Gravelle holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Iowa, a Master of Music from California State University Long Beach, and a bachelor’s degree with a major in music from Luther College.

We caught up with Gravelle to talk about interests in and out of the classroom.

In the classroom

Inside info: What’s one thing you want every student coming into your classes to know about you?

I truly believe your voice matters. That is not a gimmick. What each person contributes to our community is important, and since I teach primarily collaborative learning courses (choir), it matters that every voice is uplifted. Everyone’s contribution has an impact.

Getting energized: What work have you done or will you be doing at Lawrence that gets you the most excited?

I’m very excited to create more access to choir for all students across campus. The choral program has a rich and beautiful history of amazing music-making—a tradition that has been celebrated nationally—and I look forward to continuing that tradition with a wider community.

Going places: Is there an example of somewhere your career has taken you (either a physical space or something more intellectual, emotional, or spiritual) that took you by surprise?

I always anticipated that I would move all over the country for graduate school and to find jobs that would be good fits. I grew up in Minnesota, and have lived in Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Carolina. Imagine my surprise when I was offered the position at Lawrence and realized I would land back in the upper Midwest at a school whose choirs I have seen perform for years at national and regional conventions. What a joyful surprise.

Out of the classroom

This or that: If you weren’t teaching for a living, what would you be doing?  

If I weren’t teaching for a living, I’d love to either be a barista at an independent coffee shop—such beautiful places of community—or an advocate of some kind to empower others.

Right at home: Whether for work, relaxation or reflection, what’s your favorite spot on campus?

I’m new, so I am still discovering all the places on campus. I will look forward to my new office in Fall 2025, but besides that, I love all of the rehearsal spaces. Those spaces are engaging and active. I’m open to recommendations for spaces to check out.

One book, one recording, one film: Name one of each that speaks to your soul? Or you would recommend to a friend? Or both?

The book I’ve recommended to a lot of friends recently is Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women. In addition to being a runner, I have a passion for understanding how barriers within systems came to exist. I’m not really a person who watches many films. And I can’t pick one recording. I recommend live performances for truly formative experiences. Come to a choir concert on campus.

More than 200 students will perform in the Major Works concert, one of the showcase events on the Conservatory calendar each spring. The choirs have been working on the performance for six weeks; the orchestra for four weeks. It includes, among other musical challenges, singing in unfamiliar languages.

“It’s a great opportunity to share our musical talents in the Conservatory,” Swan said. “It’s a project where we get to collaborate interdepartmentally, the orchestra and the choirs working together. … It’s an important part of what we do and it’s a celebration of what our students can do musically.”

The pieces to be performed come with powerful back stories.

A Silence Haunts Me speaks to Beethoven’s agony at losing his hearing, expressed in a heartbreaking letter to his brothers. Runestad, a Minneapolis composer, and Todd Boss, a Minneapolis poet, debuted the choral piece in 2019 to wide acclaim.

This Love Between Us, meanwhile, is about unity, working between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music.

“Its seven movements juxtapose the words of seven major religious traditions of India (Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam), and specifically how each of these traditions approaches the topic of unity, of brotherhood, of being kind to one another,” Esmail writes on her website. 

Sutanu Sur, on tabla, ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýShreekant Shah, on sitar, will join the Lawrence students as guest artists on This Love Between Us.

Sur, who grew up in India ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýnow lives in Appleton, performed last year with the Fox Valley Symphony. For many in the audience, it was their first introduction to the tabla, twin hand drums most familiar in the music of India.

“The audience was surprised to learn all the nuances of the tabla,” Sur told globalindian.com. “The only way to promote something is to get people to learn about it.”

Four student soloists will be featured on This Love Between Us—junior Tanvi Thatai, soprano; senior Holly Beemer, alto; junior Matthew Carlson, tenor; and first-year Billy Greene, bass. They’re exploring singing in an unfamiliar musical style. 

“It’s a great educational opportunity for them to learn, grow, and create,” Swan said.

°ż˛ÔĚýA Silence Haunts Me, senior Ami Hatori will be featured on piano.

Swan called A Silence Haunts Me a “creative force” and said Esmail’s ThisLove Between Us is a complex, gorgeous, and sonically exciting musical adventure. Those two works and the Boulanger orchestral piece bring with them a connecting thread—love.

“I like to find a theme,” Swan said of planning for the Major Works concert. “The connection for this one comes from the title of the Reena Esmail piece, This Love Between Us. It’s love for different things. The first piece embraces a love for spring. The Runestad piece expresses a love for music; Beethoven’s desire and passion to write music and to explore musical sounds. And Esmail’s piece is searching for love between different people, the common bonds we share.”

If you go

What: Major Works Performance

When: 8 p.m. April 21

Where: Lawrence Memorial Chapel

Cost:Ěýąó°ů±đ±đ

“Being invited to sing at a regional or national conference is sort of like making it to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament or winning a Grammy. It’s that big of a deal.”
– Phillip Swan, director of Cantala

To qualify, choirs need to go through an auditioning process that includes submitting recordings from each of the three previous years. The three-year rule ensures the choir is consistently excellent even as its membership changes from year to year. A panel of judges then makes the selections from submissions that include college, high school, and youth choirs. The competition is robust.

“Being invited to sing at a regional or national conference is sort of like making it to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament or winning a Grammy,” Swan said. “It’s that big of a deal. It’s highly competitive; they are seeking choirs that will demonstrate the highest standards of excellence in their performance.”

Swan will lead the 37-student Cantala, a women’s choir, while Stephen Sieck will lead the 28-student Concert Choir. They are co-directors of Choral Studies at Lawrence.

“I look at this concert as an opportunity to share out what makes Lawrence special,” Sieck said. “We’re a small liberal arts college choir of scholars who approach texts with thoughtful discernment; and, we’re a Conservatory ensemble that performs difficult music with fluency and artistry, highlighting Lawrence students’ exceptional vocal technique.”

The regional and national ACDA conferences are interspersed every other year. If you’re chosen to perform, you must then wait two years before you can apply again. Since 2006, Cantala has been selected to perform at the regional conference four times and the national conference twice. Concert Choir has been chosen for the regional conference three times and the national conference once.

“It’s an important and impactful experience for our students,” Swan said. “It reinforces the consistent work they are doing in the Conservatory and allows them to share their music-making with a highly discerning audience.”  

This trip to Chicago also marks the first time the choirs have taken to the road for a performance since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. There will be a bevy of health and safety protocols put in place by the conference organizers, including proof of vaccination for all performers and conference attendees.

“Our performances will be masked,” Swan said. “That’s not such a big oddity for us because at Lawrence everything has been masked for the last year. All of our performances have been masked, so we’re used to it now.”

But just getting to take to the road and perform in person provides a certain sense of normalcy that has the choirs excited, Swan said.

“I think there’s a genuine enthusiasm about actually connecting with people in person again,” he said.

Keeping the music alive has been a priority in the Conservatory for the two years of the pandemic, Sieck said. This trip is one more step forward.

“We are excited to be able to take this major stage, and we are deeply grateful for the safety protocols at the Harris Theatre and at ĚÇĐÄvlog for prioritizing public health while allowing music-making to continue,” he said.