Peabody Opens Concert Season
Tonight, Friday, September 15, at 8:00 pm, the Peabody Institute's 2017-18 concert season begins with new faculty artist Tony Arnold, soprano, performing György Kurtág's
Kafka Fragments. This is the debut season of Peabody's recently appointed Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles Joseph Young (pictured), whose first performance of the season will be leading the Peabody Chamber Orchestra in Dvořák's
Othello Overture and works by Handel and Schubert on Tuesday, September 19. (Read a
feature from Tim Smith of
The Baltimore Sun on Young's new role and what other BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellows have achieved.) Peabody's
live streamed events start next week on Wednesday, September 20, at noon, with the Dean's Symposium featuring entrepreneur, author, speaker, consultant, and educator Eric Booth. The first live streamed concert will be the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, led by Marin Alsop, on Thursday, September 28, at 8:00 pm. All concerts at Peabody are free. Please join us in person or online for any or all of these events.
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FROM THE DEAN
With the launch this year of the Breakthrough Curriculum, our focus is on enhancing the skillset of every student that comes to Peabody around what it means to be a musician and citizen artist in the 21st century. Peabody has put a stake in the ground by committing to the belief that being a great musician today requires both excellence and a facility with other critical skills that will allow our students to bring their musical training and gifts to fruition in meaningful, imaginative, and useful ways.
Community engagement is clearly a key part of this approach to training, and it's important to note that perhaps never in our history has it been more important for artists to fully connect with communities in order to overcome the separation and disconnect that we increasingly see in our culture. As artists, we can make connections where others cannot, and it's incumbent upon us to do so. Art is an expression of human aspirations, emotional needs, and life views. As we look around our country and the world, making connections is on our collective consciousness more than ever, and deserves our attention.
Like many things in life, we come full circle. Peabody was founded in 1857 as a cultural center; a concert series, a museum, a lecture series, a library, even before it became a conservatory. Digging deeply into our institutional DNA, we build on our tradition of excellence but understand that we must be, and help our students to be, in and of many communities: the university community, the civic life of Baltimore, and the international community.
Fred Bronstein, Dean |
ON STAGE / OFF CAMPUS
Friday, September 15; Saturday, September 16, 8:00 pm
Łukasz Kuropaczewski (
GPD '05, Guitar) made his BSO debut last night at the Music Center at Strathmore with the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by Peabody's Director of Graduate Conducting Marin Alsop. He will join the orchestra again this weekend on Joaquín Rodrigo's
Concierto de Aranjuez in the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.
Saturday, September 16, 9:00 pm; Sunday, September 17, 6:00 pm
Jenny Lin (
KSAS BA '94, German; AD '98, Piano) will join Philip Glass, Ricardo Castro, Heliosa Fernandes, and Maki Namekawa for two performances of études and works for piano by Glass in São Paulo, Brazil. Glass is an alumnus of the Peabody Preparatory.
Saturday, September 16; Sunday, September 17, 7:30 pm
Peabody Distinguished Visiting Artist Eric Owens, bass-baritone, and faculty artist William Burden, tenor, will perform Mendelssohn's
Elijah with
Music of the Baroque, Jane Glover conducting. Owens will sing the role of Elijah, and Burden will sing the part of Obadiah. Saturday's performance will take place at the Harris Theater in Chicago and Sunday will be at the North Shore Center in Skokie, Ill.
Opera Philadelphia premiered composition faculty artist Kevin Puts' first chamber opera titled
Elizabeth Cree, an adaptation of Peter Ackroyd's gothic novel
The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, with libretto by Mark Campbell, with whom Puts won the Pulitzer Prize for
Silent Night in 2012.
Elizabeth Cree will be performed as part of Opera Philadelphia's Festival O at the Perelman Theater in Philadelphia from September 14 to 23.
Vocal studies faculty member and opera stage director Garnett Bruce directed Puccini's
Turandot for the 2017-18
San Francisco Opera season opener on Friday, September 8. Soprano Toni Marie Palmertree (
BM '06, Voice) made her debut in her role as Liu, the faithful slave. The production runs now until September 30 and then November 18 to December 9. When the production returns in November, Christopher Don Franklin (
DMA '99, Conducting) will make his San Francisco Opera conducting debut.
Peabody Events highlights select off-campus or live-streamed performances featuring Peabody performers. For other events, please visit our Peabody Institute Concerts Facebook page. For the complete weekly list of concerts at Peabody, subscribe to Events at Peabody at peabody.jhu.edu/news.
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ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS
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Faculty artist Oscar Bettison has been awarded The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. Bettison is one of 173 diverse scholars, artists, and scientists to be awarded the fellowship in 2017.
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Douglas Buchanan and Caitlin Vincent
Faculty composer Douglas Buchanan (
MM '08, Composition, Music Theory Pedagogy; DMA '13, Composition) and librettist Caitlin Vincent (
MM '09, Voice) won the $25,000
Sackler Prize in Music Composition from the University of Connecticut. Their collaboration is a one-hour opera to be premiered in 2019, focusing on Bessie Coleman, the first female African-American aviator, and Ma Ferguson, the first female governor of Texas.
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In August, Sahun (Sam) Hong (
GPD '15, MM '17, Piano) won the 2017 Vendome Prize at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. He won the joint second prize (no first prize was given) with Do-Hyun Kim. Hong will return to Verbier next year for a debut recital. In the
final round, he performed solo pieces by Ravel and Chopin and also Dvořák's Piano Quintet with the Gringolts Quartet. Sejoon Park (
BM '12, AD '17, Piano) was also a finalist in the competition.
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Junior Junhong Kuang tied for the highest prize awarded for guitar in the 66th
ARD International Music Competition in Munich. The jury did not award a first prize; Kuang tied for second and won the "Audience Prize." The competition included over 40 participants from all over the world, many of them winners of past international competitions. The ARD International Music Competition is held by the German public broadcasting consortium.
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Ryo Usami (
BM '17, Violin) who studied with Violaine Melançon, won the principal second violin position with Symphony NH in Nashua, NH, in their September audition.
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RECENT RECORDINGS
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Peabody Preparatory alumna Tori Amos has released a new album,
Native Invader. She spoke to NPR's
Morning Edition host Rachel Martin about her time at Peabody, her upbringing, and the new CD.
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Innovative Dutch contemporary musical group Ensemble Klang has released their album
Black Untitled. The CD features the works of Composition Department Chair Michael Hersch (
BM '95, MM '97, Composition). Described by the ensemble as a "ritual of sound and space,"
cortex and ankle I - XI opens the album featuring faculty artist Ah Yong Hong (
BM '98, MM '01, Voice).
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Outcalls - a sextet led by Britt Olsen-Ecker (
BM '09, Voice) and Melissa Wimbish (
GPD '11, Voice; GPD '14, Chamber Ensemble) - will release an album,
No King, with a concert tonight, Friday, September 15, at 8:00 pm, at WTMD. The concert will also be live on the air on Baltimore's 89.7 FM (
WTMD Radio).
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