Sean Jones, the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Jazz Studies, and the student musicians of Peabody Jazz head to New York City this month for the Jack Rudin Jazz Championship competition held by Jazz at Lincoln Center. Pulitzer-prize winning composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Managing and Artistic Director, personally invites ten of the top college and university jazz programs from around the country to come to midtown Manhattan for two days of intensive rehearsals and workshops that culminate in two rounds of competition and a final concert in Frederick P. Rose Hall. Peabody makes its first appearance in the prestigious competition this year, which takes place January 14 and 15 at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room and Rose Theater in New York and will also be livestreamed; tickets and streaming information can be found online.

Anyone who follows this space or other Peabody communications regularly understands that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and strategies now permeate every part of both our daily work and long-term strategies at Peabody. This has led today to our most diverse community ever, including a faculty that is 15 percent BIPOC, a rare statistic among professional performing arts schools, as well as an 18 percent BIPOC student cohort. Efforts around diversity, equity, and inclusion continue to underlie all our work across the Institute, from faculty, student, and staff recruitment, to infusing our curriculum with a broader range of creative voices and experiences in what is being taught and performed at Peabody, to our leadership in the field around these important issues.

The most recent manifestation of our commitment to DEI efforts at Peabody has been the creation of a new position—Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—who, as a member of the executive team, will help guide and execute critical DEI initiatives along with stewarding Peabody’s goals to advance Johns Hopkins University’s Roadmap on Diversity and Inclusion. That’s why I was so pleased when in December we announced the appointment of Dr. China Wilson to serve in this inaugural role. China comes to us from the Maryland State Department of Education where she served in a leadership role as Equity and Civil Rights Compliance Specialist. With more than 15 years of experience as a DEI professional, her prior appointments in higher education include roles at Trinity Washington University and the University of Maryland. She holds a PhD in educational management from Hampton University. 

China’s professional expertise and compelling personal story are wonderful additions to Peabody’s ongoing efforts to create a culture that is equitable and inclusive for all, productive and positive for all those ready and willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work. Our ultimate goal has to be not just to change Peabody, but to help lead change in an industry that has a lot of work to do to prepare for, thrive, and be relevant in a world that is increasingly diverse and unwilling to countenance the exclusivity that the classical arts have represented for too long. I am proud to see Peabody at the forefront of this work, and all of us, now with the expertise and stewardship of China Wilson, fully committed to bringing that change to fruition.   

Sincerely,

Fred Bronstein, Dean

Los Angeles Opera premiered Professor of Composition Du Yun’s one-character opera In Our Daughter’s Eyes in April, which the New Yorker's Alex Ross says achieved "a grittily detailed emotional realism of a kind I’ve seldom witnessed on an opera stage" in a 2022 roundup of notable recordings and performances. The Beth Morrison Projects co-commission receives its East Coast debut this month, kicking off the 2023 Prototype Festival in New York. Performances take place at Baruch Performing Arts Center; tickets can be found online.

Franz Joseph Haydn wrote more than 160 works for the baryton, a viol-like instrument popular through the end of the 18th century, and the Valencia Baryton Project—a string trio formed by colleagues from opera orchestras in Valencia, Spain, and Montpellier, France—aims both to perform those Haydn works and rekindle the baryton repertoire through new commissions. Amy Domingues (MM ’12, Viol de gamba) joins the Valencia Baryton Project’s Matthew Baker (baryton) and Estevan de Almeida Reis (viola) as guest artist at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, for a program of Haydn baryton trios and commissioned works by John Pickup, Steve Zink, and Jose Zárate. Ticket information can be found online.

Alexandra Razskazoff (BM ’14, Voice) and Toni Marie Palmertree (BM ’06, Voice) appear in Palm Beach Opera’s production of Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly taking place at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts. Palmertree sings Cio-Cio-San, the mistreated heroine, on January 21, and Razskazoff sings Kate Pinkerton throughout the run. Tickets for all three performances can be found online.

Mary Cardwell Dawson founded the National Negro Opera Company in Pittsburgh in 1941 and spent the next 21 years bringing opera to Black audiences. The Glimmerglass Festival commissioned a new play with music to celebrate this historic groundbreaker, and playwright/librettist Sandra Seaton and composer Carlos Simon's The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson debuted at the 2021 Glimmerglass Festival with Peabody's Rosa Ponselle Distinguished Faculty Artist Denyce Graves in the title role. Graves reprises the role in this Washington National Opera production, which also co-stars mezzo-soprano Taylor-Alexis DuPont (MM ’16, Voice). The performances take place at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, and tickets can be found online.

Conductor Joseph Young (AD ’09, Conducting), Peabody's Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles, returns to the Pasadena Symphony to lead the orchestra through Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, “Italian,” and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, which features guest soloist Vijay Venkatesh. The evening opens with composer Anna Clyne's Sound and Fury, for which the composer drew inspiration from Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 60 and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Tickets for both performances can be found online.

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