Lawson Malnory’s fascination with music began not with a musical instrument but with a cowboy hat. The 22-year-old senior, who graduated May 20 from the Meadows School of the Arts, tagged along as a child with his McKinney family to SMU’s football and basketball games — both parents and a brother are SMU grads.
Those games set the course for Malnory’s future. “There was this one guy in the Mustang Band who always wore a cowboy hat on the field,” says the Meadows Scholar. “I thought he was the just coolest guy ever, and I decided I wanted to be like him. … I was going into sixth grade, so I tried out for band and got in, and I stuck with it. This year, the band director (at SMU) started letting me wear a cowboy hat, so it’s come full circle.”
Clearly Malnory likes doing things a little bit differently. Take, for example, his work with the Bridge the Gap Chamber Players: His positive experiences with music and the joy that it brings him led him to join the nonprofit student group whose mission is to bring music to those who might not get regular exposure.
Read more at SMU News.
Building a musical bridge
Voted Most Spirited and Loyal by his Mustang Band peers, drum captain and recent graduate Lawson Malnory ’17 shares his instrumental gifts through Bridge the Gap Chamber Players, a student performance group that brings music to homeless shelters, city parks and other unexpected places.