Terence Blanchard, who was all of 20 years old when Wynton Marsalis suggested the young musician take his trumpet spot in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1982, earned his first film score while coaching Denzel Washington how to look like a jazz player. Director Spike Lee hired Blanchard for the Mo' Better Blues shoot and during a break Lee heard Blanchard playing a piano medley and asked the trumpeter to arrange it for strings. That arrangement, Blanchard’s first for strings, led to scoring Lee’s Jungle Fever and a rich and varied film and television composing career, complimenting Blanchard’s ongoing work as a jazz musician and tireless advocate and educator, and, most recently, celebrated opera composer. Today the New Orleans native is one of America's premiere artists, and the Peabody Institute is proud to present Terence Blanchard with the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music and Dance in America at the Peabody Conservatory’s 2023 Graduation ceremonies on Wednesday, May 24, when Blanchard delivers a commencement address. The ceremonies will be livestreamed. |
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I am always astounded at how quickly the academic year passes but here we are, just a few weeks away from the Peabody Conservatory’s 141st graduation. This year 230 students will step up to receive Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees, along with Master of Music, Master of Arts, Graduate Performance Diplomas, and Peabody’s highest degree, the Doctor of Musical Arts.
In addition to celebrating our outstanding graduates, the Peabody ceremony is also an important moment to honor an individual who has made major contributions to music and dance by bestowing the Peabody Medal. This year we honor seven-time Grammy-winner Terence Blanchard, whose remarkable achievements in music across multiple genres, from the concert stage to film (Spike Lee’s composer of choice), and now opera, have made and are making an indelible mark on American culture. Fresh off his most recent success with the Metropolitan Opera’s acclaimed new production of Champion, he is the very embodiment of a 21st century artist, someone who so intentionally and thoughtfully continues to expand his own artistic horizons and those of his audiences through his powerful creations and performances. Mr. Blanchard has always broken barriers, including being the first African American composer to be performed at the Met, and stands as an outstanding example for our graduates as they prepare to go out into the world as artists.
We are thrilled to welcome Terence Blanchard to our stage and look forward to celebrating with our graduates and their families on this major milestone.
Sincerely,
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Thursday, May 4, through Sunday, June 4
The 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is an early media franchise success story, impressively delivering equal parts melodramatic space-opera fan service and hammy entertainment—a spirit embraced by Khan!!!: The Musical! This parody takes place in the year 2366 and follows Data the Android’s trying, Hamilton-ish, to adapt the “history” told by Wrath of Khan into a musical. Soprano Laura Whittenberger ( GPD ’14, Voice) stars as Vulcan Starfleet officer Saavik in this off-Broadway production opening May 4 at the Players Theater in Greenwich Village that runs, Thursdays to Sundays, through June 4; tickets available online.
Sunday, May 7, 3:00 pm EDT
The Peabody Dance Ensemble travels to New York City to present ASCENSION, a collection of choreographies by Peabody Dance BFA founding chair danah bella and faculty artists Dierdre Dawkins and Kelly Hirina, as well as guest artists Mike Esperanza, Michael Nickerson-Rossi, and Sorah Yang. BARE Dance Company, founded by Esperanza in 2006, is the afternoon’s special guest, performing a reimagined, tenth-anniversary version of Esperanza's AVES, a work initially set to music by the Buena Vista Social Club, composer and Preparatory alumnus Philip Glass, and new media artists/composers AGF, Biosphere, Closer to Carbon, and Brian Eno. ASCENSION takes place at the Peridance Center KnJ Theater in Manhattan and free tickets are available online.
Thursday, May 11, 7:30 pm EDT
The Bergamot Quartet—Ledah Finck ( BM ’16, MM ’18, Violin); Sarah Thomas ( BM ’17, MM ’19 Violin); Amy Huimei Tan ( GPD ’20, Viola); and Irène Han ( MM ’18, Cello)—has quickly established its ability to master just about any score, from music of the Iranian diaspora recently at Cornell University to Chick Corea's Lyric Suite for Sextet with Peabody faculty percussionist Warren Wolf. Now the quartet plays Brooklyn’s Kaufman Music Center’s Ecstatic Music series as part of a collaboration involving genre-defying pianist Erika Dohi and singer/songwriter Haley Fohr, better known as Circuit des Yeux, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. The concert takes place in Merkin Hall and tickets are available online.
