Tony Award winner from Vermont adds another honor - and $10,000 - for long musical career
Brent HallenbeckA Tony Award winner from Vermont has added another honor to his resume – and $10,000 to his bank account.
Michael Chorney, who won a Tony in 2019 for his work on the born-in-Vermont Broadway musical “Hadestown,” was awarded the Herb Lockwood Prize in the Arts at a June 22 ceremony at the BCA Center. Burlington City Arts administers the annual prize named in honor of Herb Lockwood, a Burlington artist and musician who died in a workplace accident in Burlington at age 27 in 1987.
Chorney’s work with fellow Vermont musician Anais Mitchell on “Hadestown,” which earned him a Tony Award for Best Orchestrations, is what he’s best known for outside of the state. Within Vermont, fans are familiar with the Lincoln musician for his work with acts ranging from the sprawling, eclectic ensemble viperHouse to the Sun Ra tribute group Magic City to the folk-jazz band Holler General.
Chorney’s current project is Freeway Clyde, a group he describes on his website as performing “instrumental psych rock film scores for non-existent movies.” In remarks at the BCA Center event, Chorney called 2019, when “Hadestown” went to Broadway and he performed in the musical’s on-stage band, “the most-active year of my life, by far.” The music for “Hadestown” was scrutinized and carefully tailored by the production’s creative team.
“And I mean every – single – note,” Chorney said.
The next year, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic brought on the least-active year of his life. He returned from New York to Vermont and gained perspective, realizing he wanted to make music not just from his head but from other people’s imaginations as well – “that doesn’t rely on me but relies on us,” he said.
Chorney told the crowd of friends and supporters that the wordless, evocative music of Freeway Clyde inspired one of his favorite remarks from a first-time listener, one he has posted at the top of his website’s home page – “It was so nice to make up my own story for a change.”
In introducing Chorney at Saturday’s event, Seven Days co-founder Pamela Polston spoke of encountering his music in the 1980s.
“Several bands, genres and years later, as he led the ‘acid jazz’ group viperHouse, I began to recognize not only his incredible versatility and musical curiosity but his significant mentorship of other, younger musicians,” Polston said.
One of those musicians was Mitchell, who was on tour with her folk trio Bonny Light Horseman and could not attend the ceremony. She sent a video message in which she said no one deserves the Herb Lockwood Prize more than Chorney.
“I worked with Michael for many years on records and on stages,” Mitchell said. “I had a ringside view of his ferocious integrity as an artist and a human.”
Winners of the Herb Lockwood Prize
The Herb Lockwood Prize has no application process and artists do not know they are being considered for it. The purpose of the award, according to a news release, is “to validate the work of the recipient, to energize that artist’s future, to encourage other artists to work ambitiously, and to honor Herb Lockwood’s memory by continuing his inspirational influence.”
The 11 winners of the prize are:
- 2014, actor and theater director Steve Small
- 2015, fine artist and typographer Claire Van Vliet
- 2016, filmmaker Nora Jacobson
- 2017, author Howard Frank Mosher
- 2018, puppeteer and artist Peter Schumann
- 2019, musician and public-radio host Robert Resnik
- 2020, dancer and choreographer Hannah Dennison
- 2021, jazz musician and teacher Ray Vega
- 2022, poet Kerrin McCadden
- 2023, film director and impresario Jay Craven
- 2024, musician, composer and arranger Michael Chorney
Contact Brent Hallenbeck atbhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.