PEABODY MAGAZINE
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Fall 2015
Vol. 10 No. 1
Mirror on the World Music has an unmatched ability to reflect the human condition.
ALSO: Creating Opportunity through Music
Not many 12-year-olds create piano scholarships.
Truitt Sunderland has started something. When the young Blue Jays fan learned of the death of freshman lacrosse player Jeremy Huber, he asked his friends to donate to Hopkins in Huber’s name. And since Jeremy loved to play the piano as well as lacrosse, the funds were used to start a piano scholarship to help students attend the Peabody Institute. Inspired by this generosity, Hopkins donors are adding their own funds, aiming to raise $100,000. Gifts of every amount are needed to reach this goal — and to create new scholarships at Peabody and across the university. Being 12 is not a requirement for giving.
Are you ready to help our students? Be inspired by Truitt Sunderland. rising.jhu.edu/truitt
C O N TEN TS
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DANA FLEWELLING
3 NEWS
Community Builders by Rachel Wallach
Peabody alumni are using music to break down barriers, create opportunity, and bring people together.
Passing the Baton Headliners Getting Contemporary Faculty Introductions Longtime Staff Member Tapped to Lead Preparatory A European Tour for the Peabody Children’s Chorus First Major-Label Release for Peabody Peabody Welcomes Two New Executives Unique Opera Series Celebrates Five Years 14
APPLAUSE
2 6 ALUMNI
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Mirror on the World
ANTHONY FREDA
Pulling Out All the Stops Class Notes The Man for ‘Taps’
3 0 FANFARE
by Rafael Alvarez
Music has an unmatched ability to reflect the human condition
Cover illustration by Anthony Freda ABOUT THE PEABODY INSTITUTE OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Located in the heart of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Cultural District, the Peabody Institute was founded in 1857 as America’s first academy of music by philanthropist George Peabody. Today, Peabody boasts a preeminent faculty, a nurturing, collaborative learning environment, and the academic resources of one of the nation’s leading universities, Johns Hopkins. Through its degree-granting Conservatory and its community-based Preparatory music and dance school, Peabody trains musicians and dancers of every age and at every level, from small children to seasoned professionals, from dedicated amateurs to winners of international competitions. Each year, Peabody stages nearly 100 major concerts and performances, ranging from classical to contemporary to jazz, many of them free—a testament to the vision of George Peabody.
A Boost for Undergraduate Scholarships Update on the Dean’s Breakthrough Plan
FROM THE DEAN Peabody friends,
Dean Fred Bronstein
What an exciting time it is to be at Peabody. There is a special energy in the air as we begin to position the Peabody Institute for the future while honoring our legacy as the oldest conservatory in the United States. As you read through the pages of this magazine, I hope you will get a sense of what I see and hear every day in the classrooms, studios, offices, and performance spaces here on campus: a seemingly limitless potential for excellence and a passion for Peabody, with a rapidly growing hunger for innovation, interdisciplinary exploration, and for creating community connections through music. I believe that these are the skills and attributes that will strengthen the Peabody Institute as a whole and that will help our students succeed in the constantly evolving landscape facing the 21st-century musician. In order to more fully explore these concepts and what they mean in the “real world,” I’m pleased to be convening a series of symposiums throughout the 2015–16 academic year, built on the success of last fall’s “What’s Next for Classical Music?” event. The Dean’s Symposiums will each provide an opportunity for the Peabody community to come together and consider the issues facing music and musicians today. I have invited some of our industry’s most innovative artists and thought leaders to lead these conversations, discuss their successes, and offer their insights and expertise. The guests we will be welcoming
to campus for these events include author, journalist, and commentator Norman Lebrecht on October 26; Le Poisson Rouge co-founders David Handler and Justin Kantor on November 18; Howard Herring, president and chief executive officer of the New World Symphony, on February 22; International Contemporary Ensemble founder and artistic director Claire Chase on March 11; and Deborah Rutter, president and chief executive officer of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on April 6. I am looking forward to five invigorating and inspiring conversations. I hope you will join us — either in person or via live stream at peabody.jhu.edu. Of course, there are countless other opportunities this fall, both on and off campus, to experience the art we all love and the innovations through which music continues to thrive. In fact, I’m proud to note that the Baltimore Sun Fall Arts Guide’s ten highlighted ‘picks’ for Classical Music included three Peabody events, plus two more featuring Peabody faculty. As you read about some of these in the pages that follow, I hope you will share my excitement at what’s happening today at Peabody and what we are building for the future.
PEABODY MAGAZINE Editorial Staff
Advertising
Peabody National Advisory Council 2015–16
Sue DePasquale, Consulting Editor
Leap Day Media Kristen Cooper, Owner kristen@leapdaymedia.com 410-458-9291
Liza Bailey Rheda Becker Paula Boggs Barbara Bozzuto Laifun Chung Richard Davison Larry Droppa Leon Fleisher Sandra Levi Gerstung Nancy Grasmick Taylor A. Hanex Sandra Hittman Allan D. Jensen Christopher Kovalchick Abbe Levin Jill E. McGovern Mark J. Paris, chair
Tiffany Lundquist, Director of Marketing and Communications Margaret Bell, Communications Specialist Ben Johnson, Design and Publications Specialist Debbie Kennison, Director of Constituent Engagement, Alumni Section Editor Will Kirk, Contributing Photographer Carin Morrell, Preparatory Communications Coordinator
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Peabody Magazine is published twice during the academic year. Send us your questions and comments: Peabody Magazine Communications Office 1 East Mount Vernon Place Baltimore, MD 21202 410-234-4525 magazine@peabody.jhu.edu peabody.jhu.edu/magazine
Christine Rutt Schmitz Solomon H. Snyder David Tan Sally A. White Shirley S.L. Yang
Emeritus Members Pilar Bradshaw Tony Deering Hilda Perl Goodwin Benjamin H. Griswold IV Turner B. Smith
News
ADRIANE-WHITE
Gustav Meier (left) retires this year from the Peabody graduate conducting program, while Marin Alsop (right) steps in as the new director.
Passing the Baton Alsop succeeds Meier as graduate conducting program director Maestra Marin Alsop, an inspiring and powerful leader in the international music scene, has been appointed to lead the graduate conducting program at Peabody. Music director of both the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Alsop is recognized for her deep commitment to education and her gift for communicating with and building audiences. As director of graduate conducting, she succeeds one of her mentors, Gustav Meier, who is retiring after a venerable and award-winning career, including nearly two decades teaching at Peabody. “We’re simply thrilled that Marin Alsop has agreed to step into this leadership position at Peabody,” says Fred Bronstein, dean of the Peabody Institute. “Her bold vision and innovative approach will further enhance our conducting program — already one of the strongest in the nation — and our students will benefit
tremendously from this increased opportunity to work with a conductor of Marin’s caliber. “And at a time when Peabody is focusing increasingly on what it means to be a citizen-artist in the 21st century, there is no better practitioner than Marin Alsop, as exemplified through her commitment to education, community engagement, and an innate talent for making music meaningful to so many different audiences.” Maestro Meier led the graduate conducting program for more than 18 years, and over that time his name has become synonymous with the careers of numerous conductors who have appeared on the podiums of orchestras and opera companies around the globe, among them Carl St. Clair, Jun Märkl, Antonio Pappano, and Ms. Alsop. Through these artists and others, including many students that he has worked with at Peabody, says Dean
Bronstein, “Gustav Meier is singularly responsible for more professional conductors today than almost any teacher.” He adds, “We at Peabody are enormously grateful for Gustav’s unique contribution in making Peabody’s conducting program what it is and wish him the very best in a retirement that follows such a distinguished career.” Maestra Alsop first joined the Peabody conducting faculty in 2006 as a Distinguished Visiting Artist. She was instrumental in creating the BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellowship. “It is an incredible honor to accept this baton from my colleague and friend, master teacher Gustav Meier,” Ms. Alsop says. “His commitment to shaping the talents of young musicians has been an inspiration to me, and I am looking forward to continuing that legacy and working even more closely with the wonderfully gifted students and dedicated fellow faculty at Peabody.” PEABODY FALL 2015
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PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY
HEADLINERS
Meng Su (left) won the gold medal in the Parkening International Guitar Competition, named in honor of Christopher Parkening (right).
Faculty artist STANLEY CORNETT
KEVIN PUTS, chair of the Composition Department, has won a Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award for his composition titled The City (Symphony No. 5). A new multimedia work that celebrates the vibrancy of cities and Baltimore in particular, The City will receive its world premiere by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in April. The Catalyst Award provides grants of $25,000 to $75,000 to support the promising research and creative endeavors of earlycareer faculty.
J HENRY FAIR
was the recipient of the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which was presented at Commencement on May 21. The award citation noted that singers from his studio regularly represent Peabody in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and consistently win Peabody’s prestigious Sylvia L. Green Voice Competition. Dr. Cornett, who has been a member of the voice faculty for 28 years, was described as “a teacher and mentor of the highest caliber” who “exudes a contagious joy of music, singing, and life.”
Artist Diploma candidate JASMINE HOGAN (BM ’11 Harp, MM ’14, Harp, Pedagogy) won the 2015 Presser Award. Ms. Hogan will use the award to commission compositions based on the children’s poems by Federico GarcÍa Lorca that were originally featured in George Crumb’s Federico’s Little Songs for Children for harp, flute, and voice. She will invite seven different composers to collaborate on this project, one for each of the original Lorca poems. One of the composers will be Peabody faculty member David Smooke, who studied with Crumb.
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MENG SU (PC ’09, GPD ’11, Guitar; GPD ’15, Chamber Music) won the gold medal and the Jack Marshall Prize of $30,000 in the fourth triennial Parkening International Guitar Competition in Malibu, California, on May 30. The Parkening International Guitar Competition offers the largest prize purse of any classical guitar competition. Ms. Su performed the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo in the final round. She is a student of Manuel Barrueco and a member of the Beijing Guitar Duo. PETRIT ÇEKU (GPD ’11, Guitar), also a student of Mr. Barrueco, was the winner of the last Parkening Competition.
DMA candidate ERIC ZUBER (BM ’05, AD ’09, Piano), a student of Boris Slutsky, placed fourth in the Ninth National Chopin Piano Competition and received a $10,000 cash prize. Fellow DMA candidate SUNGPIL KIM (BM '11, MM '12, Piano), a student of Brian Ganz, and junior RIEKO TSUCHIDA, another student of Mr. Slutsky, were among the 24 American pianists between the ages of 17 and 29 who performed an array of Chopin compositions in the four-round competition.
