Save the dates: the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University hosts Polyaspora, a five-day festival centering Black and Brazilian perspectives in contemporary music, at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. this September. The festival is curated by Associate Professor and Chair of Composition Felipe Lara, a 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music finalist (pictured, above left), and Columbia University Professor George Lewis (pictured, above right), Artistic Director of the globally renowned and New York City-based International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). ICE serves as the festival’s guest performers and educators. Polyaspora’s four free concerts (including one on Peabody’s Baltimore campus) spotlight composers such as Leila Adu-Gilmore, Michelle Agnes, Marcos Balter, Arthur Kampela, Andile Khumalo, Nicole Mitchell, Jeffrey Mumford, Tebogo Monnakgotla, Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, Jocy de Oliveira, Igor Santos, as well as new works written by Peabody Conservatory students. Polyaspora, which convenes September 23 and offers concerts each evening from September 24 through 27, is supported by Lara’s inaugural Johns Hopkins Nexus Award and is free and open to the public. Please visit our concert calendar for more details.

As I write this on July 1, it is the first day of the new fiscal year. Generally, I like to think we spend most of our time focused on excellence, meeting our mission, and carrying out significant strategic advances for Peabody that build strength upon strength. But we also know that underlying financial stability is key to the future—without it there can be no future. And so, it seems a particularly important moment to celebrate our concluding the last fiscal year with a budgetary surplus, having this past year launched a major, unprecedented commitment to meet full demonstrated financial need with no loans for eligible domestic undergraduates, and being on the cusp of beginning a major capital improvement project (more to come very soon on this).

Underlying the Breakthrough Plan 2024, which we are now wrapping up, has been a strong financial plan with a multi-year focus on growing enrollment through new and expanded programs, enhanced fundraising, and strategic expense control, leading to the elimination of longstanding structural deficits that have historically ranged in the millions. In recent years, despite COVID interruptions, we were able to continue to reduce that operating deficit to half of previous annual deficits. Our plan had been to achieve a surplus in FY25, but thanks to increased enrollment and careful expense management, we will have officially concluded FY24 in the black, a year ahead of plan. It is also worth noting that the highly disciplined RCM budgeting model under which we operate (a differentiator from our university-based peers) requires more complete financial transparency and reporting.

Looking ahead, we have every reason to anticipate that our strategic investments in programming, financial aid, and capital needs, alongside the careful financial planning that will accompany our next strategic plan, will lead to continued stabilization and positive operating margins in the years ahead. But for the moment, we’ll just enjoy this turning point in Peabody’s financial story.

Sincerely,

Monday, July 8, through Tuesday, July 16

Baritone Michael Maliakel (BM ’12, Voice), who recently concluded a three-year run in the title role of Disney’s Aladdin on Broadway and was an ensemble member in the June 2024 New York City Center Encores! presentation of Titanic, stars as Prince Eric in a production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid that runs July 8 to 16 at America's oldest and largest outdoor musical theater, the Muny, in St. Louis, MO. Tickets are available online.

Sunday, July 14, through Sunday, July 21

Gilbert & Sullivan’s Ruddigore had the unenviable task of opening right after one of the musical theater pair’s most popular productions, The Mikado, and time has been kinder than critics were to this madcap parody of Victorian melodrama taking place among the well-heeled Murgatroyd family at the titular estate. The Young Vic, Baltimore’s Gilbert & Sullivan company under the artistic direction of Catrin Davies (GPD ’03, Voice), presents this comic opera featuring Cassidy Dixon (MM ’21, Voice/Pedagogy), Thomas Hochla (MM ’16, Voice), Rebecca Regan (MM ’24, Voice), Ben Ross (MM ’23, Voice), Hannah Wardell (MM ’18, Voice), and Emma Webster (MM ’22, Voice/Pedagogy) through July 21 at the Gilman School; tickets are available online.

Saturday, July 20, 7:00 pm EDT

Composer Viet Cuong’s (BM ’11, MM ’12, Composition) “John and Jim” for wind ensemble, commissioned by the Columbus Pride Bands and the Queen City Freedom Band of Cincinnati for the 2024 Pride Bands Alliance Annual Conference, receives its world premiere during the conference in Columbus, Ohio. The piece celebrates Ohioans Jim Obergefell and John Arthur, who brought Marriage Equality to the United States of America. The concert takes place in the Riffe Center for Government and the Arts and tickets are available online.

Sunday, July 21, through Sunday, August 11

The Concert Truck, co-directed by Susan Zhang (GPD ’18, Piano), continues its summer 2024 season with stops around the Midwest. From July 21 to 27 during the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition, the Concert Truck stages free performances around Cleveland featuring the 2024 CIPC Quarter-Finalists. From July 31 through August 4, the Gilmore Piano Festival and the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo present the Concert Truck for a series of six free outdoor concerts. And from August 7 to 11 the Great Lakes Center for the Arts on the shores of Lake Michigan in Petoskey presents the Concert Truck for eight performances in the area.

Tuesday, July 30, 7:00 pm PDT

Since its 1963 founding, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s adventurous directors cultivated the annual Santa Cruz, California, event into a crucible for new music. From first director Gerhard Samuel through now Music Director Laureate Marin Alsop’s long tenure from 1992 to 2016 and current director/conductor Cristian Măcelaru, the festival and its orchestra nurture up-and-coming artists through its Cabrillo Conductors/Composers Workshop and public performances. Composer and violinist Nick Bentz (BM ’17, Violin and Composition; MM ’18, Violin) is one of three under-30 composers showcased this year, with Maestro Măcelaru leading the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra through the world premieres of these new works at a free concert at the SC Civic Auditorium.

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

Prevailing Wind

Deer Isle and the Maine town that bears its name didn’t get a bridge connecting the island in the Penobscot Bay to the mainland until 1939—meaning that for a pair of brothers living in this hard-scrabble lobster community in 1913, the only way they’re leaving is by boat. Prevailing Wind (Archway), Professor Thomas Dolby’s debut novel and second book following his entertaining 2016 memoir The Speed of Sound, follows Davey and Jacob Haskell as they try out for the sailing crew of a New York Yacht Club member’s luxury racing yacht, seeing the job as a potential escape. 

Rectangles and Circumstance

The concert and recording collaborations between composer Caroline Shaw and the Sō Percussion ensemble, which includes Eric Cha-Beach (BM ’04, GPD ’05, Percussion), yield captivating, genre-defying music—see their 2021 Grammy Award-winning Narrow Sea or the intimate set of songs Let the Soil Play its Part (2021). Shaw and Sō sound like a full-fledged, road-tested band on the new Rectangles and Circumstance (Nonesuch), a collection of 10 songs that are as musically ornate as they are indie-pop catchy.