Laura Caridad Avila

"The function of freedom is to free someone else" - Toni Morrison

About

Laura Caridad Avila (they/she) is a Multi-Instrumentalist, Poet, Composer, and Multi-Media Artist from Albany, New York currently based in Boston, Massachusetts. They have a bachelor’s degree in Viola Performance with a minor in Art History and Creative Writing Concentration from Ithaca College, where she was known for curating recitals incorporating visual art, transforming traditional concert venues into engaging visual gallery spaces, one concert of which was entirely dedicated to Bob Ross’ show, "The Joy of Painting". In getting their master's degree from the Longy School of Music of Bard College, Laura has had the privilege of creating concert experiences that highlight underrepresented experiences within society like the femme, immigrant, queer, gender expansive, and experiences of people of color, respectively.As a composer, her work involves text and dialogue from the mundane. Her work aims to explore that which we covet yet think is not worth sharing with other beings with the belief that the mundane is the core of our life’s essence. In a literary sense, their work finds itself encapsulating what we learn in looking through the eyes of those around us, and how we relate to them on a spiritual and emotional plane.Accompanying their curated programming, Laura typically includes visual works of drawings with ink on canvas to provide a physical emblem of the mental pictures they associate with the auditory work that they present.In concert, Laura has had the privilege to perform with esteemed groups like Palaver Strings, brilliant composer-performers such as Daniel Bernard Roumain, and has had the honor of performing in spaces ranging from local art galleries toTroy Savings Bank Music Hall and Carnegie Hall.In addition to their Performance and Composition careers, she has also had the honor of establishing a career as an award-winning educator. With over two years of experience supporting public music educators both in and out of the classroom, in addition to a studio of their own viola and violin students, Laura has dedicated themselves to the fascinating process of understanding how we learn the way we do, and how to be kind to ourselves as we do it at every age.Laura has had the pleasure of studying Viola Performance with Matthew Johnson, Kyle Armbrust, and Ralph Farris, and Composition with Alexandra du Bois. Their art history mentors were Jennifer Jolly and Paul Wilson, and their writing mentors were Christine Kitano and Derek Adams.

Artists Statement

From a young age, my life’s goal has been to be a fierce friend, and someone who lives their life with love and compassion first (it’s quite literally in my name to live so!) and in all of my produced or performed work and collaborations, I aim to bring to light experiences that we may think begin and end with us, but truly branch out and reach into us all. If an audience leaves having felt known, then I’ve done what I’ve set out to do when I enter a concert hall or pick up a pen to begin with.

Performance Recordings

Composed Works

Softer (2026) for two voices, clarinet, piano, and fixed media

09/23/2020In sunny Habana,On Saturday mornings,We would clean.If there was anything on the floor left,It'd be thrown out.I was close to my parents,But with an almost professional level of boundaries between us,The presence of love never being a question.My father would do most of the cooking,Never because my mother couldn’t, but because he was just the chef of our family.I would take lessons from him fervently,Soaking up his knowledge like mushrooms to broth.My mother would teach me what it meant to be a woman in the 1970’s,And in turn I would love her,Leaving her to want for nothing in thanks for her sacrifice.In leaving eight or nine children in Cuba to traverse intoThe wide yet closed-off America,Bringing only me as the youngest.Sunnier days in New York,On Sundays we would clean,And mourn the fruits, the faces,The common ground of a blazing manifesto.

12/08/2020Occasionally, I like to look at “Nighthawks”-The painting- I didn’t create a new species of bird.I think about it, and at those empty tables I envision a married couple who visits every Friday night,Their conversations having grown shorter and shorter,Over time, I imagine silence becomes more palatable.Older in age and young of heart,Set in their ways of reading the paper in ink rather than from a screen.She orders a hot black tea with two sugars, he a coffee with none,They're out as soon as they’re in.Then, on Tuesdays, some guy in his thirties comes in, and each week he’s got something different to read,And always wears business casual clothes regardless of the time he enters.This week he has “Common Sense” by Thomas Payne, yet somehowContradicts himself by ordering a hot chocolate with orange juice in one sitting
with a cinnamon croissant wearing an orange and faded green gingham collared shirt.I suppose to be young is to have an allergy to formality.These are the people who keep the place open until the very minute it’s meant to close, but they’re never quite the people who you mind indirectly giving your time to.

02/02/22In this universe, time is not a knife,Nor is it a thief.In thisUniverse,Our glances still the adhesive joining us at the chestBecause the subject of permanence got lost in one bigRadiation bath here is the part where we both order from different pies and splitThem instead of lazily aiming both of our forks at mine. In thisUniverse there is more to you than the parts I helped youGrow the ones that taught me what it was to nurtureHere, your love growsOn vines and I craft and IBottle it and ISmuggle it into places where they thinkI’m too young to know something so wondrous.Perhaps you do the sameWhile having the tact to smear it from your lipsAn erasure and savior of our shared youth.