Eric Zuber
NEWS
Getting Contemporary When Courtney Orlando came to the Peabody Institute in 2004 to teach ear training and sight singing, some students and faculty members approached her about having contemporary classical music at the Conservatory.
serve as faculty advisor to the ensemble, which has been named Now Hear This. The ensemble’s debut performance — featuring works by Donnacha Dennehy, Julia Wolfe, and Gerard Grisey — will take place on November 19 at Leith Symington Griswold Hall. The ensemble’s second performance, on April 15 at Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall, will showcase Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. “My intention is that the ensemble will mostly be students playing with faculty and other professionals who help them raise the bar,” Dr. Orlando says. “I want the students to take responsibility for not only knowing their individual parts, but also the entire score. If everyone is familiar with the score, the players should be able to lead themselves.”
as performers, but in the whole experience of programming, presenting, and advocating for this work,” he says. “I think that as it develops, we can have that in Now Hear This.” Dr. Smooke says he envisions the ensemble becoming an integral part of Peabody’s culture. “Over the next several years,” he says, “we will continue to expand the focus of what we do, including concerts in Baltimore beyond Peabody’s campus, concerts in other cities, performances of works by student composers, and side-byside performances with faculty not just coaching students but making music together.” —— Alan H. Feiler
Courtney Orlando
As a founding member of the pioneering new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, Dr. Orlando felt presenting more new music at Peabody was a great idea. “But there were a lot of changes happening at Peabody at the time,” she says, “so it would have been difficult to make something new happen while there were already so many moving parts.” Dr. Orlando says the 2014 appointment of Dean Fred Bronstein served as the catalyst for establishing a new contemporary classical music ensemble at Peabody. She was appointed its artistic director last spring. “Peabody has the talent and now has the support it needs to make this vision a reality,” Dr. Orlando says. “I’m incredibly excited for students to have this opportunity to interface with music of our time.” David Smooke, a Department of Music Theory faculty member, will
David Smooke
Dean Bronstein believes Now Hear This represents an important step forward for Peabody. “My initial impression of Peabody was that we had elements of this — a great composition program, individuals involved with new music. But what we lacked was a vibrant, flexible performing group that could embrace the eclecticism of contemporary music and involve students in a holistic experience in which ultimately I hope they become engaged not just
The Peabody Institute is proud to be hosting the New Music Gathering, an annual threeday conference dedicated to the performance, production, promotion, support, and creation of new concert music. Taking place January 7–9, 2016, at the Peabody Institute, the focus of New Music Gathering 2016 will be on “Communities.” #NMG2016 will include concerts, lecture recitals, round-table discussions, talks, and everything from composer-performer “speed dating” to one-on-one consultations with industry professionals. newmusicgathering.org
PEABODY FALL 2015
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NEWS
Faculty Introductions
WEAR YOUR
PEABODY PRIDE
Peabody fleece and t-shirts are now available online at the JHU bookstore. Visit johns-hopkins. bncollege.com and order yours today!
Peabody welcomes three new full-time faculty members to the Conservatory this year Jenine Brown has joined the faculty to teach ear training. Dr. Brown has a PhD in music theory from the Eastman School of Music. She has taught courses ranging from modal to post-tonal literature and encompassing written theory, ear training, and sight-singing skills. As a music theory instructor at Eastman, she won the graduate student teaching award for outstanding teaching, and she also performed for several years with Ossia, Eastman’s student-run new music ensemble. Jenine Brown
A scholar of 19th-century operatic cultures, Laura Protano-Biggs joins the musicology faculty. Dr. Protano-Biggs was awarded her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and was subsequently appointed a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Nottingham. She has presented her research at forums including the American Musicological Society, Royal Musical Assocation, and the Biennial 19th-Century Music Conference in Toronto. She is currently at work on a book project, Operatic Technologies in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy. Jelena Runić has come to Peabody to coordinate the ESL Program and direct the Peabody Writing Center. Dr. Runić obtained her PhD in linguistics from the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include both theoretical and applied linguistics. She has worked with non-native speakers of English since 1995, in both Serbia and the U.S., and has also taught general linguistics, Romanian, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages at the University of Belgrade, Indiana University, and the University of Connecticut.
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Laura Protano-Biggs
Jelena Runić
You don’t need a Ph.D. to understand why Roland Park Place is the right choice.
Healthy minds make for healthy bodies. And nowhere does it apply more than at Roland Park Place. It’s true, we do have delectable dining, exceptional amenities and well-designed apartment homes and cottages. But it’s the intellectual stimulation that attracts so many residents. Perhaps this is why engaging individuals from all walks of life have chosen to live here. Residents enjoy lecturers discussing a variety of topics. They also participate in a range of special interest clubs, creative arts, classes, and more. There are regular outings to local cultural attractions such as Everyman Theater, Centerstage, the Meyerhoff, the Lyric Opera House and Shriver Hall. We take excursions as far afield as New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Ocean City. In fact, at Roland Park Place the possibilities are as endless as your own imagination.
Call (410) 243-5700 or visit RolandParkPlace.org
830 W. 40th St. Baltimore, MD 21211 (410) 243-5700 rolandparkplace.org
Longtime Staff Member Tapped to Lead Preparatory Nearly two decades after first stepping through Peabody’s doors, Gavin Farrell has become a common sight on campus. He can be found in concert halls on Saturday afternoons, meeting with staff on Wednesday mornings, and talking with families who stop by for a visit. Now, after serving in an interim position for two years, Mr. Farrell has been appointed as the Peabody Preparatory’s first executive director. Mr. Farrell began at Peabody as a student, earning a master’s degree in percussion and music theory pedagogy before joining the Preparatory staff. He served as student services coordinator and later as academic programs administrator before taking the role of interim executive director in 2013. He played a crucial role in developing Pathways to Peabody,
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a program funded by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to support high-achieving, low-income students in attending the Preparatory. “Peabody is a special place that played a formative role in so many aspects of my life and career,” says Mr. Farrell. “I’m honored and humbled to be leading the Preparatory, and I thank Dean Bronstein for this opportunity.” As he looks to the future, Mr. Farrell continues his focus on high-caliber courses, such as the Paul Taylor Dance Company’s summer intensives for Peabody Dance students; technological advancements, such as offering online instruction for continuing music students over Skype; and community outreach, including the Peabody Community Chorus, now entering its second year at the new Henderson-Hopkins school.
“Gavin’s natural leadership emerged as he helped ease the Preparatory through the Institute’s transitions over the past few years. He put in place initiatives to move the Preparatory forward,” says Peabody Institute Dean Fred Bronstein. “We’re delighted that Gavin will be leading the Peabody Preparatory into the future.” —— Carin Morrell
MAC FALBY
MAC FALBY
NEWS
Doreen Falby directed the Peabody Children’s Chorus in the noon mass at Stephansdom in Vienna this July.
A European Tour for the Peabody Children’s Chorus This summer, the hills were alive with the sound of music once again as the Peabody Children’s Chorus traveled to Austria and Germany on a whirlwind 11-day tour. Some 130 people, mostly children, swarmed the cities of Ulm, Salzburg, and Vienna in matching, brightly colored shirts, enjoying the sites and culture while crossing 500 miles by bus to perform concerts for enthusiastic audiences. “I am in awe of our singers, who memorized over an hour of really challenging music for the tour, including pieces by Austrian, German, and American composers,” says the chorus director, Doreen Falby. “We had an especially memorable experience after singing with a local youth chorus in Bergheim, when the community hosted a reception so that the groups could spend time together afterward and exchange contact information.” In addition to singing across the two countries, the chorus’ tour group spent a few hours learning to perfect the Viennese Waltz; slid down salt
mines in Salzburg; played at the Prater, a Vienna fairground; and sang “Edelweiss” in front of the pavilion used in The Sound of Music. The group also stood in the room where Mozart was born and later sang mass in the Stephansdom in Vienna, where Mozart was appointed music director shortly before his death. Two pieces were commissioned for the group’s visit to Dachau, a German city known as the site of the first concentration camp built during World War II. Locals believe there is a spirit on the Dachau camp road, where prisoners would meet in the late evening to talk and help each other. There, the chorus premiered a Yiddish poem set to music by Vladimir Heifetz and arranged by Peabody alumnus Marc Irwin and “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” by chorus alumnus Cameron Falby. “Singing Cameron’s piece at Dachau made my stomach flip and my heart turn in knots,” says Sarah Carter, a recent high school graduate on her
final tour with the chorus. “It was upsetting in ways, yet distinctly reverent and undeniably right. There was a hope around it, fueled by survivors’ stories of faith. Something I’ll never forget and never feel again.” “I think all of our singers came home with an awareness of the inter-relatedness of nations and cultures, the universality of human values, and the necessity for working together,” Ms. Falby says. “They formed lifelong bonds through rehearsing and performing intensely with their peers, and they were marvelous ambassadors for Peabody and the U.S.” —— Carin Morrell A new group, the Peabody Children’s Chorus Parent/Alumni Association, has been started to sponsor social gatherings for the singers and their families. To support this group, give online at: secure.jhu.edu/form/childrenschorus PEABODY FALL 2015
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NEWS
First Major-Label Release for Peabody The music of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and Peabody Conservatory faculty artist Kevin Puts will be featured on a new recording by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra (PSO) and conductor Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and director of Peabody’s graduate conducting program. Slated for release on the Naxos label in 2016, the disc will include Dr. Puts’ Symphony No. 2 and his Flute Concerto, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra’s principal flutist Adam Walker. This will mark the first major-label release for the PSO and will be recorded and produced by the Conservatory’s own Recording Arts
Department. The Flute Concerto was recorded last spring, when Mr. Walker was in Baltimore to perform its East Coast premiere with the BSO. The symphony is being recorded this fall in conjunction with the PSO’s October 25 performance of it. A third Puts work, River’s Rush, will complete the disc, which is being funded by California-based new music patrons Joe and Bette Hirsch. “This is such an exciting opportunity for our accomplished student musicians — both those performing on this recording and those engineering it,” says Peabody Dean Fred Bronstein. “And to be able to work with Maestra Alsop on a recording of this
caliber is a very special experience that will serve students well in their future careers.” Dr. Puts’ Symphony No. 2 was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University and premiered in 2002 by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi. His Flute Concerto was commissioned by Joe and Bette Hirsch and premiered at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in 2013, with Peabody alumna Carolyn Kuan conducting the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. Maestra Alsop, the festival’s music director, invited Mr. Walker to perform the premiere. (Continued on opposite page)
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“Northern Lights”
Saturday, October 24, 2015 at 8:00 PM Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Sibelius, Nielsen & Glazunov Along with Buxtehude, Johan Roman, Stenhammar and Grieg Columbia Pro Cantare Chorus • CPC Chamber Singers Rachel Blaustein, soprano • Alison Gatwood, piano Ronald Mutchnik, violin • Sandra Gerster Lisicky, oboe d’amore Chamber Orchestra Jim Rouse Theatre, Columbia, Maryland; Pre-concert lecture, Post-concert reception
Handel: Messiah
Sunday, December 6, 2015 at 7:30 PM Amy Van Roekel, soprano • Leah Kaye Serr, mezzo Mark Schowalter, tenor • Steven Eddy, baritone Henry Lowe, positiv organ • Chamber Orchestra Jim Rouse Theatre, Columbia, Maryland; Pre-concert lecture, Post-concert reception
A Christmas Noël with the CPC Chamber Singers
(410) 539- 0043
Sunday, December 13, 2015 at 3:00 PM
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Christ Episcopal Church, Columbia, MD
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TICKETS & INFORMATION: 410-799-9321 or www.procantare.org
FRee to aLL suNdays at 7:30PM CHAMBER MUSIC BY CANDLELIGHT Featuring members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Nov 01, 2015 Nov 22, 2015 JaN 31, 2016 ★ PREMIERE
MaR 20, 2016
Rec
Feb 21, 2016
eption
Free Post-Concert Reception
May 01, 2016 JuN 12, 2016
suNdays at 3:30PM oct 11, 2015
Barbara Dever & Phillip Collister
Nov 15, 2015 Duo Baldo
JaN 17, 2016 Gary Louie, saxophone
Feb 14, 2016 Prima Trio
MaR 06, 2016 JAMES BARTOLOMEO
Vega Quartet
aPR 24, 2016 Wonderlic Recital
May 22, 2016
Alexandre Moutouzkine, piano
Kevin Puts and Marin Alsop
“I have championed Kevin Puts’ music for years, and I am delighted to work with the gifted young musicians in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra — and the brilliant Adam Walker — to bring this music to a wider audience,” Ms. Alsop says. “Joe and I feel such a special connection to the Flute Concerto,” says Bette Hirsch. “Through this recording
project, we are both very happy to be able to share with others our enthusiasm for this compelling contemporary music.” In addition to his position on the Peabody faculty, Dr. Puts currently serves as director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer’s Institute. He won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his debut opera, Silent Night. —— Tiffany Lundquist
For more information call 443.759.3309 CommunityConcertsAtSecond.org All concerts take place at the Second Presbyterian Church, 4200 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD
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NEWS
Peabody Welcomes Two New Executives Walking into the arcade of the Peabody Institute last summer and seeing that “beautiful staircase again” was a magical moment for Sarah Hoover. “It’s so wonderful to be back,” she says. “I feel like I’ve come home.” Effective July 1, Dr. Hoover began work as Peabody’s special assistant to the dean for innovation, interdisciplinary partnerships, and community initiatives. Dr. Hoover obtained her doctorate of musical arts in vocal performance from Peabody in 2008. She came to Peabody from Hofstra University, where she was an assistant professor of music. Throughout her career, she has worked as a teacher, performer, festival director, and music journalist. A major component of her new position, Dr. Hoover says, will be cultivating relationships between Peabody
and the larger community. She will be shaping a strategic plan for ties between Peabody and other divisions of Johns Hopkins, as well as other Baltimore cultural institutions. In addition, she will examine innovative ways to ensure that students graduate with the tools necessary to enter the job market. “I’m an eternal optimist,” Dr. Hoover says. “There is a tremendous amount of opportunity with the changing market. If we are nimble and entrepreneurial, we can respond in new ways to enhance our students’ futures.” So far, Dr. Hoover says she has spent much of her time simply talking to students, faculty, and administrators. “I’ve learned so much from each person about where Peabody’s strengths and challenges lie,” she says. “As we look to the future, I feel very much the presence of a living legacy here at Peabody.”
