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- Courtesy photo by Chuck Terranova
- Michael Chorney
Michael Chorney has a rich and colorful résumé: bandleader, teacher, librarian, house painter, janitor, engineer and, of course, 2019 Tony Award winner. On Saturday, the Lincoln musician, composer and arranger, whose musical stylings are as diverse as his employment history, added yet another item to his CV: recipient of the 2024
Herb Lockwood Prize in the Arts.
The Lockwood Prize recognizes Vermonters who've made significant contributions to local music, writing, drama, dance, film, fine woodworking and the visual arts — and, equally important, have had a similar impact on the broader artistic community. Created in 2014, the award from
Burlington City Arts comes with a $10,000 prize, which Chorney accepted on Saturday at a ceremony at the BCA Center in Burlington.
“Every year we have to remind ourselves that producing great work is not the only criteria," said Todd Lockwood, who, along with other like-minded Vermont artists, created the prize in 2014 to honor his late brother. "The other important criteria is having a beneficent impact on other artists and encouraging other artists to raise their game. That’s exactly what Michael’s been doing.”
Modeled on the MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant," the Lockwood Prize is considered one of Vermont's most prestigious arts honors, in part because there's no application process. Nominations are submitted through an anonymous network of artists throughout Vermont, and nominees don't even know they're being considered for one.
Indeed, Chorney, who returned to Vermont from New York City during the pandemic lockdown, said in an interview that the prize "came completely out of the blue. It was quite a surprise — and an honor."
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- Courtesy
- Herb Lockwood Prize
Chorney, 63, has a long and storied history in Vermont's music scene. An accomplished saxophonist and guitarist, he's composed and written for nearly a dozen groups since the 1980s, in styles ranging from jazz to folk to what he once called “instrumental psych-rock film scores for nonexistent movies.”
But Chorney is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Vermont singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell on
Hadestown. The musical adaptation of the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice first premiered in Barre in 2006 and went through various incarnations before landing on Broadway. In 2019,
Hadestown was nominated for 14 Tony Awards and won eight, including Best Musical; Chorney and New York musician Todd Sickafoose shared the honor for Best Orchestration.
Freeway Clyde, Chorney's latest project, is an all-instrumental prog-jazz sextet that he described in an interview as a reaction, of sorts, to
Hadestown, in which every musical note was scripted. In contrast, Freeway Clyde is "something different every single time. It’s an absolute delight. Our motto is: Surprise yourself and surprise each other.”
Though Chorney moved to Burlington from upstate New York in 1979, he never met Herb Lockwood, a Burlington musician and woodworker who lived in Burlington for five years in the 1980s before dying in a tragic workplace fall in 1987 at age 27.
Like Chorney, Herb Lockwood was a master musician trained on classical and jazz guitar who could write arrangements for small orchestras. As his older brother Todd recalled, Herb would often grab his guitar, walk out of his Old North End apartment and, if there were neighbors he’d never met, knock on their door, introduce himself and perform an impromptu concert in their living room.
Though Todd Lockwood wasn't deeply familiar with Chorney's work before his nomination, upon learning of his history, he called Chorney an obvious recipient of the prize.
"Oh, my God! If Herb were around today, he and Michael would absolutely be doing something together," Lockwood said. "Those two were wired in a very similar way.”
Past recipients of the Lockwood Prize include musician Robert Resnik, Bread and Puppet Theater founder Peter Schumann, author Howard Frank Mosher, and last year's winner, filmmaker Jay Craven.