Headliners

CIERRA BYRD (MM ’20, Voice) has joined the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program for the 2020–21 season. Founded in 1980, the program uses the Met’s unique resources to identify and develop talented young artists for major careers in opera. It provides specialized training in music, language, dramatic coaching, and movement, along with an annual stipend and funding for continued private lessons.

Widely acknowledged as one of today’s leading interpreters of Classical and Romantic music, pianist RICHARD GOODE will join the full-time faculty of the Peabody Conservatory as Distinguished Artist Faculty beginning in the 2021–22 academic year. Goode has for many years presented an annual master class at Peabody, and he is scheduled to conduct master classes again this spring, ahead of assuming his more formal role on the faculty.

Violinist and Preparatory alumna HILARY HAHN was presented the Award of Excellence at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s second annual Women in Classical Music Symposium in November. The three time Grammy Award winner was also the featured soloist in the symposium’s opening concert, performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major with the DSO under the baton of Director of Graduate Conducting MARIN ALSOP.

Undergraduate Recording Arts and Sciences student TÉA MOTTOLESE was selected as the 2020 Mary Lea Simpson Memorial Scholarship recipient by the Audio Engineering Society Education Foundation. The competitive scholarship provides full tuition for a final year of studies to an undergraduate student entering senior year at a North American college or university audio engineering/ recording arts program.

JOSEPH YOUNG (AD ’09, Conducting), Peabody’s Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of New Music USA. Of his appointment, he said, “during this very significant time in our musical history, I hope to offer my diverse perspectives as an educator and music director while New Music USA continues to look at new areas for growth.”

Studios for Safe Singing

Low-latency rooms allow voice student Mira Huang to sing without a mask during her lessonswith Ah Young Hong.

Soprano Ah Young Hong can't gush enough about the Peabody Institute’s new low-latency music studios, created to improve the teaching and learning experience for vocalists during COVID-19. “These rooms changed everything for me,” says Hong, associate professor of voice.

In these rooms, portrait-oriented monitors, microphones, and speakers replace rehearsal studios’ fulllength mirrors and allow two artists to be in two separate spaces and see and hear each other with just a roughly 10-millisecond lag — about the time it takes to hear somebody speaking from 10 feet away.

Two of the studios were in place by early January, and 10 more were completed by the end of the month, allowing instructors to stagger student lessons and rotate time slots among studios, in keeping with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These recommendations suggest allowing rooms to remain empty for 60 minutes between uses in order to completely replace the air inside. The low-latency studios were developed the old-fashioned way: trial-and-error tinkering. Peabody IT director Theron Feist and his team, like so many of the Conservatory's behind-the-scenes staff, spent the spring 2020 semester supporting the pivot to distance learning demanded by the pandemic. Over the summer, he and his colleagues started thinking ahead to what a return to campus might mean. “We were having a lot of conversations about how you safely have people sing together,” he says, pointing out that among musicians, vocalists are at the biggest risk of spreading the virus because singing disperses aspirated droplets.

Vocalists also felt challenged by distance learning because of lag issues: It takes time to convert the analog sound of the human voice into digital information, transmit that signal over an internet connection to a computer in a different location, and convert that digital signal back into sound. There’s a lag, that glitch of audio or visual information being out of sync.

Feist reached out to his IT team and colleagues in Peabody’s Recording Arts program, and they started tossing out ideas in virtual brainstorming sessions. They went over what equipment and software packages the institute already had, as well as what else was being used by the industry at large. It helped that the institute had upgraded the local network and audiovisual infrastructure to handle automated audio and visual recording in the concert halls in recent years, so there were a variety of tools available for use. “We started to prototype some systems to connect rehearsal rooms together,” Feist says. And as they experimented with different combinations of hardware and software, they’d invite Voice faculty members to test things out.

One such guinea pig was Hong, who recalled the challenges of teaching over Zoom. “We're not just talking about a lag, we’re talking about sound that is so ridiculously distorted, how can I assess what this voice is doing?” she recalls.

Collaborating with the IT team made her more hopeful. After a few experiments, she and a graduate student were placed in separate rooms for a lesson. The lag was still there, but it was shortened enough that she could imagine improvements were possible. Feist also reached out to Peabody acoustics instructor Eric Echols, who is also a director of technology and design consulting at a commercial audiovisual firm called Pershing Industries, which ultimately came up with the design for Peabody's low-latency studios. “We wanted people to be able to walk into a room they're familiar with, hit a button, connect to another room, and start their lesson,” Echols says of the resulting design.

