It took producer Ken Harper four years and rejections from both television and film industries before the original production of The Wiz debuted at Baltimore’s Mechanic Theatre in October 1974. The lively musical adaption of L. Frank Baum’s children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz opened on Broadway the next year and would go on to win seven 1975 Tony Awards, making big names for a few artists—including performers Dee Dee Bridgewater, Andre DeShields, Stephanie Mills, Ted Ross, and Tasha Thomas—who were little-known at the time. The Wiz returns for a Broadway revival a half century later, with the touring production opening in Baltimore this fall and a new slate of up-and-coming artists among the cast and creative team, including Paul Byssainthe Jr. (GPD ’19, Organ). The accomplished organist, conductor, composer, and current DMA candidate is The Wiz’s music director, part of a creative team that also includes up-and-coming director Schele Williams, arrangers Adam Blackstone and Joseph Joubert, and choreographer Jaquel Knight. The Wiz is touring this fall into winter, making stops in Charlotte, Atlanta, Greenville, and Chicago in November, prior to its spring 2024 revival at New York’s Marquis Theatre.

While I indeed wrote in October about the impending opening of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. and Peabody’s planned role in this moment, I thought it important to report back in the wake of the festivities.  

This was a great day for Johns Hopkins University and all of its divisions. The Hopkins Bloomberg Center is a spectacular facility, up to and including the state-of-the-art performance hall designed specifically with Peabody in mind. It was obvious, from the beginning of the day, that Peabody would be ubiquitous throughout the festivities. From the opening ceremonies that included a performance by Peabody voice faculty member Carl DuPont in a uniquely creative duet with the Baltimore hip hop artist Wordsmith, along with members of our opera chorus, to the afternoon concert in the theater with its American themed program and its great variety of ensembles and genres represented, it was a special day for music in this building. Peabody’s activities culminated in a dance performance that began on the “beach”—part of the lobby—and ended up inhabiting nearly every level in a choregraphed frenzy that seemed to shake the building.

I must say that I have never been more proud of Peabody. Trustees, advisory board members, university leadership, donors, faculty, students, and others all continually commented on how Peabody really “lit up the place.” In truth, it was a testament to the fact that music and dance can infuse life at any given moment in time in the most visceral way, with results unattainable through any other means. It was an auspicious beginning to the role that the performing arts will play in JHU’s new base in Washington D.C. and just a taste of what is to come in the months and years ahead. 

Sincerely,

Sunday, November 5, 4:00 pm CST

In early summer, the College Band Directors National Association named composer Viet Cuong’s (BM ’11, MM ’12, Composition) Vital Sines winner of the 2023 Frederick Fennell Prize for Outstanding Wind Band Composition. The piece was commissioned for the contemporary sextet Eighth Blackbird (with generous support of the US Navy Band), and the celebrated ensemble joins the University of Texas Wind Ensemble to perform the consortium premiere of Vital Sines at the Bates Recital Hall in Austin in a program that includes Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Procession of the Nobles” from Mlada, Arnold Schönberg’s Theme and Variations, Op. 43a, Missy Mazzoli’s A Thousand Tongues, and Joseph Schwantner’s . . . and the mountains rising nowhere. Tickets are available online.

Sunday, November 12, 2:00 pm EST

The Boston Symphony Orchestra celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hungarian Jewish composer György Ligeti with a weeklong series of concerts dedicated to the 20th-century pioneer. The choral ensemble Lorelai, led by founding artistic director and Peabody Director of Choral Studies Beth Willer, kicks off this Ligeti 100 festival with a free concert featuring a number of Ligeti works, as well as pieces by circa Renaissance composers Guillaume Du Fay, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Johannes Okeghem, and fellow 20th-century Hungarian György Kurtág’s Játékok for organ. The free concert takes place at the Saint Cecilia Church in Boston and tickets are not required.

Sunday, November 19, 2:00 EST

Over the summer Korean-American visual artist Mina Cheon collaborated with the Baltimore Composers Forum for a virtual concert featuring composer Jin-Hwa Choi (DMA ’19, Composition), who teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul, and her students, who responded to Cheon’s art works. The collaboration continues this month with an in-person concert featuring soprano Ji Eun Kim, pianist Bonghee Lee (MM ’12, DMA ’20, Piano), guitarist Young Jun Lim (BM ’16, Guitar), and gayageum player Soyeun Jung responding to Cheon’s art at An die Musik; tickets are available online.

Sunday, November 19, 3:30 pm EST

Peabody Music for New Media Assistant Professor Chris Kennedy scored writer/director Cadell Cook’s holiday movie Forgetting Christmas, which follows a woman’s journey home to care for her father as he navigates early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. The film, which was shot in Prince George’s County and earned a Best Feature Film nomination at the 2023 Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival in August, makes its regional debut at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring followed by a Q&A with the cast, filmmakers, and the Greater Maryland Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. Tickets are available online.

Friday, November 24, through Sunday, November 26

Alexandra Arrieche (AD ’13, Conducting), Music Director of the Henderson Symphony Orchestra in Nevada and Principal Conductor of the Antwerp Philharmonic Orchestra, leads the Antwerp orchestra in three Night of the Proms-Belgium concerts featuring Belgian singer-songwriter Berre, pop group Clouseau, English singer-songwriter James Morrison, American singer Anastacia, and the rock band Toto. The concerts take place at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp and 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.

The Musical Brain

In 2013, pianist Lois Svard (DMA ’91, Piano) started a blog called “the Musician’s Brain” where she applied neuroscience research to the study and performance of music simply because she was curious. With The Musical Brain: What Students, Teachers, and Performers Need to Know (Oxford University Press), Svard explores how over the past thirty years, “multiple scientific disciplines have led to a profound change in the way scientists think about music, and the evidence increasingly points to music as biological function,” she writes. “We may be as hardwired for music as we are for language—we may be born for music.” The book is available online.

Rachmaninoff • Gershwin: Transcriptions by Earl Wild

Earl Wild was an American musician who, thanks to being the staff pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the leadership of the famed Arturo Toscanini, became known for his transcriptions of jazz and classical works played on the radio and, eventually, television. Wild’s versions of George Gerwshin’s Porgy and Bess or Sergei Rachmaninoff songs successfully translate those composer’s soulful, moving music to solo piano, and John Wilson (BM ’10, MM ’12, Piano) includes both beloved Wild transcriptions on his recent album, Rachmaninoff • Gershwin: Transcriptions by Earl Wild (Avie), which is available online.