“Love can heal,” writes Johns Hopkins Professor of Psychiatry Kay Redfield Jamison in her recent book, Fires in the Dark, a history of psychological and medical treatment and healing. “Books and nature and music heal, in different ways. Music in particular is balm and blessing.” 

Jamison and Peabody faculty artists Michael Hersch, Ah Young Hong, and Wei-Han Wu deliver a collaborative, interdisciplinary balm and blessing with the Healing the Unquiet Mind free concert taking place January 28 at Peabody at February 3 at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. The program features Jamison reading selections from Fires followed by thematically related musical performances, curated by composer Hersch, sung by soprano Hong accompanied by pianist Wu, and including works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Samuel Barber, Alban Berg, Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, Ivor Gurney, and James MacMillan. “Music has always had an unmatched ability to portray and evoke moods, as well as to help in healing grief and suffering,” Jamison says of this concert, which “pays tribute to both those who suffered and those who healed the suffering.” The free concerts take place January 28 at 4:30 pm in Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall and February 3 at 4:30 pm in the Hopkins Bloomberg Center (free tickets required).

First, I wish everyone a very Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays, and are eager to move forward into 2024. 

Today, I want to update you on an important process now ongoing. Every five years each of the schools of Johns Hopkins University undertakes an external review as a matter of due diligence and good academic and institutional hygiene. This is similar to Peabody’s regular reviews of each of its academic departments. Peabody last undertook this Institute-wide exercise in 2019, and we are now preparing to conduct a review this spring. We have worked throughout the fall to prepare an initial self-study, which shows remarkable growth and success in areas including (though not limited to) enrollment, new academic programs, faculty development, student services, and diversity. This self-study will be submitted to an external review team comprised of three decanal colleagues from peer institutions who will visit in March and meet with many members of the campus community. The external review team’s feedback, provided to the President, Provost, and the Dean, provides an important and useful opportunity to reflect on where we are as an institution, and to both celebrate and take note of Peabody’s successes while also challenging ourselves to improve and reach even further. We look forward to this opportunity for institutional reflection.

Sincerely,

Friday, January 12, through Saturday, January 20

Adoration, the opera adaptation by faculty composer Mary Kouyoumdjian and librettist Royce Vavrek of Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan’s movie, makes its world premiere at the 2024 Prototype festival in New York. In a newsletter interview with producer Beth Morrison Projects, Kouyoumdjian notes that the film, partially inspired by a failed 1986 attempt to bomb a commercial flight from London to Tel Aviv, “came out in 2008, but its commentary on religious and ethnic differences and prejudices are incredibly timely.” The world premiere takes place at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in the Bowery, and tickets are available online.

Saturday, January 20, through Sunday, January 21

Conductor Gemma New (MM ’11, Conducting) enjoyed leading pianist/composer Alissa Firsova’s Die Windsbraut—an orchestral work inspired by the tumultuous affair between painter and poet Oskar Kokoschka and pianist Alma Mahler, composer Gustav’s widow—so much at a May 2022 BBC Philharmonic concert in Manchester that she included the work on a fall 2022 Houston Symphony Orchestra performance, where the piece made its US debut. Firsova’s Die Windsbraut receives its Spain debut when she leads the Orquesta Sinfonica de Barcelona in a program that includes Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 (“the Scottish”). The concert takes place at the Sala 1 - Pau Casals and tickets are available online.

Sunday, January 21, 7:00 pm CET

Celebrated Croatian guitarist Ana Vidović (AD ’07, Guitar) embarks on a four-date tour of Spain with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra this month, performing Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo’s beloved Concierto de Aranjuez. The tour includes performances on January 19 in Santander, January 23 in Madrid, January 24 in Barcelona, and on January 21 Vidović makes her debut in at the Auditori de Girona in Catalonia; tickets are available online.

Saturday, January 27, through Sunday, January 28

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra showcases principal violist Christian Colberg (BM ’89, MM ’91, GPD ’93, Viola) and CSO Concertmaster Stefani Matsuo as soloists in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major, K. 364, part of an all-Mozart program being led by guest conductor Dame Jane Glover. The repertoire includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 13 and Symphony No. 36 (“the Linz”), and takes place at the CSO Music Hall; tickets are available online.

Wednesday, January 31, 7:30 pm EST

Canadian-Cambodian composer Vivian Fung’s (Un)Wandering Souls is a percussion piece for struck glass, metal, porcelain, and wood, written in response to film director Rithy Panh’s Bongsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia. Sandbox Percussion—Jonathan Allen and Peabody alumni Victor Caccese (BM ’11, Percussion), Terry Sweeney (BM ’13, Percussion), and Ian Rosenbaum (BM ’08, Percussion)—performed the work for its 2021 video debut, and this month premieres an expanded version in a program packed with new music including the world premiere of Ellis Ludwig-Leone’s Lifeline, and the regional premieres of Christopher Cerrone’s Don’t Look Down and Tyshawn Sorey’s For Arthur Jafa with pianist Conor Hanick, Samuel Carl Adams’ Études, Vol. 1, and Andy Akiho’s Portal. Tickets are available online and the concert in Buttenwieser Hall at New York’s 92nd Street Y will be livestreamed.

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

Aspire: “The President’s Own” at 225

“The President’s Own” United States Marine Band—which regards itself as the oldest continuously active professional music organization in the nation—released a pair of commemorative albums of works written specifically for the ensemble, including faculty artist Joel Puckett’s There Was a Child Went Forth, which “The President’s Own” debuted in April 2023 to celebrate the band’s 225th birthday. The albums are available for free online.

The EP

Wild Idol, the Brooklyn-based indie-pop and soul duo of vocalist Nora Palka and producer/percussionist/husband Nathan Ellman-Bell (BM ’09, Jazz Percussion), released the six-song The EP (PalkaBell Records) in December, featuring lead single “I Got a Thing for You” (music video). The EP is available on Apple Music and Amazon.

Expanding the Music Theory Canon

Assistant Professor Paula Maust’s (MM ’16, DMA ’19, Harpsichord) Expanding the Music Theory Canon (SUNY Press) book grew out of her similarly named website and ongoing project to introduce composer variety to music education. “Classroom examples have the capacity to foster a sense of inclusion for students who might otherwise experience exclusion,” Maust notes in a SUNY Press blog post about the book, which contains 255 musical examples composed by 67 historical women and/or people of color.

“Hanukkah Without Ya”

Musician and photographer Britt Olson-Ecker (BM ’09, Voice) and keyboardist Jon Birkholz (BM ’07, Jazz Piano) are the featured guests on “Hanukkah Without Ya,” a yearning electro-pop song from Baltimore artist Micah E. Wood’s A Hanukkah EP Part 1, which is available online.