And Hong, for one, appreciates how well the designers listened to the musicians during prototyping. From sound quality to full-length monitors, she says the low-latency studios are set up beautifully for singers. Speaking gratefully of the engineers and designers she worked with, Hong says, “They're my favorite people right now.”

— Bret McCabe

A Plethora of Precautions for Campus Return

Students who have elected to return to campus for the spring semester undergo regular COVID-19 testing, among other safety protocols.

The new low-latency studios for voice lessons (see related story on previous page) are just one of many extensive adaptations and updates undertaken to prepare for a spring semester of hybrid instruction at the Peabody Institute. From housing and dining to academics to important new COVID-19 testing protocols, virtually every aspect of life at Peabody has been tweaked, adjusted, or completely overhauled with the well-being of the campus community in mind. “The health and safety of our students, faculty, staff, and neighbors in the City of Baltimore have always been our core consideration as we have responded to this pandemic,” notes Peabody Institute Dean Fred Bronstein. “In the time since COVID first impacted Johns Hopkins last spring, we have learned a great deal about how we can best keep everyone safe in a variety of environments. And the decision to offer students the opportunity to return to campus for some in-person activities was predicated — in part — on our commitment to taking every precaution.”

Those precautions included significant upgrades to campus buildings, and in particular the HVAC/air-handling systems, to ensure proper ventilation and fresh air intake in accordance with Johns Hopkins guidelines. Facilities-related changes have also included determining the safe capacity of every practice room and studio, setting aside appropriate spaces for isolation and quarantine should those become necessary, and ensuring that common areas and teaching spaces are cleaned and disinfected. Dorm rooms are single-occupancy only, and the dining hall is strictly grab-and-go.

In reconsidering the academic experience, Peabody’s priority was to focus on performance-related activities for in-person instruction while keeping most academic courses in a remote format in order to minimize density on campus. With some members of the faculty not able to be on campus due to virus-related restrictions, and students having the option to continue their studies completely remotely, provisions were made to allow for remote participation even where in-person instruction was possible.

Standard public health protocols — masking, handwashing, physical distancing — are reinforced by signage across campus as part of the JHNeedsU campaign. In addition, Peabody students and faculty are expected to adhere to discipline-specific precautions, such as bell covers for brass players and physical distancing of at least 12 feet in dance classes. Class times are limited and a new practice room reservation system ensures that rooms are left unoccupied for periods throughout the day, allowing for proper air exchange.

Underpinning all of these precautions is a robust, universitywide COVID-19 testing program, which requires that everyone on campus be regularly tested.

“The testing is really key,” notes Interim Associate Dean for Finance and Administration Andrew Kipe, “in enabling us to manage the impact of the virus through the spring semester. If we start to see any concerning trends in that data, we will not hesitate to further adjust our operations in response. With the testing in place, we have the information we need to continue to protect our community.”

— Tiffany Lundquist

Reexamining the Narrative of Johns Hopkins

Allison Seyler of Hopkins Retrospective examines documents from the Hopkins family and census records.

In mid-December, Johns Hopkins officials shared a difficult revelation with the Johns Hopkins community: newly discovered records showing that Johns Hopkins, the institution’s founder and namesake, held enslaved people in his home during the mid-1800s.

The documents, including census records and corroborating materials, contradict previous accounts of Hopkins as an early abolitionist whose father freed the family’s enslaved people in the early 1800s and “complicate the understanding we have long had of Johns Hopkins,” university and hospital leaders wrote in a message to the Johns Hopkins community on Dec. 9.

Though significant additional research is needed for a full understanding of Johns Hopkins’ life, these new records show that the connection of Johns Hopkins and his family to slavery was more extensive than previously known. “The fact that Mr. Hopkins had, at any time in his life, a direct connection to slavery — a crime against humanity that tragically persisted in the state of Maryland until 1864 — is a difficult revelation for us, as we know it will be for our community, at home and abroad, and most especially our Black faculty, students, staff, and alumni,” wrote JHU President Ronald J. Daniels; Paul Rothman, dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine; and Kevin Sowers, president of the Johns Hopkins Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine. “It calls to mind not only the darkest chapters in the history of our country and our city, but also the complex history of our institutions since then, and the legacies of racism and inequity we are working together to confront.”

The research that led to this discovery is ongoing — led by Martha S. Jones, Johns Hopkins Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and professor of history — with many questions yet to be answered. In addition to continued efforts to uncover and establish previously unknown facts about Johns Hopkins, a future phase of research is expected to include significant Hopkins-affiliated families such as the Wyman and Garrett families.