Townsend Plant joined the Peabody Institute on September 1 in the newly created position of associate dean for enrollment and student life. Bringing 15 years of experience in higher education, he will oversee admissions, financial aid, the office of the registrar, and student affairs. Before coming to Peabody, Dr. Plant served as assistant dean for admissions for summer and preparatory programs for the School of Music at Ithaca College and as assistant provost and director of undergraduate admissions at Binghamton University of the State University of New York. He also spent four years as director of admissions and financial aid for the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. “I’m very excited to join the team at this world-class institution,” says Dr. Plant, a classical guitarist who
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holds a doctorate in musical arts from the Eastman School of Music. Dr. Plant says that one of his primary goals in his new role is to maximize faculty involvement in student recruitment. He also plans to work closely with faculty and admissions staff in expanding and strengthening relationships with music teachers and other key influencers around the country and will work with the Student Affairs staff to ensure a high-quality student experience. “Peabody is taking a fresh, innovative look at educating students in the 21st century, all while maintaining its long tradition of excellence as one of the great conservatories of the world,” Dr. Plant says. “It’s incredibly exciting to be part of that, and to have the opportunity to play a key role in helping to shape its future.” —— Alan H. Feiler
An early rendering by Luke Cantarella of the set for Street Scene, which will have two performances at the Lyric on November 13 and 15. Street Scene is sponsored by Claire and Allan Jensen. Special sponsorship has been provided by Marc von May. Additional support provided by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY. For tickets, call the Lyric at 410-900-1150.
Unique Opera Series Celebrates Five Years In its fifth year, the Peabody at the Lyric series will present the groundbreaking American opera Street Scene in November at the Patricia and Arthur Modell Performing Arts Center at the Lyric. Based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Elmer Rice, Street Scene’s music was originally written for the Broadway stage by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Langston Hughes. While usually set on Manhattan’s East Side, this production of Street Scene will have a local twist, says Peabody Opera Department Interim Chair JoAnn Kulesza. “Given the recent events in Baltimore, I thought setting the show in our own city would be timely and appropriate,” she says. “Street Scene is about the lives of ordinary, real people, living in neighborhoods, their relationships, values, trials, and triumphs.” The Peabody at the Lyric series features the Peabody Symphony Orchestra
and some of the premier vocalists from the Peabody Institute. Having a series jointly presented by a conservatory and performing arts center is unique, Ms. Kulesza says. “I am not aware of another collaboration like this in the country, where a conservatory is invited and supported in bringing a full opera production into such a venue as the Lyric,” she says. Street Scene will feature 45 to 50 performers on stage, including a children’s chorus. Ms. Kulesza says she hopes the production will bring the magic of opera and Kurt Weill to audiences that otherwise might not be exposed. “We all need shelter, food, to love and be loved, appreciated, and respected, to have purpose and hope in the future. When these needs aren’t met, we look beyond our circle to escape unpleasant reality. Street Scene illustrates all of that.” —— Alan H. Feiler PEABODY FALL 2015
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APPLAUSE FACULT Y The Washington Renaissance Orchestra, led by jazz faculty artist Nasar Abadey, was named Best Large Ensemble by the Washington City Paper.
ACCOM PLIS H M EN TS O F FACU LT Y A N D STU D EN TS
Niyazi Acer of Erciyes University and Charles Limb in Turkey. The study explores the neural bases for visualization — mental practice — in instrumental musicians with potential implications on efficient sensorimotor learning and performance reliability. Faculty member Oscar Bettison spoke at a composer’s talk on June 26 at the Crested Butte Music Festival’s Time Spans mini-festival. On June 27, the Talea Ensemble performed Mr. Bettison’s An Automated Sunrise. A Tanglewood-commissioned string quartet by Mr. Bettison was premiered on July 26 by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.
The premiere of Rise, a meditation on civil rights in America, by composer Judah Adashi (MM ’02, DMA ’11, Composition) took place on April 19 at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. The work was performed by Howard University’s renowned jazz a cappella group AfroBlue and Cantate Chamber Singers, which commissioned the piece in celebration of its 30th anniversary. Mr. Adashi and Lavena Johanson (MM ’13, Cello) presented at the inaugural New Music Gathering in San Francisco in January. Ms. Johanson performed Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas for unaccompanied cello and Mr. Adashi’s my heart comes undone for cello and loop pedal; Mr. Adashi spoke about presenting new music. Faculty artists Marin Alsop and Leon Fleisher received honorary degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, which were conferred to them at the universitywide Commencement ceremony on May 21 at Homewood Field.
Faculty artist Victoria Chiang, viola, was interviewed for the June issue of Strings Magazine in “10 Tips and Tricks From Experienced String Musicians About Competing,” which provided tips to young performers preparing to compete. She was also featured in the February issue in an article titled “Why I Play Chamber Music.” Faculty artist Mark Cudek (MM ’82, Lute) and Peter Lee (BM ’06, MM ’08, Voice) were nominated as the Best Producer for their CD Greensleeves in the 26th Annual Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan. The award, the Taiwanese equivalent to the Grammy Awards, was presented Aug. 1 by the Republic of China’s Ministry of Culture. Trombonist Ron Barron gave the world premiere of Situation Update, a new work by Peabody trombone faculty member David Fetter for tenor trombone and piano, in a recital of American music on March 8 in Massachusetts, with pianist Larry Wallach.
Faculty artist Serap Bastepe-Gray (BM ’96, MM ’99, Guitar) received a visiting scientist grant from TUBITAK, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. In April, she continued her functional MRI study in kinesthetic imagery in musicians in collaboration with
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PETER GANNUSHKIN
Faculty member Elizabeth Archibald published a book, Ask the Past, on May 5. Ask the Past is the tongue-in-cheek compilation of hilarious and true answers to life’s questions, drawn from actual antique sourcebooks by a historian and bibliophile.
Two CDs featuring faculty artist Michael Formanek, Thumbscrew and Palo Colorado Dream, were listed on allmusic.com’s Best of
2014 list of Favorite Jazz Albums. Thumbscrew’s self-titled CD was also No. 21 on the 2014 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll and the Wire’s Top 50 Albums of 2014, noteworthy because few jazz recordings are on this list of all genres. Peabody faculty member Rebecca Henry is a guest artist for the Wolf Trap Guest Artists Grant, which was received this year by Valerie Dent, director of bands and orchestras at Surrattsville High School in Clinton, Maryland.
Members of the musicology faculty participated in the American Musicological Society conference in Milwaukee, Nov. 6–9, 2014. Michael Maul presented a paper, The Performance Calendar of a Schütz Student: New Light on the Reform of Lutheran Church Music in the Late 17th Century. Joshua Walden chaired a panel titled New Approaches to Introducing Jewish Music, and Susan Weiss participated in the poster session on Empirical Approaches to Music Theory and Musicology. Peabody faculty member Patricia Palmer, who taught English as a second language until her retirement this summer, was selected as one of 12 universitywide recipients of the 2015 Diversity Leadership Council Diversity Recognition Awards. Ms. Palmer chaired the Peabody Diversity Committee, one of just many ways that she has demonstrated a commitment to and passion for diversity at Johns Hopkins. In an article by Scott Calvert for the Wall Street Journal, faculty artist Amit Peled described his journey to receiving and playing on Pablo Casals’s cello. The cello was thoroughly restored at the urging of Mr. Peled, who took it on a 19-stop cello-and-piano recital tour.
On June 14, the world premiere of music theory faculty member Joel Puckett’s I enter the earth was given by The Crossing, a professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. Dr. Puckett was in residence at University of Texas at San Antonio’s New Music Festival, March 4–5, as the distinguished guest composer. The festival performed eight of his compositions, and he gave lectures at the festival. He was commissioned to write an opera for the Minnesota Opera as part of its New Works Initiative. The Black Sox Scandal will premiere as part of the opera company’s 2018–19 season. Faculty members Oscar Bettison, David Smooke (MM ’95, Composition), and Hollis Robbins, chair of the Humanities Department, are part of an interdisciplinary team that was awarded a 2015–16 Discovery Award, new Johns Hopkins University grants aimed at supporting interdisciplinary work. Their project with School of Medicine faculty Frederick Barrett and Roland Griffiths is titled “Identifying Psychedelic and Non-Psychedelic Music Elements for Psilocybin Research.” Dr. Robbins was also awarded a Mellon Arts Innovation Grant to fund a new course, The 1930s in Jazz, Film, and Poetry, to be team-taught in spring 2016 by Dr. Robbins, jazz faculty artist Michael Formanek, and Linda DeLibero, director of the Program in Film and Media Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. Conducting faculty artist Markand Thakar taught at the International Conducting Institute workshop in Kromeriz, Czech Republic, July 28–Aug. 14. He gave the keynote address at the 45th Regional Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the College Music Society in High Point, North Carolina, in March. Musicology faculty member Joshua Walden was published on the American Musicological Society’s blog, Musicology Now. His article is titled “‘Eili, Eili’ as a Traditional Yiddish Melody.” Faculty artist John Walker, organ, presented master classes and lectures at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in May. The visit marked the first occasion for an American organist to teach at the conservatory.
