Kevin Day: Music transformed him. Now he aims to help others.

When Kevin Day was a child, he could barely speak due to a speech impediment. Yet he was prodigiously fluent in the language of music. His father, a hip-hop producer, and his mother, a gospel singer, noticed their toddler would hum melodies that he heard. They showed him how to articulate them on a piano. 

“I couldn’t talk hardly until I was 8 or 9 years old,” says the native of Arlington, Texas, who had a stutter. “Music was sort of my way of self-expression when I couldn’t verbally communicate what I felt.”

Now in his mid-20s, Mr. Day is breaking racial and age barriers in classical music. His work has already been performed at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Rachmaninov Concert Hall in Moscow. In April, he will conduct a new work at Carnegie Hall in New York. And this Thursday, he will debut a piece for the Boston-based Sheffield Chamber Players. To reach these pinnacles, the young Black composer has had to overcome acute challenges. Mr. Day’s life story is a testament to the revivifying power of music. His ambition is to compose works that have a similar effect on listeners.

“He is driven, but he is so uplifted and soothed and buoyed by music that I don’t think it’s a choice for him,” says Cynthia Johnston Turner, dean of the music faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. During her previous post at the University of Georgia, she successfully recruited Mr. Day for a master’s program. “He has a lot of resilience, but let’s not ignore the fact that the systems are stacked up against him.”

Early influences

Mr. Day’s work is influenced by life experiences as much as by musical notes. When he was around 10 years old, his family’s struggles deepened. His father could not work because of a disability and his mother was unable to find a job. Sometimes there was no electricity or water in the house. As bills piled up, the family was evicted and had their car repossessed.

“I don’t make a big deal out of this stuff,” Mr. Day writes in an email after a Zoom interview. “I’m always looking forward and try not to look back, if only for reflection.”

Still, the young composer’s childhood memories often have a halcyon hue. Mr. Day cherished the opportunity to learn euphonium and tuba in marching band at school. His best friend from church, Davion Moulton, would help write beats for songs when they weren’t watching “Star Wars.” Mr. Moulton aspired to direct movies. Mr. Day dreamed of being a film composer. They seemed destined for future collaborations. 

In 2015, Mr. Moulton was murdered in a shooting at a party. When the news reached Mr. Day – then a freshman at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth – he sank into a depressive state. It lasted for years. Though Mr. Day contemplated quitting music, he recalls the day in which he sequestered himself inside a piano practice room. His fingers began to improvise a melancholy minor chord motif. As the melody progressed, it brightened into something more hopeful.

“Something like spiritual, divine took place because, for the first time in a long time, I felt like someone might be watching over me and someone up there really cares,” says Mr. Day, who titled the composition “Breathe.” “That moment was a turning point. That piece was sort of my way of telling myself, ‘We’re going to be OK.’”  

When he’d fully recovered about a year later, the composer’s friends pointed out something he hadn’t even noticed. He’d completely stopped stuttering. “Music literally did heal me,” he says. “It transformed me, in a way, to the person I am now.”

“Spirit of resilience” 

On Jan. 27, Mr. Day will be in Massachusetts to attend the premiere of his String Quartet No. 5, which will be performed live in Waltham and streamed online. The Sheffield Chamber Players approached Mr. Day – as well as renowned composers such as Osvaldo Golijov and Kenji Bunch – to create new works for the group’s next few seasons.

Mr. Day says the two contrasting movements in String Quartet No. 5 represent the introspective and extroverted aspects of himself. “It’s a piece about where I’m now currently as a composer, where I am as a person, dealing with self-discovery, self-love, self-worth,” he says. Arranged for two violins, a viola, and a cello, the new work lends itself to simplicity and nuance, says the composer.

To date, Mr. Day’s 200-plus compositions include works for concert bands and chamber and symphony orchestras. He’s keen to branch into contemporary music, including hip-hop and jazz. He is also earning his doctorate in musical arts in composition at the University of Miami Frost School of Music.

His parents are proud of his achievements, he says, but adds with a laugh that they still remind him to take out the trash when he visits. “I have this sort of spirit of resilience that I’ve kind of inherited through them,” says Mr. Day.

It’s given him a sense of urgency to create music that bolsters listeners going through difficult times. “I know what it is to have to persevere. My goal is to try to help others as well.”