).

“Meeting 39 other people with common interests was comforting,” he says. “It convinced me to do the arts for another four years.” He also credits much of his success to the late Alan E. Symonds ’55, the program’s founder, who passed away earlier this school year.

Musico’s parents have been supportive of his heavy involvement in theater, he says. Once, after returning home from school, he was surprised to find that his father had placed framed posters from all of Musico’s Harvard shows on the staircase wall.

“It was really cute, though a little creepy,” he says.

Says Brown of Musico, “He’s one of the best music directors I’ve worked with by far. I trust him implicitly. He is incredibly kind, funny and modest.”

Brown also praises Musico’s ability to handle the hectic scheduling of theater. “He’s one of the few people I know who could balance theater with classes like constitutional law,” she says.

After graduation, Musico is slated to attend law school at Columbia University. He’s in a special four-year program that will allow him to graduate with a joint degree in law and the fine arts.

“Because of my interest in neuroscience, I originally planned to go to medical school,” says Musico. “But then I realized that researching science and music in a lab would not keep me connected to the theater community.”

With a joint degree in law and the fine arts, Musico believes he would be better connected to the artistic world. After graduating, he hopes to create a non-profit organization that will provide legal services to theater performers and other struggling artists. It’s that idea of combining seemingly disparate fields—science and music, law and performance—that has marked his approach to arts.

“This is another one of my grand visions of the world,” he says. “I have a lot of faith in the power of art. I love theater people and artists. I want to help them on an ideological level. I want to help them so that they can effect change in society through art. I want to help them do that.”