NEWS
STUDENTS
Peabody Preparatory pianists Abigail Lo and Noah Lee, students of Hyun-Sook Park (BM ’88, MM ’90, DMA ’99, Piano), won second place in their age group (11 to 14) in the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition 2015. They performed in the winners’ concerts in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Flutist Lisa Choi, a Preparatory student of Rachel Choe and a Pathways participant, won the second prize at the Ross-Roberts Competition for High School Woodwind, Brass, and Percussion Players held by the Friday Morning Music Club Competition in Washington, D.C., on March 7. No first prize was awarded. Three Peabody Preparatory voice students of Elysabeth Muscat — Megan Dietrich, Amanda Krew, and Walker Phillips — placed at the Mid-Atlantic Regional National Association of Teachers of Singing auditions in March. DMA candidate and music theory faculty member Natalie Draper, who studies composition with Oscar Bettison, was selected to be a composer fellow last summer at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Tenor John Chong Yoon Noh, a senior in the studio of Stanley Cornett, won first place in the 2015 Russell C. Wonderlic Memorial Competition in Voice. Mezzo-soprano Zoe Liliana Band (MM ’14, Voice), a GPD student of William Sharp, won second place, and soprano Wenhui Xu (GPD ’15, Voice), a former student of Dr. Cornett, won third place.
KJELL VAN SICE
Junior pianist Xiao Xiao Ouyang, a student of Yong Hi Moon, was the winner of the Eastern Division of the Music Teachers National Association Competition as a Young Artist Performer. The competition was held at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in January, and she competed at the MTNA National Competition in March.
Senior Jisu Jung, a percussion student of Bob van Sice, was the featured Young Artist in Residence on American Public Media’s Performance Today in March. Performance Today is broadcast on 290 radio stations across the country and has 1.4 million listeners each week. Preparatory student Nicholas Kim, who studies violin with Matthew Horowitz-Lee, took first place in the senior division of the Potter (Hood) String Competition. Elizabeth Gange, who studies violin with Rebecca Henry, won the junior division. The competition took place at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in December 2014. Phang Kok Jun, a master’s student studying composition with Kevin Puts, and Emily Koh (MM ’11, Composition) were featured in Singapore’s Straits Times as “30 of Singapore’s Rising Stars Under 30.”
Sejoon Park (BM ’12, Piano), an Artist Diploma candidate studying with Boris Slutsky, was named one of 10 pianists to advance to the semifinals of Canada’s Honens Piano Competition. The semifinals and finals took place during the 2015 Honens Festival and Piano Competition in Calgary in September.
Rieko Tsuchida, a senior in the studio of Boris Slutsky, was chosen for a two-week residency at the Olympic Music Festival as a 2015 Iglitzin Chamber Music Fellow. She was the only pianist chosen for the fellowship and will collaborate with experienced artists, such as Itamar Zorman and Tessa Lark, in several chamber music concerts during her residency.
Soprano Norika Zehnder, a junior in Stanley Cornett’s studio, placed first in her age category (16 to 18) of the National Society of Arts and Letters’s Shirley Rabb Winston Annual Voice Competition, Washington, D.C., chapter. Peabody’s baroque ensemble, Different Birds, competed for and won a grant from Early Music America to participate in the organization’s Young Performers Festival at the Boston Early Music Festival. It performed a program of French Baroque music titled “La Douleur Exquise” in June. The performance was dedicated to the memory of early music student Christine Chen.
RECENT RECORDINGS
Jazz guitar faculty artist Paul Bollenback released a new album, Portraits in Space and Time. Performing with bassist Joseph Lepore and drummer Rogerio Boccato, Mr. Bollenback leads the group through 14 originals — 10 by Mr. Bollenback alone, three by the trio, and one by Mr. Lepore. Last Autumn, the recording of the two-hour work for horn and cello by faculty member Michael Hersch (BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition), was released on Innova Recordings. The work was performed by Jamie Hersch and Daniel Gaisford. Faculty artist Amit Peled released Collage, a CD with pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera performing Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19; David Popper’s Tarantella, Op. 33; and a mid20th century cello sonata by the Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze.
Tempesta di Mare/Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, led by Peabody faculty members Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone, released Comedie et Tragedie on the Chandos label, which features the music of Lully, Marais, and Rebel. Kevin Payne (BM ’08, Guitar; MM ’10, Lute) and GPD student Aik Shin Tan (BM '14, Recorder) performed on this recording. Conundrum, the debut instrumental jazz album by Ian Sims (BS ’08 Electrical Engineering; BM ’08, MM ’10, Jazz Saxophone; MA ’10, Audio Science), highlights faculty artists Alex Norris (PC ’90, Trumpet; BM ’90, Music Education), trumpet/flugelhorn, and Paul Bollenback, guitar, with Ed Howard, bass, and E.J. Strickland, drums. Faculty artist Donald Sutherland, organ, and Mas Podgorny (BM ’14, Double Bass) have released a CD of rare works for double bass and organ. Organ and Double Bass was recorded in Peabody’s Leith Symington Griswold Hall and mastered by Scott Metcalfe, Peabody's director of recording arts. Faculty artist Denise Tryon, horn, has released her debut album So-Low on Bridge Records. Her CD features newly commissioned compositions that feature the low area of the horn’s register.
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PEABODY FALL 2015
15
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C
g n i t a r eleb
50 GLORIOUS YEARS
The French Connection
Sunday, November 1, 2015 at 3 pm Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College
Tom Hall leads the Chorus and Orchestra in the Requiems of Fauré and Duruflé.
Christmas with Choral Arts
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 7:30 pm The Baltimore Basilica, 409 Cathedral Street
Celebrate the holiday season with this annual tradition, performed in the historic Baltimore Basilica.
Hallelujah: Celebrating 50 Years
Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 3 pm Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College
5584 General Washington Drive Alexandria, Virginia 22312
703-256-0566
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Tom Hall leads the Chorus and Orchestra in a retrospective of Choral Arts’ 50 years, from Mozart’s Requiem, to founding Music Director Theodore Morrison conducting, and a rousing Hallelujah Chorus featuring chorus members past and present.
Sing-Along Messiah
Friday, December 18, 2015 at 7:30 pm Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College
Join in singing the choruses of Handel’s Messiah, or just enjoy the surround-sound!
Christmas for Kids
Saturday, December 19, 2015 at 11 am Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College
Holiday fun for the entire family, featuring Pepito the Clown and a visit from Santa! Call 410-523-7070 or visit BCAsings.org
Baltimore Choral Arts is also grateful for the support of The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artist Awards, www.bakerartistawards.org.
50
Y EARS
Tom Hall, Music Director
Community Builders From Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Wilmington, North Carolina, Peabody alumni are using music to break down barriers, create opportunity, and bring people together.
by R achel
Wallach
Peabody graduate Russ Grazier is the founder of the Portsmouth Music and Arts Center in New Hampshire.
DANA FLEWELLING
PEABODY SPRING 2015
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Now
that his Portsmouth Music and Arts Center is 12 years old, founder Russ Grazier (MM ’93, Composition) is watching students who grew up in the New Hampshire program attend conservatories, join the faculty of university music departments, and become professionals in the music industry. While it’s deeply rewarding to see those developments unfold, Mr. Grazier says it can be even more gratifying to watch hundreds of other students choose and excel in nonmusical fields while remaining connected to the art that grounded them. “We look at arts education in two ways,” Mr. Grazier says. “There’s art for the sake of art; playing music is an experience everyone should have. Then there’s the way that we use our brains and interact with people while learning the arts, which supports all other ways of learning.” Mr. Grazier is one of a notable cohort of Peabody alumni who have carved out careers offering music programs in communities across the country and abroad. Some programs are for kids, meeting during or after school and on weekends. Others are geared toward adults — whether returning to a childhood instrument or picking one up for the first time. Some aim to prepare aspiring professionals, while others focus on the communal experience and an environment of mentorship. And while social change and the concept of upward mobility play a key role for many community programs, they are in no way about “outreach,” which would feel arrogant or condescending, the alums say. Instead, they’re about using music to build community, and about teachers and mentors receiving — both personally and professionally — as much as they give. “It’s not ‘us’ reaching out to ‘you’ because you need us; it’s that we both need each other,” says Matt Carvin (MM ’05, Guitar), executive director of DREAMS of Wilmington in North Carolina. ◼ ◼ ◼
Mr. Carvin first started connecting with community during his Peabody days. In search of a meaningful way to relate to the school’s neighbors while earning his master’s degree in classical guitar, Mr. Carvin picked up his instrument one day and walked over to My Sister’s Place, a nearby women’s shelter. After playing for the residents and sharing a meal, he realized this was the experience he’d been seeking to balance an existence filled with practice rooms and recitals. “I knew this was what I was supposed to do with my life,” he says. He began arranging concerts by his peers at Baltimore shelters, hospitals, and schools, and soon had created Peabody’s Creative Access program — which continues to hold performances across Baltimore — and served as its director for 10 years. The purpose, says Mr. Carvin, was to help students step out of their 18
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world and into their neighbors’ and to create performances that celebrate a mutual world. “When you stepped back into the practice room afterward, trust me; you noticed it in your playing,” Mr. Carvin says. One year ago, he left Baltimore for North Carolina to become director of DREAMS of Wilmington, which offers free after-school classes in the musical, visual, literary, and multimedia arts to about 110 kids a year, mostly from economically disadvantaged backgrounds or considered “at risk.” The organization also brings free music and arts classes into public housing and other sites for about 600 children unable to travel to the center — an undertaking that has been a priority for Mr. Carvin, who says he learned at Peabody the importance of going into the community to break down barriers of transportation and mobility as well as cost. In the program’s 18-year history, 99 percent of its students have gone on to finish high school and enter college. Studying art can do that for kids, Mr. Carvin says: While thinking critically about what they’re trying to accomplish with art, they learn to set goals, evaluate their progress, try new things, and recover from mistakes. Mastering that process, they learn to believe they can improve. “You practice music, you think about how you want to sound, and, like success in pretty much any other area of life, the focus becomes less about the sound and more about how to get there,” Mr. Carvin says. That process is essential for kids who, like himself, have had very limited access and opportunities in early life, says Baltimore native Dontae Winslow (BM ’97, MM ’99, Trumpet), now a Los Angeles-based musician who appears with his wife, Mashica Winslow, as WinslowDynasty. He’s toured with Justin Timberlake, Queen Latifah, and Jay-Z, among others. Together with his wife, he is co-founder of Music Motivating Minds, a nonprofit in Baltimore that offers free music, movement, and art classes to about 25 kids every month, from January to June. Developing skills in the arts can sustain kids growing up in the inner city, Mr. Winslow says, and can help them get into college and build their passion. “I’m one of these kids. I know what it’s like to sit outside on the porch all day on Saturday with nothing to do,” he says. What he and his peers were missing, he says, was someone who showed interest in their development and offered guidance in setting the goals that would help them find their path. “Everybody needs coaching, mentoring, life skills, and fun,” says Mr. Winslow. Along with offering choir and drumming, Music Motivating Minds holds workshops in areas that staff members have observed can pose challenges for adults — financial literacy, nutrition, and mental health, for example.
DANA FLEWELLING
Above: Students at the Portsmouth Music and Arts Center are encouraged to stay connected to the arts, even as they pursue nonmusical endeavors. Right: D ontae Winslow (pictured with son, Jedi) co-founded Music Motivating Minds in Baltimore.
