Last year, Peabody faculty artist Denyce Graves launched her groundbreaking Shared Voices program, a historic collaboration among Historically Black Colleges and Universities and leading conservatories and music schools of North America. Organized by Graves’ namesake foundation, Shared Voices’ current 2022-24 cohort of vocal artists is being prepared to address the performing arts’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in novel ways and includes students from Fisk University, Howard University, the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, and Peabody.

Peabody is proud to welcome Shared Voices Symposium 2023: In the Driver’s Seat, the program's second annual event, to its Baltimore campus September 29 through October 1. This immersive experience offers an intensive opportunity for students to gain foundational knowledge and expertise for success. The three-day event includes master classes, workshops, explorations of vocal, mental, and physical health, simulated auditions, and chances to engage with classical vocal artists and industry experts such as bass baritone Simon Estes, mezzo soprano Frederica Von Stade, composer Carlos Simon, President and Director of Minnesota Opera Ryan Taylor, and more. Many components of the Shared Voices Symposium are open to the public, including a September 29 recital featuring soprano Symone Harcum, tenor Andrew Turner, and pianist Jose Melendez. Details and registration are available online.

The intersection of performing arts and health continues to be a rapidly growing and expanding footprint for Peabody, encompassing health for performing artists as well as engagement with the performing arts to enhance well-being. The most recent development in this area includes the appointment of Peabody’s first Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Kris Chesky, who now chairs Peabody’s newly established Department of Performing Arts and Health and holds a joint appointment with the School of Medicine, and is charged with establishing a research lab at Peabody and new academic programs in performing arts health, science, and education. A team of three post-docs will support Chesky’s work and manage a growing portfolio of research initiatives across the spectrum of performing arts and health. All of this adds to an established footprint that already includes the Johns Hopkins Rehabilitative Network Clinic for Performing Artists at Peabody—the first clinic of its kind to provide diagnostic and therapeutic services on a premier conservatory campus; the work that has been embedded in the Conservatory student experience with the Peak Performance Fundamentals program; and Peabody’s partnership with Johns Hopkins Hospital to bring the arts into healthcare, offering musician visits at patient bedsides through the Sound Rounds program, and providing daily live music in public spaces throughout the hospital campus through the Music for a While program.

The area of performing arts and health offers an exciting new cross-disciplinary frontier, and Peabody is fully committed to playing a leadership role in paving the way in understanding and addressing performing arts-related injury as well as helping unlock the vastly untapped potential that music and dance may play as a palliative in treating a range of health conditions. More to come on this exciting initiative in the future. 

Sincerely,

Friday, September 15, through Sunday, September 17

Choreographer/performer Rush Johnston (BFA ’22, Dance) channeled their queer coming-of-age story in a religious and working-class pocket of South Carolina into the dance-and-theater work Keeping Watch, which they debuted in June. Johnston performs this visceral work three times during Philadelphia Fringe Festival at the Fidget Space: Tickets are available online.

Saturday, September 16, 8:00 pm PDT

In 2021 producer Rob van Weelde and arranger/producer Roeland Jacobs turned Beach Boys songs into a symphonic work that the Antwerp Philharmonic Orchestra recorded for release. The Seven Symphonies: A Classical Tribute to Beach Boys Music includes 33 songs—from early hits such as 1963’s “Surfin’ U.S.A.” to the mature disillusionment of “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times”—that Jacobs arranged for orchestra. Alexandra Arrieche (AD ’13, Conducting) led those recordings, and now as music director leads the Olympia Symphony Orchestra in the North American premiere performance of The Seven Symphonies at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are available online.

Saturday, September 23, 8:00 pm EDT

Peabody Computer Music Associate Professor Sam Pluta and Princeton Laptop Orchestra Director Jeff Snyder released their debut recording, exclusiveOr, in 2008 and continues to perform their composition and improvising collaborations under the same name. exclusiveOr makes a rare live appearance as part of the cooperative Elysium Furnace Works’ 2023 season in the Hudson Valley, performing at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie. Tickets are available online.

Monday, September 25, through Tuesday, October 3

In 2019, violinist Soh-Hyun Park Altino, a Preparatory alumna, began interpreting traditional Korean music on the Western violin while she was on faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now an associate professor of Music at Wheaton College in Illinois, Altino has turned her studies into a free lecture-recital tour titled “Playing Traditional Korean Sanjo on the Violin: The Kim Ilgu school of long sanjo” with Jeong Junho, who plays the changgu, a Korean percussion instrument. The tour includes four universities with Korean Studies programs and the Cleveland Museum of Art, and kicks off September 25 at Wheaton College’s Todd M. Beamer Student Center. 

Friday, September 29, through Sunday, October 1

Every fall between 1858 and 1902, painters and friends Susie M. Barstow and Edith Wilkinson Cook took canoe trips to a small island in the Hudson River about 50 miles north of New York City. Composer Steven Crino’s (MM ’18, Composition) and librettist Laurel Andersen's Six Autumns on the Hudson, a one-act chamber opera for two vocalists, violin, cello, and piano, explores what these two Hudson River School painters learned about themselves and each other on those journeys. The chamber opera opens September 29 at Mister John’s Music in Philadelphia, and continues through October 1. 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.

40@40

In 2019, Grammy-nominated soprano Laura Strickling (MM ’06, Voice) started commissioning 40 art songs from 40 composers and poets of diverse backgrounds to celebrate and advance the art form. The first installment, 40@40 (Bright Shiny Things), features Strickling accompanied by Daniel Schlosberg (BM ’00, MM ’01, Piano; KSAS BA ’00, History), and debuted at the top of the Billboard Traditional Classical Albums chart the last week of August. The album is available online.

“Kaddish”

At the 2022 Ravinia Festival north of Chicago, Professor and Director of the Graduate Conducting Program Marin Alsop led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Children’s Choir through Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony, with featured soprano Janai Brugger and Jaye Ladymore as narrator. The performance was recorded for PBS’ Great Performances series and debuted August 21; it remains available to stream or purchase online through September 18.