Peabody's First Founder's Week
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Last week, the Peabody Institute celebrated its first Founder’s Week, honoring the legacy of George Peabody who established the Institute on February 12, 1857. Founder’s Week highlighted Peabody’s rich history while shining a light on our vision for the future, rooted in the five Pillars of the Breakthrough Plan. Over the course of the week, faculty, staff, students, and alumni celebrated Peabody through volunteerism, community engagement, performance, and philanthropic gifts to support Peabody’s mission and programs.
Founder’s Week was a wonderful opportunity for the Peabody community to come together and highlight George Peabody’s tremendous legacy and continuing impact on the arts, education, philanthropy, and the greater Baltimore community. Although the week’s programming has concluded, you can still take part and learn more about Peabody's rich history and the Breakthrough Plan on our Founder's Week
webpage.
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With so much focus on the launch of new programs and strategies, we can sometimes lose sight of what’s immediately in front of us: the nearly 1,000
programs and concerts that take place annually at Peabody. I was reminded of how wonderful these seemingly everyday events can be when the Peabody Symphony Orchestra recently performed a remarkable program under the leadership Marin Alsop, director of graduate conducting at Peabody, music director of the BSO, and recently named chief conductor of the Ravinia Festival. It is always special when Marin is on the podium, but this program – consisting of Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 – was especially noteworthy. The Bartok, notoriously difficult for both the soloist and the ensemble, got a brilliant performance from Chengcheng Yao. The PSO shined similarly in the Shostakovich. As I listened, I was reminded of the incredible talent that Peabody attracts and nurtures. After the concert, Bob Pierce (who was the Peabody Institute’s director for 12 years and served as Principal Horn for the Baltimore Symphony for 25) pulled me aside and said simply that it was the best he had ever heard the orchestra play at Peabody. Bob knows a great orchestra performance when he hears it. This evening was a proud moment for all of us, made even more special in that it was also the 7th annual concert honoring the memory of Dr. Steven Muller, who served as president of Johns Hopkins University from 1972 to 1990 and was responsible for the merger that brought the Peabody Institute into the Johns Hopkins family.
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Thursday, February 20, 8:00 pm
Columbia University School of the Arts'
Composer Portraits series shines a spotlight on Peabody Composition Department Chair Oscar Bettison with a program of his works at Miller Theatre. Alarm Will Sound with faculty artist Courtney Orlando, violin, will perform the New York premiere of Bettison’s
Pale Icons of Night as well as his 2012 work
Livre des Sauvages.
Friday, February 21, 7:30 pm
Associate Professor of Voice Ah Young Hong (
BM ’98, MM ’01, Voice) will sing the world premiere of
Agatha by Composition Professor Michael Hersch (
BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition) with
Camerata Bern in Switzerland. The work for soprano, violin, clarinet, and ensemble was commissioned by Camerata Bern, with whom Hersch is composer in residence.
Friday to Sunday, February 21-23, 8:00 pm
Directed by Timothy Nelson (
BM ’04, Composition), Georges Bizet’s
Le Cabaret de Carmen, an immersive tango cabaret based on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, will be produced by Washington, D.C.’s In Series. Performances will take place at Baltimore’s
Theatre Project.
Monday, February 24, 8:00 pm, 10:00 pm
A Peabody Jazz Faculty Ensemble including Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair Sean Jones, trumpet, and bassist Kristopher Funn are scheduled to appear in an upcoming performance at Washington, D.C.'s legendary jazz supper club
Blues Alley.
Thursday, February 27, Friday, February 28, 8:30 pm
Distinguished Artist in Residence Vadim Gluzman, violin, will be featured with the
Philharmonic Arturo Toscanini in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in C major in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. The performance will take place at the Auditorium Paganini in Parma, Italy.
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Peabody Notes highlights select off-campus or live-streamed performances featuring Peabody performers. For other events, please visit our Peabody Conservatory Facebook
page
. For the complete weekly list of concerts at Peabody, subscribe to
Events at Peabody
or visit
peabody.jhu.edu/events
.
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Director of the Graduate Conducting Program Marin Alsop was hired as the first chief conductor and curator of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for a two-year appointment. During the last two seasons at Ravinia, she curated centennial celebrations of conductor-composer-teacher Leonard Bernstein, her mentor.
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Michael Blackman (
MM ’05, Music Education), band director for River Hill High School in Clarksville, Md., for over a decade, was selected to represent Maryland in
School Band and Orchestra magazine’s “50 Directors Who Make a Difference in the United States.”
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Serap Bastepe-Gray & Julian Gray
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Assistant Professor and Co-Founder of the Center for Music and Medicine Serap Bastepe-Gray (
BM ’96, MM ’99, Guitar) and Chair of the Guitar Department Julian Gray (
BM ’79, MM ’82, Guitar) were published in the
Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy for their study aiming to investigate the activation differences in the different ways musicians mentally practice previously learned repertoire.
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Justin Nurin (
GPD ’10, Trumpet) has been the custodian of the Instrument of Hope, a trumpet made for the foundation of survivors of the Parkland school shooting, and has performed on it for several concerts including one at Carnegie Hall. Nurin was featured in a
WBALTV news story for his work advocating against gun violence.
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Graduate Performance Diploma student Alaina Rea, viola, has won the assistant principal viola position of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra for its upcoming season.
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Director of LAUNCHPad and guitar faculty Zane Forshee (
MM ’01, GPD ’03, DMA ’11, Guitar) has released a new recording that focuses on the works of Vicente Asencio and several other Valencian composers. In its first week, the release made it to No. 1 on Amazon’s ranking of classical artist New Releases.
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Are you going on tour or performing at a major venue? Have you been invited as a guest lecturer at another major conservatory or university? Are you presenting your research at a national conference or collaborating with fellow Peabody faculty, students, or alumni on a major project? Has your student just won a major competition? We know you are doing amazing things in the world, let us help promote your work!
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