“It’s not ‘us’ reaching out to ‘you’ because you need us; it’s that we both need each other.” — Matt Carvin (MM ’05, Guitar) executive director of DREAMS of Wilmington PEABODY SPRING 2015
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Like other alumni working in the community, Mr. Winslow has found that developing a skill in the arts often spills over into spheres both academic and personal. Music provides a spark to young brains, he says, inspiring students to try harder across the board. “Kids find something they’re good at and it builds confidence, character, ability, and aptitude that they begin to apply in other areas.” There’s growing evidence that in addition to building confidence and instilling passion, music can help unlock these creative cognitive pathways. Mr. Grazier, too, has watched it happen among his students. The human brain processes music differently from the way it processes language, he notes, which helps musicians develop new approaches to all manner of problem-solving. He’s also noticed that university orchestras are often heavily populated by students studying science, technology, and medicine. “That’s telling me that young students who grew up immersed in musical education are the same students getting accepted to the best medical schools and science schools in the country,” he says. Mr. Grazier has known since his Peabody days that music education strengthens the fabric of community. Having watched Peabody Preparatory play that role in Baltimore, he went on to teach at Merit School of Music in Chicago, and then returned to his hometown of Portsmouth to found — along with his wife, Katie — the community music school that never existed when he was growing up. The Portsmouth Music and Arts Center offers music and visual arts education programming to 750 students of all ages, including performance, ensemble, and exhibition opportunities. In a town where the median age is 65 and politics can be contentious, he’s discovered that music builds
bridges like nothing else. Through the communal experience it creates, music strips away boundaries regardless of the musicians’ backgrounds and philosophies, he says. “It doesn’t matter if someone is the most conservative or the most liberal; if you play Mozart together, you have the same goal and the same passion for it,” he says. “There’s really no better way to build social capital than having the community participate in arts programming.” Dan Trahey (BM ’00, Tuba, Music Education) agrees that community music programming, by providing democratic access to music, helps build confidence within individuals and community within groups. He’s seen it happen in multiple settings — he’s worked with some 50 ensemble programs in U.S., European, and Latin American communities; teaches at the Peabody Conservatory and directs the Preparatory’s Tuned-In scholarship program; and serves as artistic director of OrchKids, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program offering music education to 1,000 kids in six Baltimore public schools. One of the most important contributions of community music education, Mr. Trahey adds, is an expansion of repertoire and pedagogy far beyond the Western white male composers of the 16th to 20th centuries that are so familiar in pre-professional institutions. As schools like Peabody become increasingly involved with their communities, he says, they change — for the better — how they think about music education and the way they relate to music. “Hearing and learning different styles of music is of the utmost importance to any institution and integral in producing the 21st-century musician,” says Mr. Trahey. “Diversity in styles of music and pedagogy is helping to create a place where all can come and learn music.”
A summer day means Keith Flemming’s tuba lessons with Dan Trahey are in the park outside the Peabody Institute. Trahey’s Tuned-In program offers music education to Baltimore City public school students.
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SPRING 2015
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...and eat it too.
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Mirror on the World Opening dialogue, provoking outrage, giving a voice, projecting hope … music, it seems, has an unmatched ability to reflect the human condition. Written By Rafael Alvarez Illustration by Anthony Freda
Does
art soothe, provoke, give context, outrage, or heal? It seems to depend on what kind of trouble has come to call. And as the Baltimore-born composer Frank Zappa observed: “There’s no way to delay that trouble coming every day …” In 1989, when doomed pro-democracy activists in China were staring down Communist tanks in Tiananmen Square, supporters blasted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony over makeshift loudspeakers powered by car batteries to drown out government broadcasts. During the bloody Soviet regime of Josef Stalin, particularly through the purges of the 1930s and the civilians either killed or sent to Siberia by state police during World War II, Dmitri Shostakovich secreted protests in his symphonies barely under the radar of the Communist censors. From concert to concert, the composer could never be sure if he would be the next artist arrested for defiling the ideals of the state. “I had to write about it — I felt that it was my responsibility, my duty,” he said of his Seventh Symphony, in which many of his protests abound. “I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered.” And about a year ago, Frances Pollock, then a Peabody graduate student in voice, walked from her apartment near Lexington Market to the Conservatory in Mount Vernon just about every day. It was a short mile away and a world apart. “Every day I went from the oldest [public] market in the country to the oldest conservatory in the country, and all I kept hearing was that Lexington Market was dangerous,” says Pollock, 25, a soprano, pianist, and cellist from North Carolina who studied at Peabody with the soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson. “It didn’t take long to realize that the two places didn’t mix, so I wrote an opera I hoped would bring people together.”
Pollock’s opera, Stinney, concerns the youngest person executed in the United States, a 14-year-old black boy sent to the electric chair in 1944 for allegedly murdering two white girls near his mill town home in Alcolu, South Carolina. Last year, a South Carolina judge vacated the conviction of George Stinney Jr. A few examples of the obvious — that music and all the brethren arts — arise as a response to something. [It was not for nothing that George Harrison’s guitar gently wept.] Most recently, the something in “ I’m not saying the spotlight here that music can’t — in Baltimore, at Peabody, along heal, but to the streets stretchlimit it to that is ing from Lexington Market to the to miss its role Washington Monin provoking ument — is the violence, protests, righteous anger, finger-pointing, outrage, and and communal change.” doubt that followed the death of Freddie Gray, a — Hollis Robbins 25-year-old West chair of Peabody’s Humanities Department Baltimore man who died in police custody this past spring. For a brief time, perhaps a half-hour or less, the rioting of April 29 — the day of Gray’s funeral — passed by Peabody as it moved through Mount Vernon. Six Baltimore police officers were indicted by a grand jury in connection with Gray’s death, and the trials will begin in November. What is a song in the wake of all that? PEABODY FALL 2015
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When Beethoven learned in 1802 that his deafness was profound and inevitably permanent, he very publicly considered suicide. Instead, he trudged into a silent world, in time producing “the Ninth,” widely held to be his masterwork. “Art is what sustains us when nothing else can, and for me, that art is music,” says Candaele from his home in Venice, California. “Like the best music of any genre, the Ninth has the capacity to put things right. Even if that only lasts for a day, for a moment that’s a great accomplishment.” Following the Ninth, says Andrea Trisciuzzi, Peabody’s associate dean for external relations, “[helped] expose our students to a broader context for music beyond the concert hall and practice room. To remind them that music is not an isolated museum piece.” And to emphasize a very old idea much in need today. “We want our students to return to the idea that musicians are essential to society,” says Trisciuzzi.
“ We want our students to return to the idea that musicians are essential to society.” — Andrea Trisciuzzi associate dean for external relations
“I’m not saying that music can’t heal, but to limit it to that is to miss its role in provoking righteous anger, outrage, and change,” says Hollis Robbins, chair of the Humanities Department at Peabody and a scholar of 19th- and 20th-century African-American literature who says she “teaches U.S. history and civil rights to musicians.” Last month, the film Following the Ninth played Miriam A. Friedberg Hall at Peabody. A documentary about Beethoven’s final symphony in 1824, the film focuses on the power of “the Ninth” across time. From Tiananmen Square to the voices of 10,000 Japanese braving the devastation of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami to Chileans singing “Ode to Joy,” the Ninth’s exalted choral movement, while protesting the murderous dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, “the film asks questions about what art is for, and I tried to ask them from Beethoven’s point of view,” says director Kerry Candaele. “His answer seems to be connected to amour fait — love of one’s fate.” 24
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Tia Price, a 25-year-old who earned a master’s degree in voice from Peabody in 2014, says she grew up “a poor kid in West Virginia with a mother in prison.” Her father is white, her mother African-American, and there was all manner of alcoholic and addiction dysfunction at home and altogether, she says, it made her feel like “the other” — a person outside of the mainstream, a marginalized voice either ignored or silenced. All of this helped Price prepare to play George Stinney’s mother, Alma, in the Pollock opera. At the same time, her elite musical education has catapulted her beyond those childhood hardships. And that comes with responsibility. “The pain I ignore from my own past is the pain that people who haven’t had the privileges I’ve had face every day,” says Price, who now lives near the Johns Hopkins Hospital. “It has made me very interested in how ‘the other’ uses music to make its presence known.” In spring 2014, Price’s musings along these lines took the form of a musical composition and performance. This Is My Voice, a song cycle she created with Peabody composition doctoral student Natalie Draper, was built upon the writings of scholarship students from Peabody’s Tuned-In program, who live in some of the city’s most disadvantaged communities. The students shared their hopes, concerns, and struggles in four areas — Baltimore, Love, Expectations, and Music — and Price and Draper wove their words into a powerful, 20-minute composition that debuted at Peabody and was then performed at venues across the city. Listeners, such as Peabody Preparatory Dean Gavin Farrell, have praised This Is My Voice for providing “a message of empowerment.”
“You might not be able to express those feelings in just speaking with someone, but you can use [the arts] to express them, and that’s what I wanted to give to the kids,” says Price. “That’s what music has been to me.” Back in 1968, an extraordinarily tragic year for the United States, Vivian Adelberg Rudow was a young mother with a bachelor’s degree from Peabody in piano, a woman who wrote children’s songs, all the while dreaming of becoming a composer. A few days after the April assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the five-months-pregnant Adelberg Rudow was being fitted for a maternity dress at a store on Howard Street near Park Avenue, downtown’s old shopping district. The dress, Adelberg Rudow recalled, was “green, with pretty flowers,” and on her drive home to the suburbs, mayhem erupted in response to King’s murder.
Tia Price (left) created This Is My Voice to showcase Peabody Tuned-In students as narrators of their own experiences in the community.
“Driving up Park Heights Avenue, I saw armored vehicles coming toward me and row after row of soldiers,” says Adelberg Rudow, now 79. “It was horrifying — the city was greatly damaged.” She’ll never forgot the experience and, as her career gained momentum — earning a master’s from Peabody in composition, winning awards, creating aural “paintings” with sound, spoken word, and echoes of pop music — she applied her skills to what ails this country. In 1999, she composed Urbo Turbo — for “urban turbulence,” later recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra — which evolved from the agitation that
“most people in the country seemed to be enjoying themselves, having a nice time while revolution was brewing.” The piece — renamed Spirit of America, when some musical directors chafed at the abrasiveness of the original title — “paints pictures of lonely lives and a public education system that isn’t good enough,” Adelberg Rudow says. At the same time, she threaded hope through the piece, a “confidence in our country that things could be turned around.” “We’re artists; we do what we can,” muses Adelberg Rudow. “Maybe one day we’ll find a way to work together and survive as one country.” About two weeks after the Freddie Gray uprising, Pollock’s Stinney was staged at 2640, an event space jointly run by Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse and St. John’s United Methodist Church in Baltimore. The timing of the performances, says Peabody Institute Dean Fred Bronstein, “viscerally placed the tragedy of Stinney in a contemporary context in the most immediate way imaginable. It was startling.” Pollock didn’t have to change a thing about the story — of an adolescent black male executed under highly questionable circumstances — for it to be relevant in the 21st century. “I was thinking of George [Stinney] after Freddie Gray died,” she says. “Here we are 70 years later and African-American men are still being killed in the name of justice. How on earth is this still happening?” David Smooke, Pollock’s faculty advisor on the project and a co-producer of Stinney, noted that Gray died while the opera was in rehearsals. “The uprising was a constant source of thought on the production,” says Smooke, adding that two Peabody panel discussions about the opera — and the broader role of art in communities — took place as peaceful protests against police brutality marched down St. Paul Street toward City Hall. “I think artists are often afraid of dealing too specifically with contemporary events because it can lead to propaganda,” says Smooke. “But by eliciting the parallels between events from 70 years ago and today’s world, Frances allowed for a thoughtful dialogue.” Opening dialogue, bringing people together, remembering the fallen, provoking outrage, attempting to put things right, giving a voice, projecting hope; in times of change, the roles of music and art seem to defy categorization. When we look at these episodes across history, though, one thing seems clear. “Music has an almost singular ability to reflect the human condition, from its worst moments to its most inspired peaks,” says Bronstein. PEABODY FALL 2015
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Alumni
Alumni and their guests from as far back as the class of 1951 came together in September for a reunion of organ alumni. More pictures are posted on the Peabody Conservatory Alumni Facebook page.
