“I don’t think another school could come near to helping me shape my identity to the extent which Bennington has,” Webb Crawford ’18 recalled after becoming the 2016-17 recipient of the annual Libby Zion ’87 Memorial Scholarship, which was established in 1988 to support students majoring in performing arts with demonstrated financial need. “I’m so glad to have come to this incredible place with its intimate and loving music department.”
After graduating from a small alternative public high school in New York City, Crawford set her sights on attending a music conservatory where she could study composition. “I thought that a conservatory education would provide me with all the benefits of music academia that my tiny and negligibly funded high school never could.”
Unfortunately, the two conservatories Crawford was accepted to did not provide enough financial support for her to attend. A presidential scholarship and additional support including the Libby Zion ‘87 scholarship made Bennington College Crawford’s most affordable option; a turn of events for which she was tremendously grateful.
Crawford admitted to having a “pretty one-dimensional” focus in her studies at Bennington, devoting herself early on almost exclusively to music. She also recognized, though, the need to expand her horizons, and she spoke glowingly of Bennington’s tradition of interdisciplinary collaboration.
“The environment of this college, and the ability to collaborate and see work across a multitude of disciplines has been an incredibly rich and rewarding experience that a conservatory could never have offered me,” Crawford recalled. She considered her decision to attend Bennington “one of the most rewarding I've made, and that I think I will ever make.”
Crawford never believed that college would have an effect on her. “I’d always seen higher education as a tool to add to a utility belt which would legitimize my work as a composer,” she recalled. “Bennington is so much more than a tool for me. This scholarship has made it possible for me to attend a school which is also a home and a haven and an infinite pool of resources. Thank you so much for making attending this college possible.”
Currently, Webb is in the second year of an MA program in composition at Wesleyan University. She builds string instruments and composes for them, and plays free improvised music as a guitarist. She is working on a reproduction of a 13th-century instrument called a symphonia, which is an ancestor of the hurdy-gurdy.