“Accordingly, we have requested that this future phase include research on George Peabody so that we can more fully understand things that we may not know today about Mr. Peabody’s relationships and business dealings,” wrote Peabody Institute Dean Fred Bronstein in a December letter to the Peabody community. “While we have no reason to think that Peabody himself was a slaveholder, in truth, there is no way for us to know without further research what his relationship was to slavery. So, based on this experience with Johns Hopkins, we are committing ourselves to undertake this fact-finding process,” noted Bronstein. He has enlisted Peabody archivist Matt Testa to work with Sheridan Library researchers and others to lead this process specifically as it pertains to George Peabody. “We already know through the history of the institute, despite its founding as a community cultural center, that it was not welcoming to Black people for much of that history,” Bronstein added. “As we grapple with the work that we are doing in anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion today, we must learn and understand more about our own history, including the institute’s historical relationship to communities of color in Baltimore. My hope is that we can build on this initial research around Mr. Peabody, to better understand the history of the institute that is his namesake.”

— Sue De Pasquale

Opening the ADEI Dialogue

Kaijeh Johnson, president of the Black Student Union at the Peabody Institute, spent part of the fall 2020 semester talking with other students about their personal experiences. As one of two students on the newly created Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Steering Committee charged with looking at the institute’s efforts in those areas, he’d ask his peers: How is Peabody navigating our polarized current moment? “Sometimes it’s difficult to talk about such a sensitive topic, but it’s definitely been useful,” says Johnson, who is also co-chair of diversity and inclusion for the Peabody General Assembly. “People mention things that you might not think about from inside your personal bubble, and it’s helping us make an inventory of the resources we already have at the school. What’s available? What is the current status of funding for those services? What is the training like? What does that include? We’ve been finding out as much as we can about the current situation so that next semester we can start talking about: Alright, here’s what we think we should do.”

That energy streams directly from Dean Fred Bronstein’s June 2020 open letter in the wake of the nationwide protests following the police killing of George Floyd. Working to diversify classical music has been one of the pillars of Dean Bronstein’s vision at Peabody since his arrival, and last summer’s events reiterated the need not only to sustain those efforts but also to intensify and broaden them to address questions of inclusivity and equity as well. “The deaths of more Black Americans and growing national outrage served as a call to action to the Peabody community,” says Sarah Hoover, associate dean for innovation, interdisciplinary partnerships and community initiatives. Hoover and Registrar Nilaya Baccus-Hairston put together the collaborative committee, which includes faculty and staff members from the Conservatory and Preparatory, and students Johnson and Sheila Esquivel, to respond to the dean’s expanded commitments to anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Meeting remotely, the committee identified five areas — vision and strategy, program and curriculum, policy and practice, climate and community, and resources and funding — as areas for strategic action. The goal is to measure and track what progress Peabody has made over the past five years to establish a baseline from which to start planning for the future. “We’ve already determined how much money we committed to diversity thus far in the last five years and how that money has been spent, the first time that that calculation has been done,” Hoover says. “Once we’ve established those baselines, how do we ensure transparency and accountability and regularly update the community about the progress? That’s another part of this effort.”

Additionally, the committee has brought in leaders from Johns Hopkins central administration to begin a series of institutewide community dialogue sessions. Registrar Baccus-Hairston says that Katrina Caldwell, vice provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer, and Shanon Shumpert, vice provost for institutional equity for the Office of Institutional Equity, were able to talk about the work of their offices and how they address concerns. “I assumed there’s one place to report everything, so having them explain things straight out, it makes much more sense now,” Johnson says of those two virtual conversations. “Having that open dialogue about how things work. If you don’t understand what the proper process for reporting something is and then nothing comes of it, there’s a missing link in the communication chain. And just by understanding these processes, we can start addressing how to make things more inclusive.”

Hoover adds that the committee plans to conduct a campus climate survey in the spring, after which it should have amassed enough baseline data to draft a vision and strategic plan for how Peabody plans to continue its efforts to create an equitable, inclusive, and welcoming environment for its faculty, staff, and student body — and, incrementally, the industry at large. “I don’t think we’ll ever be finished with this work at Peabody,” Johnson says, “but I think once we get the ball rolling in terms of what we’ve learned and how we want to start moving forward, the school is going to be a better place for everyone.”

— Bret McCabe

A World-Class Performance Space in D.C.

When Johns Hopkins University purchased the former Newseum at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., plans for a major renovation were already in place. The façade and interior floor plates would be completely changed. All of the university’s D.C.-based graduate programs would have a presence in the building. And the property’s Walter and Leonore Annenberg Theater would become a new recital hall for Peabody.

But turning the 11-year-old, 535- seat Annenberg Theater designed for a 4D film experience into a state-ofthe-art performance space “probably represents the biggest challenge and among the most successful parts of the project,” says Lee Coyle, Johns Hopkins University’s senior director of planning and architecture.