Pulling Out All the Stops This fall, alumni organists from across the region and around the world gathered together to perform and reconnect. The event on September 18 was the brainchild of Jonathan Moyer (MM ’00, GPD ’02, DMA ’10, Organ), current DMA student Felix Hell (AD ’07, MM ’08, Organ) and Michael Britt (BM ’84, Organ). The three organized a recital on the Holtkamp organ in Leith Symington Griswold Hall, followed by a dinner and recognitions at The Engineers Club at the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion. Dr. Moyer explains: “We wanted to celebrate the legacy of the organ at Peabody, but also the legacy of Donald Sutherland,” the longtime faculty organist whose fame extends well beyond Peabody. “We have a lot of great organists from our studio,” Dr. Moyer continues. Many, including Dr. Moyer, were piano students before meeting Dr. Sutherland, whose influence and enthusiasm convinced them to switch to multiple keyboards, pedals, stops — and the small but tightknit community of an instrument that has been a mainstay of Western music since the Middle Ages. Peabody organ alumni have found success across the globe and close to campus in Baltimore, many of them as church music directors, a traditional role that requires more than excellent performance. Mr. Britt, who is in his fourth year as minister of music at Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, notes: “You 26
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have to be able to lead the choir from the organ, you have to be able to improvise, and in many instances arrange and compose the music.” Mr. Britt previously was director of music at St. Margaret Roman Catholic Church in Bel Air, Maryland. Before that, he served for 26 years as minister of music at Baltimore’s Shrine of the Little Flower. At Brown Memorial, he succeeded John Walker, who also is a longtime member of the organ faculty at Peabody and is president of the American Guild of Organists. Dr. Moyer is now assistant professor of organ at Oberlin Conservatory as well as music director at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland. Mr. Hell, described as “undoubtedly one of the major talents of the century” when he was just 13, today tours globally as a solo organist. He also is organ artist associate at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan and holds two positions in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: distinguished organist-in-residence at the Lutheran Theological Seminary and adjunct professor of organ at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music. The strong ties of Peabody organ graduates and the opportunity to celebrate each other’s individual and collective success drew a significant number of them back to campus for this special reunion and concert. —— Michael Blumfield
CL A SS N OTES 1 9 20
198 0
Jay Shulman wrote a tribute to his father, Alan Shulman (’26, Violin), on the 100th anniversary of his birth for the June 6 issue of Allegro, the newsletter of the Associated Musicians of Greater New York.
Kwang-Wu Kim (MM ’82, AD ’89, DMA ’93, Piano) has been appointed president and chief executive officer of Columbia College Chicago. He is the 10th president in the 123-year history of Columbia College.
With more than 30 years of experience in performance, teaching, and administration, President Kim was most recently dean and director of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.
19 9 0 Harold Chambers (BM
’90, Recording Arts, Saxophone) was featured in an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review titled “Pittsburgh Symphony Recordings Reach Wide Audience.”
Bill McQuay (BM ’91,
The Society of Peabody Alumni hosted several parties for students during orientation week including the annual Student/Alumni pizza party. Pictured from left to right are alumni hosts: President Matthew Rupcich (BM ’90, Music Education); Carol Cannon (BM ’67, Voice); JungEun Kim (MM ’13, Musicology); and Paul Matlin (BM ’70, MM ’72, Viola; BS ’81, Mathematics-JHU BUS; MS ’84, Computer Science-JHU ENGR). Pictures from all the parties can be seen on the Peabody Conservatory Alumni page.
Composition; BM ’92, Recording Arts and Sciences), an audio producer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has produced a weekly summer series on NPR. Close Listening: Decoding Nature Through Sound ran from July 30 to Sept. 10 on Morning Edition.
Leela Breithaupt (BM ’93, MM ’96, Flute) was awarded an Indiana Arts Commission
Individual Artist grant to make her first CD titled Inner Chambers: Royal Court Music of Louis XIV with her trio Les Ordinaires. At this year’s National Flute Association convention, she played on the historical flutes concert titled “Echoes from the Dayton C. Miller Collection: Historical Flutes in Concert.” She also taught a workshop called Go Baroque! Historically Informed Performance for Modern Flutists at the convention and taught the same workshop in New York in September.
Zuill Bailey (BM ’94, Cello)
joined host Lara Downes for an emotionally raw, profoundly real conversation about life on the road and fatherhood at home in The Green Room, a radio series about the real lives of classical musicians distributed by the WFMT Radio Network. On June 17, Joel Fan (MM ’94, Piano) performed “From China with Love–Connecting Cultures through Music,” a solo recital presented in collaboration with the National YoungArts Foundation, at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. The concert
CD Releases from Peabody Alumni Grammy-nominated classical guitarist Marc Regnier (BM ’79, Guitar) released his latest CD Tempo Do Brasil on the Reference Recordings label. The album showcases a variety of modern Brazilian music, including works by Sergio Assad, Radamés Gnattali, and Heitor Villa-Lobos.
Anthony Piccolo (BM
’69, MM ’70, Piano) released Imaginary Symphony and Other Tales on Navona Records. It includes the title symphony, a suite of songs for children’s voices and percussion, a sonata for cello solo, a suite for multiflute soloist, and a sonatina for four horns, all works by Mr. Piccolo.
Two original compositions by Mark Lackey (MM ’02, DMA ’09, Composition) are featured on the new Potenza Music album Agents of Espionage by clarinetist Brian Viliunas. Dr. Lackey is an assistant professor of music at Samford University, and his music is published by Dorn Publications. Russian-born, Israeli-raised, and San Francisco Bay-based
classical guitarist Yuri Liberzon (BM ’04, GPD ’05, Guitar) released his debut album. The CD, Ascension, features compositions by Bach, the Beatles, and Keith Jarrett.
Maggie O’Connor (BM ’13,
MM ’14, Violin) appears on the new album Duo with her husband, Mark O’Connor. The CD is a series of American classics and originals in a violin duet setting. Pianist and composer Jennifer Nicole Campbell (BM ’14, MM ’15, Piano) released her solo piano debut album, Perceptions of Shadows. The CD includes her own compositions, new audio premieres by Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman and David Auldon Brown, and
established masterpieces of the piano repertoire by Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin.
Jarrett Gilgore (BM ’15, Jazz Saxophone) released two CDs this month. Streams, with the Words Are Not Enough quartet, pays homage to the music of jazz alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. Mr. Gilgore recently received the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award to research Mr. Lyons’s music and interview his collaborators. The second CD is a duo project with percussionist Deric Dickens. The album is called Pallaksch! and is inspired by the poems of Friedrich Holderlin. The album features compositions written by Mr. Gilgore and improvisations. PEABODY FALL 2015
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CL A SS N OTES provided an insightful look into China’s rapidly changing musical landscape, featuring works of both Chinese and Western composers that are favorites of Chinese audiences.Dontae Winslow (BM ’97, MM ’99, Trumpet) wrote and performed the orchestral intro and also arranged horns for Dr. Dre’s new album, Compton, the soundtrack for the 2015 movie Straight Outta Compton.
Washington Garcia
(MM ’98, DMA ’03, Piano) taught and performed last year in Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, China, Italy, Indonesia, and Ecuador. While in Ecuador, he joined eminent conductor Maestro Alvaro Manzano, along with the Ecuadorian National Symphony Orchestra, to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
James “Jamie” T. Kelley III (BM ’99, Percussion) has
been selected as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s new vice president of development. Mr. Kelley will oversee all of the BSO’s fundraising activities. Since 2007, Mr. Kelley has been in various positions of increasing responsibility at the Johns Hopkins University, most recently as associate dean of development and alumni relations at the School of Nursing.
20 0 0 The Yale School of Music selected 38 participants for the fifth Symposium on Music in Schools, which took place June 4–7. Each organization received the Yale University Distinguished Music Educator Award, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program, represented by Dan Trahey (BM ’00, Tuba, Music Education), and the Portland Symphony Orchestra’s PSO Musical Explorers program in Maine, represented by Norman Huynh (MM ’13, Conducting). They partici-
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pated in three days of strategic sessions at the symposium.
Glenn Quader (MM ’03,
Conducting) has been chosen as the Frederick Symphony Orchestra’s new conductor and music director. Mr. Quader currently holds positions in the Piedmont Symphony Orchestra, Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, and American Studio Orchestra. He served as an assistant director at the Frederick Symphony Orchestra in Maryland between 2003 and 2009.
Elizabeth Berman (BM
’05, Oboe; JHU, BA ’05, Romantic Languages) and Ira Berman (MM ’04, Clarinet) are the proud parents of a baby girl, Sarah Claire, born on June 4. The new music group, A Far Cry, has been selected as Best Classical Musical Ensemble by Boston Magazine. Jason Fisher (BM ’05, Viola) and Jesse Irons (BM ’04, Violin; GPD ’06, Chamber Music) are members of the group, which is the in-house chamber orchestra at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The magazine describes the group’s self-released, Grammy-nominated album Dreams and Prayers as “one of this year’s best classical recordings.”
Jenni Bank (BM ’06, Voice)
performed as Samira in Wolf Trap Opera’s production of The Ghosts of Versailles in July. Alex Rosen (BM ’14, Voice), who is also a studio artist, was in the ensemble.
Elena Yakovleva (MM ’08,
GPD ’10, Flute; GPD ’11, Chamber Music) is the new principal piccolo of the United States Navy Band’s Concert/Ceremonial Band.
2 010 Amy Beth Kirsten (DMA
’10, Composition) has been chosen for a two-year artist residency by the Office of Arts and Cultural Programming at Montclair State University in New Jersey, to develop a
new evening-length work. Dr. Kirsten and Mark DeChiazza will develop Quixote, a musical fantasy based on The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. Quixote, for three vocalists and four vocalizing percussionists, will be created for and with the ensemble HOWL featuring soprano Lindsay Kesselman, mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, contralto Kirsten Sollek, Ian Rosenbaum (BM ’08, Percussion), Victor Caccese (BM ’11, Percussion), Terry Sweeney (BM ’13, Percussion), and percussionist Jonny Allen.
Thomas Kotcheff (BM
’10, Piano) was awarded one of nine BMI Student Composer Awards from the BMI Foundation, in collaboration with Broadcast Music Inc. The winning composition was titled that in shadow or moonlight rises for mixed octet. Winners receive scholarship grants to be applied toward their musical education.
Tong Chen (GPD ’11, Con-
ducting), a former student of Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar, was appointed music director of the Yonkers Philharmonic Orchestra in New York.