Saturday, May 13, 9:00 am EDT
In 2001 faculty composer Michael Hersch ( BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition) began writing a work that eventually evolved into ten hours of music exploring and extolling the devastating beauty of being human. The three-part cycle sew me into a shroud of leaves— The Vanishing Pavilions for piano, Last Autumn for horn and violoncello, one day may become menace for piano—received its first and only full performance at the 2019 Wien Modern festival. On May 13, National Sawdust presents this staggering work’s US debut in a day-long performance featuring pianist Jason Hardink ( Vanishing), hornist Jamie Hersch and cellist Mariel Roberts ( Autumn), and pianist Jason Rhodebeck, who stunningly performed menace at Peabody this semester. Tickets are available online.
Saturday, May 13, 7:30 pm EDT
Joseph Young ( AD ’09, Conducting) has kept busy guest conducting over the 2022-23 season. Peabody’s Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles led the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Washington National Opera and National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, and in July 2023 makes his Carnegie Hall debut leading the National Youth Orchestra. This month he travels to Florida to lead the Sarasota Orchestra through Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with guest soloist Bokyung Byun, guitar, as well as Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9 and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, “Italian.” The concert takes place at the Sarasota Opera House and tickets are available online. _______________________________
Peabody Notes highlights select off-campus performances featuring Peabody performers. For other events, please visit our Peabody events page.
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Trailblazing choreographer Ronald K. Brown, who founded his Evidence company in Brooklyn in 1985, has said his 2001 work Walking Out the Dark was partly inspired by religious practices he witnessed in Portugal and the Ivory Coast. Dance assistant professor Dierdre Dawkins, an Evidence company member from 1998 to 2004, received a New York Dance and Performance Award—aka, a Bessie—for her performance in Walking when it debuted. This month Dawkins returns to Evidence to set Walking Out the Dark. |
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The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto consults with educators from across Canada, the US, and abroad, helping to set and support standards in music study and assessment from beginning to advanced. Peabody Conservatory and Preparatory faculty artist Rebecca Henry will participate in curriculum development for the new Violin Series video program, traveling to Toronto this fall to record video on the development of vibrato. |
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David Kelley ( DMA ’16, Organ)—Minister of Music at Church of the Holy Comforter in Virginia—won the 2023 Peter & Lois Fyfe Choral Composition Contest sponsored by the Sewanee Church Music Conference in Tennessee for his Pentecost, which will be performed at the upcoming conference in July. From July 17 to 23, Kelley and the Church of the Holy Comforter choir will be in residence at Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, UK, providing the music for daily Evensong services and Sunday Eucharist. |
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Marcie Kolacki and Nicholas Pascucci |
Marcie Kolacki ( BM ’19, Cello), a former student of Alan Stepansky, recently won a position in the New World Symphony, the American orchestral academy in Miami Beach. And Nicholas Pascucci ( MM ’20, GPD ’22, Cello), a student of Amit Peled, won the principal cello position at the Amarillo Symphony. |
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Awadagin Pratt (PC ’89, Piano; PC ’89, Violin; GPD ’92, Conducting) was appointed professor of piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, starting July 2023. He will also receive an honorary doctorate from the Boston Conservatory at its May 13 commencement, alongside Cynthia Erivo. |
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Arizona State University Assistant Professor of Percussion Michael Compitello ( BM ’07, Percussion) has collaborated with composer Robert Honstein since 2012 and performs on two of Hornstein’s imaginative, alluring percussion works on Lost and Found (New Focus Recordings). Compitello and cellist Hannah Collins, who perform as the duo New Morse Code, realize Down Down Baby, a dreamlike piece for two musicians playing one cello. Compitello also performs the longform title track for prepared marimba—and plays it in an empty swimming pool in the video. Lost and Found can be purchased online. |
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During the pandemic, New York-based composer Ellen Fishman ( DMA ’95, Composition) revisited her sprightly Lark Dances, a 2009 electronic piece commissioned by Jeanne Ruddy Dance loosely based on Franz Joseph Haydn’s “The Lark,” and reimagined it for a string quartet. The Fairmount String Quartet, the ensemble in residence at Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Philadelphia that includes Leah Kyoungwoon Kim ( BM ’99, MM ’00, Violin), premiered the work in 2021 and has now recorded it for its second album, Unleashed (Spring Garden Records), that spotlights women composers. Unleashed is available to purchase and stream online. |
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More news about Peabody alumni, faculty, and students can be found online: Please keep sending us your news, career achievements, fellowships awarded, competitions and prizes won, commissions earned, albums released, and whatever else you’re currently pursuing. |
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