Because the hall has to be flexible enough to host dance, opera, ensembles of various sizes, lectures, and multimedia collaborations, large-scale changes to the theater were imperative.

A space designed for live performance rather than 4D movie projections requires different sightlines, so the seating was entirely re-raked to adjust the slope. Because a chamber music audience doesn’t require motion-controlled seats that can simulate wind, spray water, or include “feet ticklers” (used in one film when rats ran off the screen and into the audience), all the seating is being replaced. The first tier of new seats includes tablet arms that slide under chairs when not in use. Behind the scenes, performers will find new rehearsal rooms and spaces for storage. The facility, including the stage, is also designed to be highly accessible to promote inclusion for all.

Some of the theater’s renovations are invisible to the eye, but not to the ear. “We completely remade the acoustics,” explains Coyle. “The quality of sound is Peabody’s brand, and this space has to be capable of supporting the highest level of acoustic performance. Working with the firm Fisher-Dachs Associates, we have designed a space that is world class.”

With the building’s projected opening in fall 2023 at the earliest, some plans for the new hall are still under consideration, says Andrew Kipe, interim associate dean for finance and administration for Peabody. “But one of the things that we are committed to is to not simply repeat concerts in Washington that we’re doing in Baltimore,” he says. Both the needs of the D.C. audiences and the potential opportunities for different collaborations with other Johns Hopkins schools or departments will help define how (and how frequently) Peabody will use the space.

“What we want to make sure of is we’re not simply showing up, playing concerts, and busing people back to Baltimore,” says Kipe. “How can we be part of the community, as opposed to what I call drive-by performances, where you show up and leave?”

In the near future, Peabody leadership will be soliciting ideas from faculty members, administrators, and students to help articulate a specific vision of how Peabody might use the new hall.

“It’s always exciting to have a new space to play in,” adds Kipe. “And the investment that Johns Hopkins is making in the buildout and the renovation of the building shows a really high commitment to having something very special.” “Now we have to hurry up and wait a little bit.”

— Mary Zajac

Breaking New Paths

Bassoonist Mateen Milan sees something of his younger self in the first cohort of Baltimore-Washington Musical Pathways (BWMP) scholars at Peabody. And he is excited about what’s on tap for them.

“These students have big dreams, and they have the drive to achieve them,” says Milan. “Music can open up entirely different paths for them, as it did for me. Their commitment and hard work, combined with the opportunities and supports they have access to as BWMP scholars, can literally change their lives.”

As the new program coordinator overseeing the launch of the BWMP program at Peabody, which is meant to extend and intensify the Peabody Preparatory’s current offerings, Milan is coming full circle. He spent seven years in the Preparatory’s Tuned-In program before matriculating to the Conservatory, where he completed his BM degree in Bassoon Performance in 2019.

Launched last year with a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the BWMP has as its mission to prepare and support student musicians from communities historically underrepresented in U.S. orchestras for advanced study in music and eventually professional opportunities. Its goal, put simply, is to transform the field of classical music. BWMP partner organizations — the Peabody Institute, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Symphony Orchestra, the D.C. Youth Orchestra Program, and Levine Music — are combining and expanding their efforts to support and serve young musicians from diverse backgrounds.

Students who are accepted into the program receive an intensive musical education including private lessons, ensemble experience and performance opportunities, instruction in music theory and musicianship, and enrichment experience such as concert tickets, backstage access, and master classes. In addition, they can take advantage of academic tutoring, family support, and one-on-one mentoring, as well as financial assistance for purchasing instruments, applying to college or conservatory, and other related expenses.

The rigorous application process seeks to identify students in grades 8 through 12 who are highly driven, dedicated, and interested in pursuing a professional career in classical music. “With this first cohort, we certainly met that mark,” notes Milan. “I can’t wait to see where they’ll go.”

— Tiffany Lundquist

Big Plans

In their own voices, here is where some members of the inaugural Baltimore cohort of BWMP scholars hope to go:

Anthony Alark

Composition and harp

“My dream for the future is to attend college and secure a position in music composition and animation.”

Keyona Carrington

Keyona Carrington

Clarinet

“This program is something that I can grow a lot from. I want to go to college and I need something that can push me more. This program can do that; it can give me strength.”

Lowrider James

Tuba

“If I didn’t have music I literally wouldn’t know where my life would have been heading, but I’m glad it’s in my life, and it gives me the voice I think everyone deserves.”

Jayden Moore

Viola

“My goal is to be the best violist ever because then I can encourage other Black kids to be the best they can be.”