Antoinette Gan (BM ’11,
Cello), a former student of Amit Peled and Alison Wells who recently received a Master of Music degree from the Shepherd School of Music, has won a section cello position with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra. Mezzo-soprano Diana Cantrelle (MM ’12, Voice, Pedagogy) was selected to participate in Vocalypse Productions in Canada. Pairing six singers with six composers, Miss Cantrelle co-wrote and performed All that Glitters with Canadian composer Matthew Tozer. The performances of Opera From Scratch took place Aug. 16–23 in Halifax. Soprano Kimberly Christie (MM ’12, Voice) appeared as Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with Carroll Summer
Opera in Westminster, Maryland, at Carroll Community College. Also in the cast was Annie Gill (GPD ’08, Voice) as the Countess and Chris-
tine Thomas-O’Meally
(MM ’94, Voice) as Marcellina. Elijah Wirth (BM ’99, Tuba; MM ’02, Music Education), who serves as Carroll Community College’s director of music and is a Peabody Preparatory faculty member, was the conductor. Ms. Christie was in the chorus of the Washington National Opera in its production of Carmen at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in September and October. She will also return to the Bootless Stageworks stage in Wilmington, Delaware, to perform Clara in The Light in the Piazza, Nov. 6–12.
In Memoriam Corinne Eckert (TC ’49, Organ) Johnny Mann (’51, Trumpet) Sophia Abdallah Burkey (TC ’52, Voice) Edward Clayton Wolf (BM ’52, MM ’58, Music Education) Mildred R. Reiner (BM ’53, Music Education) Ronald T. Knudsen (TC ’55, AD ’58, Violin) Norman O. Scribner (TC ’56, BM ’61, Organ) Junetta Jones (TC ’59, BM ’60, AD ’60, Voice) David Bragunier (BM ’61, Music Education) A. Maurice Murphy (BM ’61, MM ’63, Piano) Kenneth Gould (BM ’71, Voice) Daniel A. Doescher (MM ’84, Oboe) Jennifer A. Holbrook (MM ’09, Voice; GPD ’11, Opera) Cameron Huster Beck (GPD ’10, Harp)
Norman Huynh (MM ’13,
Conducting), who studied with Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar, was selected for the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholarship. This included a three-week residency in September at the Mendelssohn Festival in Leipzig, Germany, to study privately with Kurt Masur.
Michelle Shin, (BM ’15,
Violin) who studied with Victor Danchenko, was awarded first prize in Peabody’s Peggy and Yale Gordon Concerto Competition. She performed Prokofiev’s first concerto with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in February. Second prize was won by junior Hojung Jung, a
double bass student of Jeffrey Weisner, and third prize was won by master’s student
Jacques-Pierre Malan
(GPD ’12, GPD ’13, Chamber Music), a cello student of Amit Peled.
Hyobi Sim (’15, Viola), who
was a GPD student of ChoongJin Chang, has won a position with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, which she started in the fall.
Please send us your news Alumni Office 1 East Mount Vernon Place Baltimore, MD 21202 PeabodyAlumni@jhu.edu
Professional Appointments Lillian Green (MM ’15, Music Theory Pedagogy; DMA ’15, Viola) has been appointed to the faculty of Bethany College in West Virginia. She will be an assistant professor of music and director of orchestras for the school’s Department of Music. Benjamin Kramer (BM ’07, Jazz Bass, Recording Arts and Sciences) was appointed program manager of the Los Angeles Film School’s online degree in music production. Robyn Stevens-Woodle (MM ’88, Voice) has joined the voice faculty at Peabody Preparatory. Demarr Woods (GPD ’11, Trumpet) has accepted the assistant professor of trumpet position at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
The Man for ‘Taps’ It’s a simple song, just 24 notes, one that Jari Villanueva has performed publicly thousands of times. Still, it never fails to move him deeply. “Taps,” the ubiquitous tune heard nightly throughout the United States, often serves as a “lights out” notification in camps and military bases. Mr. Villanueva (BM ’78, Music Education) plays it in much more somber settings: funerals for military personnel. Even though there may only be a handful of people present, the setting requires the same focus on the task at hand as a classical violinist performing in a hall in front of thousands. The audience for the music is grieving family and friends, struggling to cope with their loss. “You want to do your best, but you have to put the environment out of your mind as you play,” Mr. Villanueva says. “If you let yourself pay attention to the audience, you’d be emotionally spent very quickly.” Mr. Villanueva has made “Taps” his life’s work. He played it at military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery for nearly a quarter century as a member of the United States Air Force Band. Now, as director of the Maryland National Honor Guard, he oversees its performance at military funerals for Maryland veterans. The organization averages about 300 military funerals a month, with members sometimes playing up to three funerals a day. And he works with Taps for Veterans, which provides buglers for veteran funerals beyond Maryland. He’s also become a noted historian on the origin of “Taps,” a Civil War–era composition originally intended only to tell troops to go to sleep. Mr. Villanueva has been interviewed by National Public Radio on the topic. An
extensive interview with sound clips and a wealth of detail can be found at http://n.pr/1eLXxnY. In addition to the emotional demands of performing “Taps,” Mr. Villanueva says he faces environmental challenges unique to the military setting, such as jets flying overhead or honor guards shooting rifles at nearby funerals. Once, he started playing only to be joined seconds later by an unseen military band at Arlington playing the “Star-Spangled Banner.” “Once you start, you really can’t stop,” he says. He kept playing as if nothing else was happening. “Later, I happened to talk to some of the band members who heard ‘Taps’ as they were playing the anthem. They thought the combination sounded pretty good.” —— Michael Blumfield PEABODY FALL 2015
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Fanfare
This past June, an all-alumni orchestra, led by David Ik-Sung Choo (DMA ‘98, Conducting), performed in the IBK Chamber Hall of the Seoul Arts Center in Korea. Sangjae Lee (MM ‘93, DMA ‘97, Clarinet), pictured here, was among the soloists. The concert was so successful and well-attended that the chapter was able to make a generous gift to support scholarships at Peabody.
A Boost for Undergraduate Scholarships Laifun Chung and Ted Kotcheff, parents of alumnus Thomas Kotcheff (BM ’10, Piano) have established a $3 million bequest for undergraduate scholarships at Peabody. Ms. Chung says her son’s experience at Peabody, where he studied piano with Benjamin Pasternack and took composition lessons with Tom Benjamin, was “really transformational, both as a performer and as a human being.” She saw firsthand what Peabody can do to mold and develop young artists, she says. “My son was gifted, in that things came quite easily to him,” says Ms. Chung. “But the level of excellence was so high at Peabody, he had to decide whether to step up or step out. He decided to step up.” He is now pursuing a doctorate in composition at the University of Southern California and has won numerous prizes for his works. Ms. Chung says that as her son establishes
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himself as a serious musician and composer, he has applied the knowledge and tools he acquired at Peabody. Although she lives in California, where she is a professional landscape designer, Ms. Chung has become an avid supporter of the school, serving on its National Advisory Council and establishing both an endowed and a current-use undergraduate scholarship in the past four years. “I just fell in love with the school,” she says, “and when I was asked to be on the board, I joined.” At about the same time, she said, she joined the board of her son’s alma mater, Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). Ms. Chung saw a perfect opportunity to help LACHSA students get a superb musical education, while helping Peabody diversify its student body geographically. She created scholarships at Peabody to help recruit top students from LACHSA.
Her experience as a member of the search committee for the new Peabody dean helped her appreciate how providing scholarships profoundly influences an institution’s ability to sustain excellence. By giving to attract and retain excellent students, she says, she believes she can make a huge difference at Peabody. While philanthropy at this level is new to her, Ms. Chung says, she was inspired by the stories of fellow legacy donors Jill McGovern and Taylor Hanex, who support Peabody because of their personal connections with and passion for the institution and a deep desire to nurture young musical talent. Ms. Chung says she is proud that two LACHSA alumni were among the successful applicants to Peabody in recent years. “These kids just moved me with their excellence and their desire to go to a school that I loved,” she says. —— Christine Stutz
Update on the Dean’s Breakthrough Plan Barely a year after Dean Fred Bronstein launched his ambitious Breakthrough Plan, Peabody has not only met the plan’s $2.5 million fundraising goal — it has exceeded it. The plan calls for Peabody leadership to focus on academic excellence, innovation, collaboration, and community connectivity to help Peabody remain among the most competitive and influential music conservatories in the nation. Toward that end, several important initiatives already are in place. A key element at the outset was an assessment of Peabody’s public image. Working with an experienced market research firm, Peabody utilized targeted focus groups and surveys to learn more about how the Conservatory is perceived by prospective students — its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in the marketplace. The research affirms that Peabody is seen as a top-tier school, highly regarded for its outstanding faculty, high-level students, and overall reputation, says Tiffany Lundquist, Peabody’s director of marketing and communications. “The research also pointed to several areas where Peabody can improve its efforts to attract quality applicants,” she says. The findings will now provide the foundation for refined messaging and an improved Peabody website, projects set to begin this fall.
An October 2014 symposium, “What’s Next for Classical Music?,” brought together experts such as Ben Cameron, then with the Doris Duke Foundation, and Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, to discuss industry trends and the role of the conservatory in the future of classical music. The symposium was viewed online in 31 countries and paved the way for a new series of Dean’s Symposiums, set for the coming academic year, to explore what it means to be a working classical musician today. Speakers this year will include music commentator Norman Lebrecht; David Handler and Justin Kantor, founders of (Le) Poisson Rouge; Howard Herring of the New World Symphony; Claire Chase, founder and artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble; and the Kennedy Center’s Deborah Rutter. Adding to Peabody’s national profile is an exciting new recording project on the Naxos label featuring works by faculty artist Kevin Puts, a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, and performed by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra (see page 10). Also adding to Peabody’s reputation as a place for contemporary music, this January, Peabody will host the New Music Gathering, a three-day event for professionals creating new music in the classical music tradition.
