A New Home for Peabody Students | | |
The Peabody Residential Commons was the star attraction on student move-in day in August, when students, staff and families experienced Peabody’s new housing in full for the first time after a year of building and landscaping improvements and security and IT upgrades.
The new apartment-style housing now serves 260 primarily first- and second-year students, as well as some upper-division and graduate students.
The Commons represents the latest improvement to Peabody’s Mount Vernon campus and community over the past year. In addition to updates of elevators, classroom furniture, and security technology, major renovations to the Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall were completed in April, making the 2026–27 concert season the first full showcase of new and improved electrical, acoustic, and lighting capabilities.
Read more about the Peabody Residential Commons online.
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The start of the new academic year is always a special and exciting time, full of anticipation especially with our incoming class. Peabody’s Class of 2030 arrives with two “firsts.” It is our most selective class to date since we have been keeping such statistics, and it is the first class to take up residence in the newly acquired Peabody Residential Commons. Formerly the Waterloo Apartments, these apartment-style homes have transformed over the last year to student housing including building improvements, new furniture inventory, security enhancements, IT upgrades, and landscaping to be fully ready to welcome our residential students. Parents and students were thoroughly impressed with the PRC amenities!
This year our new students also experienced a reimagined Convocation ceremony where first year students were led in an official walk down Peabody’s historic and iconic spiral staircase and across the Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall Stage, foreshadowing a trip they will take again at graduation. During Convocation, we also officially launched the inaugural Common Theme—the Beauty of the Unresolved—a new academic initiative that ties together curricular and performance activities in a shared institutional focus.
Faculty and students have wasted no time in buckling to the business of another busy Peabody academic year even as we gear up for other exciting changes to come to our campus. More on that soon!
| | More news about Peabody alumni, faculty, and students can be found below and 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. | | | | Composer Līva Blūma (MM ’21, Composition) was named one of the four winners of the the 2026 Hildegard Commission at National Sawdust in Brooklyn and Qiujian Levi Lu (MM ’25, Computer Music) was named among the four finalists. The judging panel included Du Yun, Paola Prestini, Nathalie Joachim, Angélica Negrón, and inti figgis-vizueta. | | | | Felipe Lara, Laura Strickling | Faculty artist Felipe Lara and Professional Studies faculty member Laura Strickling (MM ’06, Voice) were named among the 63 artists, composers, musicians, and administrators from around the country as New Music USA 2026 Creator Fund Awardees. | | | | DMA composition student Christopher Thompson was named the winner of the sixth annual Emerging Black Composers Project from the San Francisco Symphony; as the Michael Morgan Prize recipient he receives a $15,000 commission and mentorship, and his piece will premiere with the San Francisco Symphony during the 2027–28 season. | | | |
Brand Named Inaugural Executive Director of Peabody Extended Learning
Academic leader and music educator Benjamin Brand has been appointed the inaugural executive director of Peabody Extended Learning, which expands the reach of the Institute’s non-degree, non-credit performing arts programs. Brand will shape and drive the growth of dynamic programming for lifelong learning, professional development, and training and engagement for artists of all backgrounds, ages, and skill levels.
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Friday, September 18, 7:00 pm EDT
Dancer/choreographer Zoe Brielle Payne (BFA ’23, Dance) is currently working on The Backroad Home, a full-length contemporary ballet inspired by her time growing up square dancing in Appalachia to be staged in March 2027. She and Makenna Charles (BFA ’26, Dance), debut an excerpt of that ballet at Iterations S.2, an evening of dance works-in-process at 2640 Space in Baltimore. Tickets available online.
Wednesday and Thursday, September 23 and 24
Concert pianists and sisters Chelsea de Souza (MM ’18, GPD ’19, Piano) and current DMA candidate Chloe de Souza perform Sept. 23 and 24 at the University of San Diego with the mobile venue Concert Truck, directed by Susan Zhang (GPD ’18, Piano).
Wednesday, September 23, 8:00 pm PDT
Saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and her touring band perform the John Coltrane 100th Celebration concert on the centennial of his birth, backed by a 16-piece orchestra led by conductor Jonathan Taylor Rush (MM ’19, Conducting). The concert takes place on a double-bill featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Tickets are available online.
Saturday, September 26, 5:45 pm CDT
The 2026 Hyde Park Jazz Festival celebrates the legacy and cultural richness of the Chicago neighborhood, bringing contemporary jazz musicians such as Emmet Cohen, Kris Davis, and Joshua Redman to perform at various South Side venues. Preparatory alumnus Brandon Woody and his Upendo ensemble, which includes Troy Long (BM '19, Jazz Piano), play the Hyde Park Jazz Festival’s Warner Stage September 26. Tickets are free and a $10 donation is suggested.
Sunday, September 27, 5:00 pm PDT
Acclaimed Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks (BM ’99, MM ’01, GPD ’03, Piano) celebrates the release of her new album Stranger Things: Piano Music from a Refugee’s Backpack (Novano) with an intimate solo recital at the Da Camera Society of Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles, Calif. 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.
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Brouhaha: Shaped By Fire
Violinist and Eight Blackbird member Maiani da Silva commissioned six composers to write for solo violin “based on what intrigues them about our human nature and our place in the ecosystem,” which she compiled into the Brouhaha: Shaped By Fire recording and performance project. The recently released album includes Viet Cuong’s (BM ’11, MM ’12, Composition) haunting piece, “Traveler.”
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Capital Finds
Sonja Kahler’s (GPD ’18, Organ) debut album is also the first recording featuring the Lively-Fulcher organ built in 2002 for the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America church in Washington, DC. Capital Finds: Surprising Organ Music from the USA's capital and others (Raven) spotlights organ works with some connection to various nations’ capitals.
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Hourglass
Baroklyn is a group of predominantly women string players led from the keyboard by concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein. The group’s second album, Hourglass (Naïve), features Preparatory alumnus Philip Glass’ Suite from The Hours and Tirol Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1).
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Interlaced: Music for Organ et al.
Composer Natalie Draper (BMA ’17, Composition) collaborated with a group of musicians over a period of six years on Interlaced: Music for Organ et al. (Acis), her debut album featuring solo, chamber, and choral organ music written for organist Anne Laver.
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Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines: The Music of Ayn Inserto
Trumpeter Sean Jones, Peabody’s Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies, performed a new suite written by big band composer Ayn Inserto in Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines (Summit Records), which was recorded with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Big Band in Cologne's Stadtgarten in May 2024.
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Opera and the Built Environment
Associate Professor of Musicology Laura Vasilyeva’s recent book, Opera and the Built Environment (University of Chicago Press), examines classic Italian opera houses in a global context. Supported in part by a 2018 Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award, it received an honorable mention from the jurors of the American Association of Italian Studies' Literary and Cultural Studies Book Award.
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Play Monk
Pianist Pat Thomas, drummer Antonin Gerbal, bassist Joel Grip (GPD ’05, Jazz Bass), and alto saxophonist Seymour Wright formed the [Ahmed] quartet to explore the musical ideas of the late American composer/bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. On the new Play Monk (Otorokul), [Ahmed] adventurously tackles works by pianist/composer Thelonius Monk, who led ensembles Abdul-Malik played in during the late 1950s.
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