Lawrence Watson is an experienced performer boasting over thirty-five years of performing experience throughout New England and around the world. He has traveled as far as Singapore and Malaysia, delivering his own special brand of music. In a return engagement to Shanghai, China, Watson wowed the Chinese people as the lead male vocalist in a concert entitled “The American Songbook.” He was the featured artist in the annual Passion Caribbean Dance and Music Festival in Barranquilla, Colombia and spent two seasons as a judge on the Boston WGBH television show Sing That Thing!
In 2018, SaveOurSelves Productions and Consulting, the company of which Lawrence Watson is the executive director and founder, concentrated its musical and educational efforts in China. Presently, due to the coronavirus pandemic, touring has been put on hold. As the world slowly reopens, we will focus our efforts in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Watson has recently published his long-awaited book of original music and all-time classic standards. The book, entitled H.E.M, focuses on what he refers to as “Highly Emotional Music.” In addition, the book offers the audience thirty-three classic songs with accompanying illustrations by young artists of color. All of the illustrations in the book visually capture the intention and spirit of the songs. H.E.M. is an insightful look at the social history of people of African descent through their popular musical forms.
Being a master teacher, Watson has used this opportunity to highlight often-overlooked young talent in America and continues the long legacy of collaboration between visual and musical artists in the Black community. With its comprehensive curriculum, H.E.M. will eventually become the textbook of choice for several music programs around the globe.
Watson’s fourth studio recording Prescriptions is available for purchase, consisting of many songs Watson has sung over the years that have worked as "medicine." These elixirs can be used to chronicle and comprehend the current disorderly and turbulent situation in America, as well as challenging times in our lives.
Lawrence Watson is a soulful messenger—a modern-day Paul Robeson. For 23 years, he served as Voice Faculty and Performance Ensemble teacher at Berklee College of Music. For fifteen years, he served the Resident Artist at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at the Harvard Law School. At Berklee College of Music, he teaches official Motown Ensemble, Stage Performance Technique, Foundations of Singing with Soul, the required History, Culture and Music of African Americans, private voice instruction, and a series of directed studies on Jazz, Blues, Rhythm Music, Soul, Contemporary Pop, Black Art songs and American Gospel music.
Mr. Berry Gordy, founder of the Motown Record Company, the most successful record company of the 20th century, delivered the ultimate summation: “First, I want to say that as great as Motown was, if we had had Larry Watson, it would have been even better… It would have been amazing, he was incredible, his rhythm… We would have been off the charts if he would have been there.”
Kay Bourne, the veteran emeritus music critic for the Bay State Banner, wrote: “This powerful baritone, who easily swoops up to the tenor range, sings with a groovy beat lyrics that convey messages smoothly delivered yet relevant to the Black cause. He is the respected inheritor of the Great Black Music tradition of blues, jazz, and gospel, but his own man too.”
Lawrence Watson has been special guest soloist, opening for artists like Al Green, Smokey Robinson, Oleta Adams, Little Richard, Gladys Knight, The Neville Brothers, Tata Vega, Jean Carne, and The Boston Pops Orchestra. He has also sung for President Nelson Mandela, the Honorable Reverend Desmond Tutu, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, three Supreme Court Justices (Sandra Day O’Connor, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan), and President Barack Obama.