Carl Orff's Carmina Burana | | German composer Carl Orff’s 1936 cantata Carmina Burana, a setting of 13th-century songs and poems, is one of the more recognizable works of choral music—its opening “O Fortuna” is a staple of movies and their trailers, radio bumper music, and even sampled by hip-hop producers. Performing the work requires a wealth of musicians and singers, and on May 2 guest conductor Andrew Grams, a Baltimore School for the Arts alumnus, leads the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Hopkins Conservatory Chorus, NEXT Ensemble, Peabody Camerata, and Peabody Children’s Chorus through a performance of Carmina Burana at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Peabody alumni Christina O’Malley (MM ’24, Vocal Studies), soprano; Jason Gonzalez (MM ’24, Vocal Studies), tenor; and Tim Mix (BM ’01, Voice), baritone, join the choirs for this performance, and a free Peabody Alumni and Friends reception takes place right before the concert at 6:30 pm in the Meyerhoff (register online). Free tickets for the Carmina Burana performance will be available from our concert calendar. | | Dean's Notebook: Building on the Breakthrough | | | | |
The Peabody Institute’s new strategic plan, Building on the Breakthrough 2025-29, marks the next chapter in our remarkable journey of growth and innovation. This ambitious plan reflects significant collaboration and input from faculty, staff, students, alumni, and advisory board members. It charts a course for Peabody’s continued leadership in the performing arts, focusing on five key areas: Academic Programming, Financial Aid, Expanding Our Reach, People and Culture, and the Mount Vernon Campus.
On April 10, join Peabody Institute Dean Fred Bronstein for a free, live virtual event presented through Hopkins at Home, where he will discuss the successes and exciting new developments that have positioned Peabody to further deepen its impact, expand access to its world-class performing arts education, enhance the student experience, strengthen its competitive standing among peers, and explore opportunities to reach new audiences. The event takes place Thursday, April 10 at 12:30 pm EDT and is available online.
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Sunday, April 6, 5:00 pm CET
For the next concert in the Zauberklang Festival chamber series that faculty artist Marina Piccinini co-created in the Swiss Alps, the celebrated flutist joins renowned French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s flute sonatas and solo harpsichord works in the historic, baroque St. Peter and Paul church in Bürglen, Uri, Switzerland. Free tickets are available online.
Sunday, April 6, 1:00 EDT
The New England Symphonic Ensemble youth orchestra, founded by the late Virginia Gene Rittenhouse (DMA ’63, Violin) in 1969, is joined by choruses from around the country for a program that includes two world premieres and choral pieces by Monteverdi, Handel, Vivaldi, and Bach. Faculty artist Carl DuPont is the featured bass soloist for the Monteverdi and Vivaldi works, and the concert takes place in Carnegie Hall’s historic Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage; tickets are available online.
Sunday, April 20, 4:30 pm CDT
Visiting artists from around the world descend upon College Station, Texas, this month for the 2025 World Shakuhachi Festival that celebrates the Japanese end-blown flute capable of producing haunting tones. Composer Peter Dayton’s (MM ’16, Composition) "The Demonstration"—a setting of text by poet Cid Corman, for soprano, shakuhachi, 13-string koto, and violoncello—was named the winner of the Friends of Chamber Music B/CS Texas World Cultural Heritage Chamber Music Composition Competition and receives its world premiere during the festival. The performance takes place at the Rudder Theater on the Texas A&M campus and tickets are available online.
Wednesday, April 23, 7:30 pm CDT
Conductor Murry Sidlin (BM ’62, Music Education; MM ’68, Instrumental Conducting) created the Defiant Requiem concert drama to honor and remember Jewish conductor and pianist Rafael Schächter, who organized a volunteer choir of 150 prisoners and taught them to perform Verdi's Requiem by memory 16 times over three years at the Terezín concentration camp outside Prague. Sidlin provides the narration to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s performance of this arresting work with conductor Benjamin Loeb (GPD ’02, Conducting) leading the orchestra and current graduate student and Dallas Symphony Chorus Director Anthony Blake Clark leading the chorus, with featured soloist Allison Charney (MM ’91, AD ’94, Voice) at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas. Tickets available online.
Tuesday, April 29, 1:00 pm EDT
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History first designated April as Jazz History Month in 2001 to recognize and celebrate the extraordinary Black American art form. And Jazz History Month 2025 at the museum includes a range of concerts, exhibitions, film screenings, and events encouraging visitors to learn more about the music, its history, and its performers. The April 29 Jazz Afternoons concert features faculty artist Fran Vielma and his quartet of bassist Steve Arnold, saxophonist Luis Hernandez, and pianist Savino Palumbo. The free concert takes place on the museum’s third floor west wing.
