Peabody’s Conservatory Graduation festivities deliver a high point during this celebratory month, beginning with the Graduation Concert, a new annual tradition that invites members of the graduating classes to perform on the Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall stage one last time as students before they cross it as graduates. The program this year features graduating artists from across disciplines performing musical works by composers including Frederic Chopin, Nadia Boulanger, and Jennifer Higdon and dance works choreographed by Tristian Griffin and students Sophia Perone and Harry Sukonik. Open to the public, the Graduation Concert starts at 7:30 pm on May 21 and will be livestreamed.

At the Graduation ceremonies the next day—at 10:00 am for undergraduates and 2:00 pm for graduate students—we honor two pioneering American performing artists with the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music and Dance in America (read more in the Dean’s note, below). In addition, Elizabeth Futral, the Marc C. von May Distinguished Chair of Vocal Studies, will be awarded the 2024 Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award. And student speakers French horn player Mika Judge and vocalist Rahzé Cheatham address the undergraduate and graduate classes, respectively. In-person attendance is ticketed and reserved for graduates and their families and guests, and both ceremonies will be livestreamed.

It is always amazing as we arrive at Graduation time—each year seems to get more compact. In just a few short weeks at this year’s Graduation ceremonies we look forward to seeing 279 students walk across the Friedberg Hall stage to receive their diplomas. Of course, the primary reason for Graduation day is to celebrate the successes of our students. At the same time, one of the great moments is when we award Peabody’s highest honor, the Peabody Medal, to an individual who has made an outsized contribution to the American cultural landscape through music or dance.

This year we hear from not one, but two truly inspirational 2024 Peabody Medal awardees. Misty Copeland—the groundbreaking dancer, first African-American woman principal at the American Ballet Theatre, and an inspiration to many through her remarkable talent as well as her courage in breaking barriers—is the first dancer to receive the Peabody Medal since the award was first bestowed in 1980. She is that rare artist whose name transcends their discipline. By excelling as a Black woman in ballet, she has led change in the art form and inspired countless younger dancers, performers, athletes, and audience members—in the process, elevating the power and relevance of dance as a medium for expression. Ms. Copeland will receive the award at the morning undergraduate ceremony.

Following that, 25-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, musician, and producer Stevie Wonder will receive the Peabody Medal at the afternoon graduate ceremony, and an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins University at the universitywide Commencement ceremonies the following day. By any measure, Stevie Wonder has been one of the most influential artists of his time, a remarkable artistic personality born of Motown but destined to exceed what even that juggernaut has meant to the world of music. At the same time, he has been a leading voice in important social and civic causes, connecting his art with social justice to create a legacy of activism closely intertwined with his truly outsized impact in music.

It is hard to imagine a more stellar way to celebrate our Peabody graduates as we bring the curtain down on the 2023-24 academic year.

Sincerely,

Thursday, May 9, through Saturday, May 11

Composer Robert Ashley’s genre-defying television operas and multimedia theatrical experiences require a game ensemble of performers equipped with a variety of extended techniques and unafraid to experiment. Performing Artservices and Roulette Intermedium have assembled just such a slate of adventurous artists for a new production this month of his 1993 opera Foreign Experiences: singers Gelsey Bell, Kayleigh Butcher, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, Aliza Simons, and Bonnie Lander (MM ’07, GPD ’08, Voice; GPD ’08, Computer Music) perform this opera for seven voices and pre-recorded orchestra at Roulette in Brooklyn May 9, 10, and 11. Tickets available online.

Friday, May 10, 8:30 pm EDT

The Elite Pan Consortium—an ensemble of steelpan musicians that has performed for Presidential Inaugurations, the Queen’s 75th Jubilee, and the Diamond Jubilee Anniversary of the Independence of Trinidad and Tobago, and includes LAUNCHPad Manager of Community Partnerships and Professional Studies faculty Khandeya Sheppard—headlines the 2024 Virginia International PANfest in Virginia Beach. The Elite Pan Consortium plays the 24th Street Stage off the boardwalk. The concert is free.

Saturday, May 25, 7:30 pm EDT

The Lorelei Ensemble joined the Nashville Symphony Orchestra to debut composer Julia Wolfe’s Her Story oratorio for 10 women’s voices in fall 2022, and since then the vocal ensemble has joined the other co-commissioning orchestras in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco for performances. This month the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra pairs this exploration of the ongoing struggle for equal rights for women in America with Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem. The Lorelei Ensemble—which includes Taylor Hillary Boykins (MM ’14, Voice) and founding music director Beth Willer, Peabody’s director of Choral Studies—and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra perform Her Story at the Geraldine V. Chavez Center for the Choral Arts and tickets are available online.

Sunday, May 26, 7:30 pm EDT

The Baltimore Consort started in 1980 to perform the instrumental music of Shakespeare's time and quickly evolved into one of the premiere Early Music ensembles around. Forty years on the Consort boasts a cornucopia of repertoire from around early Europe and remains anchored by co-founders Mindy Rosenfeld (BM ’80, flute), Ronn McFarlane (MM ’79, Guitar), and versatile lutenist Mark Cudek (MM ’82, Lute), who retires from Peabody at the end of this academic year after serving on the faculty since 1982. This month the ensemble travels to Festival Schlossmediale Werdenberg in Switzerland for a pair of concerts, performing its songs, dances, and fancies for Shakespeare May 24 and early Scottish music May 25. And on May 26, the group performs that Shakespeare program at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich.

Sunday, June 2, 4:00 pm EDT

Composer Anthony Davis’ grandfather was a treasurer at Hampton Institute and organized an opera series to bring Black performers such as Betty Allen and Leontyne Price to the historically black college in Virginia, so it’s fitting that the Virginia Arts Festival celebrates Davis for writing works that break through opera’s color barriers. Longtime Davis collaborator/pianist Alan Johnson is joined by soprano Christine Johnson and faculty artist and bass-baritone Carl DuPont to perform excerpts from X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Amistad, and The Central Park Five at the Attuck Theatre in Norfolk and tickets are available online.

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Peabody Notes highlights select off-campus performances featuring Peabody performers. For other events, please visit our Peabody events page.

John Adams: City Noir

American composer John Adams was inspired by California’s changing urban landscape in the 1940s and ’50s for his symphonic work City Noir, whose titles suggest the neon-lit nights and melodramatic shadows of crime fiction that this period evokes. Professor Marin Alsop, Director of Graduate Conducting, leads the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra where she is the Chief Conductor through Adams’ moody City Noir, as well as his Fearful Symmetries and Girls of the Golden West: Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance, a piece dedicated to Alsop. City Noir is available to stream or buy from Naxos. 

Kevin Puts: The Hours

Faculty composer Kevin Puts and librettist Greg Pierce’s The Hours returns to the Metropolitan Opera’s stage this month following its celebrated debut run last season. If you can’t make it to New York, WarnerClassics has also just released a recording featuring conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus and, of course, the three acclaimed divas animating this production: sopranos Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. The Hours can be streamed or purchased online.