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MARQUETTE - The story of Thomas LaVoy's song "White Stones" - which will be featured this weekend in New York City as one of the top 10 compositions in a choral music competition - begins 23 years ago, before he was even born.
In 1985 LaVoy's mother, Esther LaVoy Barrington, wrote a poem for his brother Lucas, who was suffering from bad dreams at night. "White Stones" - the title of the poem - represented "the little white lies we tell that nothing can hurt you while mom is here," Esther said.
Over 20 years later, Tom, now 18, was busy working on a new, untitled composition when his mother walked into the room to listen.
"She asked me if I'd ever read her poem "White Stones." And I hadn't so I took a look at it and ... it was a unique experience because every single word that was written on her page corresponded exactly with what I had written in the music and she had written it 23 years prior to this," Tom said.
After combining the words of his mother's poem with his music he entered his choral composition into the New York Virtuoso Singers Composition Competition "on a whim."
"I did not think I was going to win anything," Tom said. "Usually, people my age, we enter the youth competitions that they have set up around the country. This is a professional competition. It's had some very famous composers in it."
Out of over 300 competitors from around the country, Tom's composition was awarded a fourth place honorable mention and he was invited to come to New York by world-famous choral conductor Harold Rosenbaum, winner of the 2008 American Composer Alliance's Laurel Leaf Award.
LaVoy said he got the call from Rosenbaum while hiking Sugarloaf Mountain in Marquette with some friends.
Tom said Rosenbaum asked him if he would like to come to New York, to which Tom replied "'I have to ask my mother' because I had just graduated from high school and he was really surprised to hear that because they've never had anybody this young in it. I looked up all the other composers and I think I'm the youngest person there by about 30 years."
He plans to be there when his song is performed Sunday at Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church.
Tom said he has written about 15 major classical pieces of music. Several of his pieces have been performed by the Marquette Senior High School Redmen Chorale.
"It's a big transition going from Marquette Senior High School to New York City," Tom said, adding he was grateful to all the music teachers at MAPS for encouraging him.
Music plays an important role in his family. Tom said his older brother Lucas inspired him to get into music and his mother, a piano teacher as well as choral director of a couple choirs at St. Michael Catholic Church in Marquette, helped him learn the piano.
Tom has also written songs for the band he and his three brothers started, "The LaVoy Brothers," in which Tom plays the drums.
"I can't remember a time when I didn't write music," he said. "It's always just been a part of what I do."
He said he thinks about music and his possible future career in music at least four hours a day. He's also always at a piano, his mother said.
"It's like living with the Phantom of the Opera," Esther said. "His space is downstairs and you can hear the music drifting up. The middle of the night. First thing in the morning. All the time."
After New York the future is wide open for Tom. Currently, his work is being reviewed for publication by G. Schirmer, a music publishing company. He's also applying to several colleges including Western Michigan University, Michigan State University and Westminster Choir College to pursue a career as a choral composer.
"My eventual goal is to have a professional choir that sort of focuses on new music, commissioning other music and singing some of my stuff," he said. "That's the height of what I want to do with my life."
