DEPARTMENT NEWS Peabody student, faculty, and alumni news all in one place, sorted by department to help you find your colleagues and classmates. BRASS Junior horn performance student Maxwell Arceneaux released his first album, Discovery, in October. The self-produced album includes 10 original compositions. See Teresa Deskur in Historical Performance.
See also Judah Adashi in Guitar. See Viet Cuong in Percussion. Composition Professor Du Yun released a new album, A Cockroach’s Tarantella, with the JACK Quartet. Her piece i am my own achilles’ heel was included on Brooklyn Rider’s GRAMMY-nominated album Healing Modes.
Current conducting DMA candidate Matthew Pellegrino (MM ’18, Composition) presented a virtual music performance and talk on Korean music that inspires optimism and transformation through the Carroll County Public Library in October.
See Harry Oehler in Strings.
Composition Professor Michael Hersch (BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition) and sculptor Christopher Cairns collaborated to create a series of concerts called “...thus far and no further...”
Con Alma is an album and live digital experience of original works by Paola Prestini (BM ’95, Composition) and vocalist and composer Magos Herrera that explores the question of how we can find communion in a time of isolation. Created and recorded in quarantine, it features more than 30 musicians from three continents.
See Ian Striedter in Strings.
See Amy Beth Kirsten in Percussion.
See Vivian Adelberg Rudow in Piano.
Baltimore’s Creative Alliance hosted Sahffi Lynne’s (BM ’93, French Horn) “Connect with YOUR Voice” workshop, where participants engaged with Lynne’s Vocal Ladder Method.
Preparatory faculty member Dan Trahey’s (BM ’00, Tuba, Music Education) Collective Conservatory, including members of the Preparatory’s Tuned-In program, performed and remotely recorded music for “Visceral Harmonies,” a collaboration with American Ballet Theatre Studio Company. The video premiered in December on the ABT YouTube channel and Instagram TV. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, Johns Hopkins University partnered with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids Program on “Queens Unseen: Royals Without Crowns, A Musical Exploration of Women’s Voting Rights in Our Democracy,” an audio/visual presentation that premiered in December. Peabody affiliates involved with the project included Dan Trahey (BM ’00, Tuba, Music Education) and Director of Graduate Conducting Marin Alsop as well as Nick Skinner (BM ’08, Trumpet), Sam Bessen (MM ’17, Horn), Chelsey Green (MM ’09, Viola), and members of the Preparatory’s Tuned-In program. A feature on faculty artist Larry Williams (BM ’88, GPD ’90, French Horn) was the cover story for an issue of SupportED, a magazine for instrumental instructors published by Yamaha.
C O MPO SITION The Evolution Contemporary Music Series, founded and directed by faculty member Judah Adashi (MM ’02, DMA ’11, Composition), held its season kickoff event with recent Peabody Medal winner and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross discussing and sharing readings from his third book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music.
C O N DUC TIN G Marin Alsop, director of graduate conducting, was appointed the first ever Music Director of the National Orchestral Institute + Festival, a program of the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. See also Marin Alsop in Brass.
Angel Lam (MM ’03, DMA ’11, Composition; MM ’05, Music Theory) will host a program in collaboration with the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), featuring Hong Kong musicians, artists, and creations, in 2021. Lam had her piece Once upon a time, a village in the southern sea… featured on Radio Television Hong Kong and on the cover of Hong Kong’s Fine Music Magazine. Scott Lee (MM ’13, Composition) released Through the Mangrove Tunnels, performed by the JACK Quartet, on Panoramic Recordings in November 2020. IN Series, with Timothy Nelson (BM ’04, Composition), artistic director, is one of 13 Professional Company members that will receive a share of $980,000 in the Innovation Grants program from OPERA America. (Read more about Nelson on p. 22.) See also Timothy Nelson in Vocal Studies.
Nu Deco Ensemble, created by Jacomo Bairos (GPD ’11, Conducting), released the EP Live from Miami with Cimafunk, the first of the “Nu Deco + Series,” which highlights previous collaborations through digital streaming platforms. In November, they also premiered their live performance video, Catching Up With Depeche Mode, originally recorded at the New World Center in 2018. Jamie Reeves (DMA ’20, Conducting) was recently appointed director of orchestral studies at the University of Alabama. PROTESTRA, a coalition of activist musicians founded by Michelle Rofrano (MM ’16, Conducting), created a virtual performance of Florence Price’s Symphony No. 4 in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Clifton Joey Guidry III (BM ’18, Bassoon) and Jordan Thomas (BM ’13, MM ’15, Harp) performed for the recording. PROTESTRA aims to highlight social justice issues through classical music performances. Jonathan Rush (MM ’19, Conducting) received a two-year appointment as Assistant Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Rush will support Associate Conductor Nicholas Hersh in conducting the BSO’s digital series and serve frequently as a cover conductor.
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