Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health John Howard brings a powerful national voice to the first Global Summit on Occupational Health in Music taking place July 9 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. The event, supported by a 2024 Johns Hopkins University Nexus Award to Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in Performing Arts and Health Kris Chesky, marks a historic moment of recognition for musicians as a uniquely vulnerable and underserved workforce. Howard’s plenary address will reflect on the critical role of occupational health in safeguarding the well-being of those engaged in music-making, situating music-specific occupational health challenges within the broader scope of NIOSH and its Total Worker Health framework that emphasizes prevention, interdisciplinary collaboration, and institutional responsibility. Howard’s message underscores the Summit's goal of embedding occupational health as an essential domain of competency in the discipline of music. Other Peabody presenters at the Summit include Serap Bastepe-Gray, assistant professor and co-founder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Music & Medicine, who is also co-chairing the international symposium of the Performing Arts Medicine Association which follows the Summit; faculty artist Ah Young Hong performing faculty composer Michael Hersch’s oaks cut for the pyres – five songs after Robert Lowell; and Raluca Matei, Giulia Ripani, and Nabeel Zuhdi, Peabody’s inaugural cohort of Performing Arts and Health postdoctoral fellows. Peabody Magazine recently talked with Matei and Ripani about their research and Summit presentations for these preview stories. 

Friday, July 11, through Saturday, August 9

The 56th Summer Festival at the Yellow Barn international center for chamber music in Putney, Vermont, features its consistently adventurous programming, pairing works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Schubert with those of György Kurtág, Conlon Nancarrow, Kaija Saariaho, and other living composers. Performing these concerts is an exceptional group of chamber musicians from around the country, including Kim Kashkashian (BM ’73, Viola), baritone faculty artist William Sharp, and soprano Melissa Wimbish (GPD ’11, Voice; GPD ’14, Chamber Music). Yellow Barn’s 2025 summer festival runs through August 9, and tickets are available online.

Saturday, July 12, 7:00 pm EDT

Pete Rock sampling Ahmad Jamal’s “I Love Music” piano line for Nas’ “The World is Yours.” Mobb Depp turning a loop of Herbie Hancock’s “Jessica” into its “Shook Ones, Pt. II.” Late producer J-Dilla sampling Zoot Sims’ bubbly “Indiana” for the Roots’ “Dynamite.” Hip-hop producers have rifled through jazz albums looking for samples, basslines, drum breaks, and hooks since the 1980s—and in recent years Baltimore alto saxophonist and faculty artist Tim Green has reinvigorated those jazz standards and deep cuts. Green and his ensemble present jazz and hip-hop samples at the Takoma Station Tavern; tickets are available online.

Wednesday, July 16, 1:00 pm PDT

For nearly 75 years the Music Academy of the West’s summer classical music training program has brought distinguished musicians, composers, conductors, and emerging young artists to southern California for networking events, concerts, and master classes. Faculty artist and Strings Chair Alan Stepansky returns to the Academy cello faculty this summer, and leads a master class in the Music Academy’s Lehmann Hall in Montecito; tickets are available online.

Saturday, July 19, 8:30 pm MDT

English composer Benjamin Britten’s opera adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, featuring a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, is genuinely more frightening than Henry James’ tautly creepy source novella. Britten adds musical tension to this story of a governess who vows to protect the two children under her care from the ghosts that, perhaps, only she can see. Gemma New (MM ’11, Conducting) makes her Santa Fe Opera debut conducting The Turn of the Screw, which opens July 19 and continues July 23, August 1, and August 5. Tickets are available online.

Friday, July 25, 8:00 pm CDT

Director of the Graduate Conducting Program Marin Alsop co-curated the 2025 Breaking Barriers Festival: Women Leaders in Food and Music with author/restaurateur and percussionist Molly Yeh. Over its three days during the summer Ravinia Festival north of Chicago, Alsop and Yeh tap into the global adventures offered by music and food. The headline concert features celebrity chefs introducing each work as Alsop leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade and George Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, and guest conductor Alexandra Arrieche (AD ’13, Conducting), makes her CSO debut on the podium for Reena Esmail’s RE|Member. 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.

Metallic Life Review

Matmos, the adventurous electronic duo of Computer Music faculty artist Martin Schmidt and Hopkins English professor Drew Daniel, explores all things metal on its fifteenth studio album, Metallic Life Review (Thrill Jockey). For the sample sources and sound library they created for this album, Daniel and Schmidt turned to noises made by metal objects that they’ve documented and recorded since forming in 1995: pots and pans, aluminum rods, cemetery gates, aluminum cans, and more. The result is an album that unabashedly imagines the rhythmic possibilities of everyday objects. Metallic Life Review is available to stream or purchase online.