Holy Cross Students Earn Prestigious National Awards

WORCESTER, Mass. – Two Holy Cross seniors have been awarded prestigious traveling fellowships from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to spend a year after graduation traveling outside the United States.

William (Billy) J. Currano, a classics major from Clarksville, Md., will use his Watson fellowship pursuing his interest in melodic metal music in northern Europe in a project titled "…And Thor's Hammer Struck a Chord: the Melodic Metal Boom from the North (Nordic metal bands)." He will meet with performers of this music as well as producers of their recordings in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, learn about the folk traditions that inspire much of it, and possibly have the chance to do some performing himself.

Brett W. Maguire, a music major and the Holy Cross Organ Scholar from Amherst, N.H., will focus his project on the tradition of the blind organist in France. For much of the past two centuries this tradition provided blind musicians with a means of earning a livelihood as church organists. Brett plans to base his project in Paris, meeting surviving musicians of that tradition, and exploring the methods by which they learned their art. He also hopes to see whether he can learn to perform blindfolded, with the expectation that his aesthetic experience of the music may well be affected. Maguire was the recent first-prize winner of the Regional Young Artists Competition of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) and will perform a solo concert for the National Convention of the AGO this summer in Philadelphia. Until recently, he served as interim director of music at St. Paul Cathedral in Worcester.

The Watson Fellowship is an unusual opportunity afforded to 60 students each year chosen from among four nominees from each of 50 preeminent liberal arts colleges and small universities. It is intended to provide selected students with the opportunity to spend a year away, learning about the wider world and pursuing a project that is of passionate interest. Fellows are awarded $22,000 for this enterprise and the instructions not to return to the United States for a year. This year, Holy Cross is one of 11 schools with two winners.

In addition to Currano and Maguire, Laura D. Peynado of Clinton, Mass., was named one of five alternates. Her project, "Education for the Deaf: Sign Language in Spanish-Speaking Countries," would allow her to explore her interest in Deaf communication and education in Bolivia, Guatemala, Venezuela, Mexico and Spain. These countries, differing profoundly in political, economic, and historical characteristics, all share the Spanish language (Laura's own native tongue). If any of the 60 designated Watson Fellows are unable to accept the award, alternates will be offered the opportunity.