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Peabody Notes highlights select off-campus performances featuring Peabody performers. For other events, please visit our Peabody events page.
| | | | Longtime WETA Classical Program Director Jim Allison (MM '86, Piano) was promoted to Vice President and General Manager of WETA Classical, consistently among the highest rated classical stations in the country. He joined the station in 2007. In his new role, Allison oversees the content and strategic focus of WETA on-air, online, and in the community. | | | | Adrian Bostian, Amir Kadamani González, and David Lécuyer | The Setas Trio—Peabody undergraduate Adrian Bostian, cello, and graduate students Amir Kadamani González, violin, and David Lécuyer, piano—earned First Prize in Piano and Strings at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition. The trio played Schubert's Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major and an excerpt from Joan Tower's tone poem Trio Cavany, and their competition performance can be viewed online. | | | | Vocalist and arts administrator Camille Delaney-McNeil (MM '11, Flute), a graduate of the Sphinx Organization’s leadership program and a 2021 Musical America Top 30 Professional of the Year, was named Vice President, Learning at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She previously served as Director of the LA Phil's YOLA program, as well as Director of its ground-breaking Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood. | | | | Graduate student Josíah Garza was named the Classical winner of the American Pops Orchestra's inaugural Ruth Wales Du Pont Collegiate Composition Competition at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. Six finalists were chosen from submissions by composition students from around the country, three each in the Classical and Pops categories, and undergraduate Tomás Jonsson was named a Pops finalist. | | | | The contemporary ensemble Passepartout Duo, which includes Christopher Salvito (MM '16, Percussion), left, claimed first prize at the 2025 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at the Georgia Tech School of Music for its Chromaplane. Initially designed in 2001 and refined in collaboration with Germany’s KOMA Elektronik, the Chromaplane uses two electromagnetic pickup coils to interact with a cloud of electromagnetic fields, and can be purchased online. | | |
The Art of Prelude and Fugue
For her newest recording, Peabody’s Coordinator of Adult Chamber Music and Steinway artist Lura Johnson (’01, Piano) has tackled a mammoth solo piano undertaking: a curated, intertwined recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. The 144-track, seven-hours and 11 minutes long The Art of Prelude and Fugue comes with a thoughtful and insightful listening guide penned by Johnson, and the album can be streamed or purchased online.
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Chamber Works for Strings
This double album brings together chamber works written by faculty artist Felipe Lara between 2005 and 2021, including Corde Vocale, his first string quartet, and Sonare, the nearly 40-minute commission for the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program that the Parker Quartet debuted at Peabody in 2022. Chamber Works for Strings (Kairos) features performances by the Parker Quartet, Duo Diorama, JACK Quartet, and the Mivos Quartet, and was made possible with funding from a Peabody Dean's Excellence Accelerator Award. The album is available to purchase online.
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A Garden Adorned
The New York City-based loadbang’s trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice instrumentation makes for an eclectic contemporary chamber ensemble—one that enjoys collaborating with living and young composers, such as when it visits Peabody for a pair of concerts April 30 and May 1. A Garden Adorned (New Focus Recordings), its latest album, features works by Laura Cetilia, Raven Chacon, Christina J. George, Yotam Haber, and faculty artist Oscar Bettison, whose “I am a Garden Adorned” not only gives the album its name but also establishes its intense, intimate, and mystical tone. A Garden Adorned can be streamed or purchased online.
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Sandbox Percussion: Tiny Desk Concert
Sandbox Percussion—featuring faculty artists Victor Caccese (BM '11, Percussion), Terry Sweeney (BM '13, Percussion), Ian Rosenbaum (BM '08, Percussion), and Jonny Allen—made its debut appearance on NPR's popular Tiny Desk Concert series performing composer Viet Cuong’s (BM ’11, MM ’12, Composition) “Water, Wine, Brandy, Brine” and pieces by Andy Akiho, including “Pillar” from Sandbox’s Grammy-nominated album Seven Pillars. The performance can be viewed online.
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Testament: Beethoven Complete Piano Sonatas
Korean pianist and faculty artist HieYon Choi started intensely exploring the piano music of Ludwig van Beethoven in 2002, eventually performing two complete cycles of his piano sonatas, the piano trio cycle, the violin sonata cycle, and all of his works for cello and piano. Choi first started recording Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas at Teldex Studio in Berlin in 2015; she finished those recordings in 2023. Testament (Decca Korea) delivers Choi’s exquisite performance of those complete sonatas, as well as extensive liner notes by Choi exploring her relationship with the composer’s music. Testament is available to stream or purchase online.
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Witness
Faculty artist and 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist Mary Kouyoumdjian’s first portrait album is a searing engagement with and exploration of the Lebanese Civil War and the Armenian Genocide that incorporates testimonies of Kouyoumdjian’s family, friends, and community impacted by those events. Witness (Phenotypic Recordings) features the Kronos Quartet performing Kouyoumdjian’s deeply affecting works, and the Phenotypic label is donating streaming proceeds to two charities supporting Armenian and Lebanese communities. Witness is available to stream or purchase online.
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