A new project still in its infancy but with tremendous potential is the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine. In collaboration with the Department of Neurology at the School of Medicine, the center would combine music and medicine in two ways: making music and rhythm an integral part of treating illness in the general population and improving the health of musicians worldwide. “There is nothing like this on the East Coast,” says Andrea Trisciuzzi, Peabody’s associate dean for external relations. “To have a leading music conservatory and a leading medical institution working together on a project of this nature is very exciting.” There’s more to come. Dean Bronstein recently appointed three task forces who will begin working this fall to review and revise Peabody’s curriculum; reimagine the ensembles program; and address the faculty governance system to ensure substantive, transparent, and accountable faculty engagement. These are just a few of the initiatives that have grown out of the Dean’s Breakthrough Plan. The dean continues to seek broad consensus as he works to build capacity and innovation within the organization and promote financial sustainability, all in the service of ensuring an even brighter future for the school. —— Christine Stutz
Rising to the Challenge Campaign Update for Peabody Goals TOTAL RAISED BY PEABODY THROUGH JUNE 30, 2015: $37.7 MILLION
FACULTY SUPPORT (4%)
PROGRAM SUPPORT (30%)
SCHOLARSHIP SUPPORT (66%)
ALLOCATION OF $37.7 MILLION RAISED TO DATE PEABODY FALL 2015
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George Peabody Society We recognize those philanthropic visionaries whose lifetime cumulative giving has matched or exceeded George Peabody’s founding gift of $1.4 million. Their generosity has expanded and transformed the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. The names are ordered by the date when they joined this elite group of donors. George Peabody Sidney M. Friedberg Charitable Trust The Blaustein-RosenbergThalheimer Philanthropic Group Eric and Edith Friedheim Loretta Ver Valen Arabella Leith Symington Griswold
Wendy G. Griswold and Benjamin H. Griswold IV Elizabeth J. and Richard W. Case Florence H. and Charles R. Austrian Michael R. Bloomberg Anonymous Tristan W. Rhodes
Hilda P. and Douglas S. Goodwin Allan and Claire Jensen Marc von May Thomas H. Powell Anonymous John L. Due Taylor A. Hanex Rheda Becker and Robert E. Meyerhoff
Laifun Chung and Ted Kotcheff Sandra Levi Gerstung and the Levi Family Fund II of the Baltimore Community Foundation
Legacy Society The Legacy Society consists of individuals who have made a provision in their estate plan for the Peabody Institute in the form of a bequest, a life income gift, or a trust arrangement, thus becoming a part of the Peabody legacy — and a part of its future. Anonymous (5) Sallie M. Albright Frances K. and George Alderson Anne-Truax Darlington Andrews The Estate of Robert Austrian* Herman C. Bainder* Wilmot C. Ball Jr. * Mary B. Barto Meta Packard Barton* Mary Lou Bauer Catherine H. Beauchamp
John F. Cahill Carol Cannon Josepha Caraher Kathryn Chilcote Laifun Chung and Ted Kotcheff The Estate of Virginia C. Cochran * Doris and Richard Davis Jane E. Donato Miriam B. Dorf Ronya Driscoll John L. Due Elayne Duke
Arno Drucker, Rieko Tsuchida, and Robert Barrett
Lisa D. Bertani Dorothy and Wakeman S. Bevard Jr. Edith Blum * Alma T. Bond Esther B. Bonnet Barbara and Thomas Bozzuto Elizabeth Bryan* Sophia A. Burkey* Laura R. Burrows Jean Burton Elana R. and Joe* Byrd
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Jane R. Dummer Phillip T. Dunk Jr. Beverly Kinsman Eanes and Edward Eanes Tinka Knopf de Esteban Stephen W. Fisher Leon Fleisher E. Carl Freeman Jr. Owen B. Fuqua Jr. Sandra Levi Gerstung Hilda Perl Goodwin Basil Gordon*
FALL 2015
Daniel M. Graham Nancy and Louis Grasmick Janet Rayburn Greive Beatrice C. and Frederick N. Griffith Leith Symington Griswold * Wendy G. Griswold and Benjamin H. Griswold IV Taylor A. Hanex The Estate of William Sebastian Hart* Lynn Taylor Hebden* Wilda M. Heiss David Helsley* Alice Eccleston Hill Jeanie A. Hillman-Brotman Reginald D. Hobbs Jr. Christina Holzapfel and William Bradshaw Amy Elizabeth Hutchens Ludmilla Ilieva Helen J. Iliff * Allan and Claire Jensen Laima Kallas Thomas Kaurich Dale Kellenberger Harriet Kessler Galan Kral John Larner Marjorie G. Liss H. Bruce McEver John R. Merrill Suzanna N. Miller* Jill E. McGovern and Steven Muller* Martha K. Nelson Dorothy L. Rosenthal and William A. Nerenberg Nancy W. and William* Nicholls
Mark Paris and Tammy Bormann Michele Parisi Claude and David Paulsen Alan J. Pearlmutter
Dorothy Fahey Stanley* Carroll F. Stewart Walter C. Summer Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Donald S. Sutherland
Barbara Bozzuto, Bethany Baxter, and Phyllis Bryn-Julson
Scott Pender Anthony Piccolo Thomas H. Powell Joan M. Pristas* Virginia M. Reinecke Tristan W. Rhodes and Daniel Kuc Howard Rosenfeld Winnifred Ross Doris Rothenberg Joseph Russ* Suzanne J. Schlenger Christine Rutt Schmitz Karen A. Schwartzman Carol Scruggs Carolyn J. Sienkiewicz and Mark J. Sienkiewicz, Jr.* Arlene and Len Singer Robert W. Smith Jr. Hardwick R. Spencer Beatrice E. Stanley
Leo B. and Ruth A. Swinderman* Carol and Roy R. Thomas Francis H. Thomas* Marc von May Robert W. Wagner Charles Emerson Walker Mary C. Walker* Carol Schultz Weinhofer Neville Williams and Deloris Elinor Wilkes-Williams Charlotte L. and Bruce M. Williams Peter J. Wolf Robert M. Worsfold Phyllis A. Zheutlin The Carrie May Kurrelmeyer Zintl Trust
* Deceased
The 2014–15 Friedberg Society This society is named in honor of Sidney and Miriam Friedberg, whose generosity launched a new era of philanthropic leadership at the Peabody Institute. Friedberg Society donors sustain and enhance Peabody by giving $1,000 or more over the course of a fiscal year. The donors listed below have made outright gifts or pledges at the Friedberg Society level between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015. CHAIRMAN’S CIRCLE $100,000 AND ABOVE
DIRECTOR’S CIRCLE $1,000 - $2,499
Liza Bailey and Michael Musgrave Ruth and Ted Bauer Family Foundation Rheda Becker and Robert E. Meyerhoff Paula Boggs and Randee Fox Barbara and Thomas Bozzuto Carol Cannon Frank Chiarenza Laifun Chung and Ted Kotcheff Jack Kent Cooke Foundation CSX Corporation Lester Dequaine Jane W. I. and Larry D. Droppa Sandra Levi Gerstung and the Levi Family Fund II of the Baltimore Community Foundation Wendy G. Griswold and Benjamin H. Griswold IV Hecht-Levi Foundation Fred and Sandra Hittman Philanthropic Fund Christina M. Holzapfel and William E. Bradshaw Allan and Claire Jensen Charles and Margaret Levin Family Foundation Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation Dorothy and Louis Pollack Samuel G. Rose Christine Rutt Schmitz and Robert W. Schmitz Dorothy Fahey Stanley * Marc von May
Anonymous Elizabeth M. Adams Mary Lou Bauer Carol A. Bogash Aurelia G. Bolton Anders V. Borge Amy and Terrence Boscov Bart Bosma Sophia A. Burkey * and E. Clayton Burkey David J. Callard Campbell Foundation Linda P. Carter L. Chinsoo Cho Vestry of the Church of the Redeemer Chuck Clarvit Georgia R. Crompton D’Addario Music Foundation Russell Davidson Foundation
COMPOSER’S CIRCLE $50,000 - $99,999 Anonymous (2) Robert Austrian * Brookby Foundation Cape Foundation Rosalee and Richard Davison Taylor A. Hanex Jill E. McGovern Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation Robert W. Smith Jr. * Judy and Turner Smith Elaine B. and Solomon H. Snyder Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Shirley S.L. Yang
MAESTRO’S CIRCLE $25,000 - $49,000 Adalman-Goodwin Foundation Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation Mark Paris and Tammy Bormann Charlesmead Foundation Lynn and Anthony W. Deering Jephta and Daniel Drachman Ira B. Fader Jr. Hilda P. and Douglas S. * Goodwin Peggy and Yale Gordon Charitable Trust
Barbara P. and Martin P. Wasserman Amy L. Gould and Matthew S. Polk Jr. Nancy Grasmick Bette G. and Joseph I. Hirsch Nancy and Robert Huber Akemi Kawano-Levine and David Levine Thomas H. Powell Adam G. Shapiro
VIRTUOSO’S CIRCLE $10,000 - $24,999 Robert J. Abernethy Baltimore Music Club Elizabeth A. Bryan * Elana R. Byrd Cathedral of Mary Our Queen Alexandra Clancy Charles Delmar Foundation Helen P. Denit Charitable Trust Estelle Dennis Scholarship Trust Edith Hall Friedheim and the Eric Friedheim Foundation Wilda M. Heiss Hoffberger Family Foundation Nina Rodale Houghton Amy and Dwight Im Christopher Kovalchick C. Albert Kuper III Audrey C. McCallum Israel and Mollie Myers Foundation G. Keith Nash Claude and David Paulsen Presser Foundation Mary P. Renner Esther Carliner Viros Barbara P. and Martin P. Wasserman Andrew Yang
Terry H. Morgenthaler and Patrick J. Kerins Heather Hay Murren and James J. Murren Clara Juwon Ohr Peabody Institute Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation PNC Bank Foundation Lori Raphael and J. Michael Hemmer Ann Schein and Earl Carlyss Suzanne J. Schlenger George L. Shields Foundation Lisa Smith and W. Christopher Smith Jr. Anne Luetkemeyer Stone David Tan Sally A. White Susan and Maury N. Wilkins +
Deborah Koenig and James Frison Anne M. Koether and G. Henry Koether III James Kozel and the Kozel Family Fund Galan Kral Susan and Jeffrey Krew Tracy F. Lau and Edwin Lo Sara W. Levi Susan J. Linde Carol C. Lobenhofer and Louis Fred Lobenhofer Carol and Paul Matlin Hugh P. McCormick Jr. John S. McDaniel III Gary Melick James L. Meyerhoff Ned S. Offit Margaret B. Otenasek Jay W. Pearson Vivian Adelberg Rudow Matthew W. Rupcich
Carol and Paul Matlin
PRINCIPAL’S CIRCLE $2,500 - $4,999 Frances K. and George Alderson Thanh V. Huynh and Jeremy Nathans Patricia E. Kauffman Links Inc. Cynthia and Paul Lorraine Thomas MacCracken Paul E. McAdam Lloyd E. Mitchell Foundation Trust Oscar Schabb Thomas R. Silverman Helen Stone Tice and Gregory Tice Marguerite M. VillaSanta Margaret C. and Patrick C. Walsh
Ruth L. and Arno P. Drucker Lydia and Charles Duff Phillip T. Dunk Jr. Hildegard and Richard Eliasberg Kimberly and Donald Evans Exelon Foundation ** Jerri Ann Fitts and John S. Fitts Google Inc. ** Janet Rayburn Greive and Tyrone Greive Edward Grossman Ellen Halle and the Halle Family Philanthropic Fund Maureen Harrigan and David McDowell Barbara S. Hawkins Donna and Eric Kahn
Irwin Schneider Robert H. Scott Terry Shuch and Neal Meiselman Eleanor Simon and Patrick O’Neall Linda B. and Richard Q. Snurr St. Patrick Celebrations Inc. Edward Steinhouse Winston D. Tabb Kenneth R. Talle Angela and Daniel Taylor Andrea Trisciuzzi and Charles Gannon Posey and Joseph Valis Mary Jo Wagandt and Charles Wagandt Charles Emerson Walker Beverly Dietrich Weber Wolman Family Foundation Ireneus Bohdan Yaromyr Zuk
CONCERTMASTER’S CIRCLE $5,000 - $9,999 A L H Foundation Anonymous Liz and Fred Bronstein Basil Gordon * Ruby and Robert Wesley Hearn Thomas Hecht Judith Kasper + Lynn and John Lazzaro Susan and Samuel G. MacFarlane Maryland Humanities Council Dae-Won Moon
+ In-Kind Gift * Deceased ** Matching Gift
Caleb Park, Grace Park, and Rheda Becker
Non-Profit Non-Profit Org.Org. U. S. Postage U. S. Postage PAID PAID Harrisburg, PA Harrisburg, PA Permit No. 1107 Permit No. 1107