Michael L. Schachter ’09

Senior theses are notorious for being time-consuming and frustrating, yet ultimately rewarding. Music concentrator Michael L. Schachter ’09 took this characterization to new heights with his thesis, an original composition spanning many genres and lasting nearly an hour.

Schachter undoubtedly has the artistic chops to pull off such an ambitious undertaking. He started playing the piano at age five and began to improvise and compose shortly afterward. The Boston-area native soon became interested in performing jazz, and he took composition lessons at the New England Conservatory throughout high school. When college rolled around, Schachter chose a liberal arts education at Harvard over the conservatory experience: “I never really wanted to go to a conservatory because I thought I would be intellectually and socially stifled. The Harvard music department gave off good vibes, and the great compositional faculty attracted me here.”

Since arriving at Harvard, Schachter has been a fixture on the university’s music scene. He plays piano and bass with both the Sunday and Monday Jazz Bands, has composed on commission for various ensembles, and has enjoyed the opportunity to perform alongside Herbie Hancock, Aaron Goldberg, and other jazz legends. Schacher credits Harvard Universiy Bands director Thomas G. Everett with getting him to “listen to good stuff” and for being his “de facto sugar daddy of the past few years” by arranging performance opportunities.

Schachter also used his time as an undergraduate to explore arenas beyond his musical comfort zone. Despite having no prior vocal experience, he joined the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum as a freshman and has sung with both the Collegium and the Chamber Singers—the Collegium’s Renaissance music subgroup—ever since. “My participation in the Collegium really informed my writing of music and made me think a lot more vocally and contrapuntally about the music I write,” Schachter says of his foray into vocal music.

Schachter also plays bass with Kuumba, whose “raw energy and feeling have impacted [his] style of writing.” Schachter even picked up yet another instrument, the didgeridoo, when Kuumba went on tour performing aboriginal music in Australia.

For his senior thesis, Schachter wanted to combine the free, improvisational character of jazz music with the elements of the classical compositional form he had honed during his undergraduate studies at Harvard. The product was “The Ten Plagues,” a ten-movement piece for small jazz ensemble based on the story of the Exodus. “My goal was to achieve a balance between making my piece sound free and to do what was necessary to make the work intellectually coherent,” reflected Schachter.

“It was very artistically challenging. I personally have a lot of problems with the way that a lot of academics go about music writing: it’s so hyper-intellectualized and specialized that it’s very hard for the so-called uninitiated to appreciate it on an aesthetic level. I have a problem with people who make music ugly just to create a barrier to entry.”

Schacter’s piece was performed last Monday in Paine Hall. The ensemble included members of the Harvard Jazz Collective as well as a few students and professionals from nearby conservatories, and they executed the piece in accordance with Schacter’s vision: “It was a very high energy performance and had much less of a performer-audience divide.”

Schachter’s Harvard career has left a diverse and lasting imprint on the university’s music scene, but what’s next for this musical extraordinaire? “I’m resigned to eventually go to grad school,” Schachter piqued, “I am really into teaching, but I’m also interested in pursuing composition.” It seems as if grad school isn’t calling just yet though. Next year, Schachter will be long gone from Paine music building, splitting his time between India and Israel to study ethnic music.