Braxton-Brooks says she is unsure about her plans for next year.

“I feel that my thesis is just winding down,” she says. “It’s like the project that never ends.”

But whatever the future may bring, she says it will include theater.

“I’ve realized that this is what I want to make life and my career,” she says.

—Jayme J. Herschkopf

Hazel D. Davis ’03

Music runs in the blood of Hazel D. Davis ’03, one of this year’s recipients of the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts “in recognition of her extraordinary musicianship.”

“My mom was a horn player through college,” she says. “So I decided to play it and follow in her footsteps.”

Davis has spent her years at Harvard immersed in music. She is a full-time member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and the Bach Symphony Orchestra (BSO), and occasionally performs with other groups. She says her most rewarding performance was the Britten Serenade—a piece written for solo horn and voice—with the BSO in 2001.

Davis’s musical career began when she received her first horn in fifth grade. But finding a teacher was difficult for the budding musician.

“My school had a pitiful little band program,” she says.

No horn instruction was offered, so she says she “listed porn and horn” on her instrument request sheet. The school decided to allow her to take lessons “with one other girl in a walk-in closet” until she reached a more accommodating department in junior high.

At Harvard, Davis says she quickly found her place.

“There’s a really tight group of really committed musicians,” she says.