02/03/22One of the first piano pieces that I actually liked learning was“The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”.For someone who will never have flaxen hair,I fall in love with an unreasonable amount of peopleWho hold an affection for the Hitler beauty standard.Of all of them, only one really mattered.Once, so many years ago, he thought to ask me for a pictureWithout the strings of hair covering any of my features.When I asked him why, he said that it was rare, and I didn’t appreciate it- how pretty I was.Knowing all that I know of him now,I know that he was full of shit,But youth makes shit almost look rosy.Maybe if I was more than a mixed girl with issues and a pitiful crush,Things could have gone a bit further,Or maybe he’s into gingers.

02/18/21There have been very few sights in my lifeThat have managed to take my breath away.Ironically enough,Much of those instances involved you professing to me that I myself wasBreathtaking.Asthma can only do so much to assist me in my daily questTo feign astonishment,Yet what lies beyond your ribsMakes the eighth wonder of the world look cowardly,And awe something of ease.But you,You of steady lungs and even voice,A great pacemaker for a waltz.Perhaps this would have been a nice time for my mother to tell meThat she decided to push me forth into the world with two left feet.If only you knew we were dancing at all.If only I was in a position to ask you,And if only you would want to say yes.But alas,She is yours, the stunning spring rose,And my eyes don’t deceive me as I carefully maneuver themOver those same cherished ribs,Looking closely enoughTo take notes on the rushed intake of breathEntering your once-in-a-lifetime ecstatic lungs.

10/06/22There’s much of me that I would give you for nothing-My jacket, my gloves, my scarf,Things of mine that I’m elated you like enough to make yours.There are other things that I’d loan you for a nickel -My thoughts, my joints, maybe my shoulders,Parts of me that keep me in one piece when caffeine isn’t enough.Before I met the one before you, I didn’t believe in transactions.I realize how ridiculous this is, but I preferred “there’s nothing I wouldn’t give you”.He did not.And so I will give you what I can and keep what I must.I will give you my fingertips under the condition that I can keep my arms at my sideFor a few moments longer.I offer cheesy movie references in (hopeful) exchange for your laughter,I give you my eyelashes if you promise me thatThe wishes you make on them aren’t for anything that I can give you myself.I will trade my Ella Fitzgerald albums for your Chris Botti and call it SquareI trust you’re fair.Eventually, I may stop asking for a nickel whenever you’d like my thoughts,Though I wouldn’t stop you from handing one over.

11/17/21Of course,Like any good insomniac should,I spend my nights wondering if I was to you asMy collection of blankets is to me now.I wonder what your mother thoughtWhen you explained whoever I am to youTo her,Or if you did so at all.I wonder if I was to youAs lo meinFrom that one place on Central Ave isTo my mother.I’d wonder if you’d care about what my mother saidWhen I explained who I know you are to her-Because I did.As someone who religiously wears a watch,You and your wit were what fueled me to burn itWhen you taught me what it truly meant to live in a 9 to 5.I don’t tell my friends about you.I instead detangle your hands from my hairAnd artfully fold your fingers neatly over each other.In my dreams I’d then hold them to my chestBefore surrendering them to their rightful owner.I would thank you for the loan of them,And allow my eyes to flutter shut.

11/04/2025I bloom under your touchI hide it from youPetals and petals and petalsI dry you between pagesMy first hiding placeSanctuary in your palmsYou’re beautiful, aren’t you?

11/15/25I make a lot of people comfortable-I don’t mean to a lot of the time.Actually, I find most of the things I say to be quite disturbing to my own ears.I say them anyway, only sometimes on purpose,Other times without thinking about how harrowing things sound.I have no idea what I look like, generally,And not a clear idea of what people hear from me in the 1% of the time they get curious about my thoughts.I take a lot of things at face value, and I almost always speak in double entendres-I hide a lot of things, make them more palatable.People confide in me often and heavily; I do not confide in others.Elastic in the way leather (and really, my own skin), only somewhat is,Bouncing back to be remolded to someone else’s flesh.I am comforting.I do not always wish to be this way.I tend to let people hollow me; I tend to wither.I wait for my cup to empty; it only refills.

2/10/26
A Sapphic's Triptych:I will write you
I will teach you to draw butterflies,
dot your eyes, cross your t's,
I will do more than send pictures.
I will bind you together with twine-
I will secure you with a fresh wax seal.I keep her in jars.
She sustains me.
I preserve her in my memory.
The veins near her eyes, the bones of her back,
the backs of her hands I know better than mine.
What did I do instead of living?
One jar, two jar, three jar, fourIn the flutter of her lashes,
sleep does fall.
Left in the palms of my hands,
kisses yet to be blown.
In my arms, warmth.
A parting song forlorn,
Until our hands meet once more.
In my parting wave, an eyelash to wish

Upcoming Events

April 13-16 2026, Residency with Palaver Strings - Portland, MEMay 3, 6:30 p.m - "In-Progress Together: a Fundraiser Recital" - Graduate Performance Candidacy First Year Recital - Cambridge, MAMay 14-23, 2026, Opera Vermont's "La Cenerentola" - Barre, VTMay 29 - June 12, 2026 - Residency at Next Festival for Emerging Artists - PS21 and National Sawdust - NYC, NYJune 15-26 - Residency at Divergent Studio - Cambridge, MAJuly 13 - August 2 - Residency at Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA - North Adams, MA

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