Tori Amos to Speak at Peabody Conservatory Commencement
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Singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and eight-time Grammy Award nominee Tori Amos will address the graduates at the Peabody Conservatory’s Commencement ceremony on Wednesday, May 22, in Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall. Amos, who studied piano at the Peabody Preparatory from 1968 to 1974, is among the most influential solo artists of her generation. In honor of her singular career and outsized impact, Amos will also be awarded this year’s George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America. The highest honor bestowed by the Peabody Institute, the George Peabody Medal has been presented since 1980. The ceremony, which begins at 10:00 am on Wednesday, May 22, will be
livestreamed.
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It is almost impossible to believe, but graduation is upon us! On May 22, the Peabody Conservatory will celebrate its 137th graduation exercises, where 70 Bachelor of Music degrees, 123 Master of Music degrees, 10 Master of Arts degrees, 28 Graduate Performance Diplomas, one Performer’s Certificate, and 15 Doctor of Musical Arts degrees will be conferred.
Graduation always represents the happiest of occasions. This year, singer-songwriter Tori Amos, an alumna of the Peabody Preparatory, will be our graduation speaker and will receive the George Peabody Medal, Peabody’s highest honor. Ms. Amos’ career has spanned 15 albums, landed her eight Grammy award nominations, and crossed over to include penning a stage musical,
The Light Princess, which premiered at London’s Royal National Theater. Tori’s songs, often intensely personal, have frequently touched on themes of feminism, family, sexuality, politics, and religion. She has been an important and leading voice for victims of sexual assault for many years preceding the #MeToo movement.
When we talk about getting prepared to pursue a career I am always reminded that classical and jazz musicians, and now dancers at Peabody, going out into the world can take a page from pop artists like Tori Amos, who have built substantive and broad careers and professional brands in an interesting and sustainable way. We look forward to the opportunity to hear from Tori Amos about what she has done, and what our graduates can learn from her. And of course, we’ll be enthusiastically celebrating the success of the graduating class of 2019!
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Friday, May 3 at 7:30 pm
Scalia/Ginsburg, an opera by professional studies faculty member Derrick Wang, will have its last performance at
OperaDelaware tonight. The work, which has set box office records during its run, is paired with Gilbert & Sullivan’s
Trial by Jury in OperaDelaware’s “In Opera We Trust” festival.
Sunday, May 5 at 3:30 pm
The Poulenc Trio - Bryan Young (
BM '96, Bassoon); Preparatory faculty artist Irina Kaplan Lande, piano; and Liang Wang, oboe - will perform at the
National Gallery of Art in a concert called "From Nature, Truth: Whitman, Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites." The concert will feature composers who inspired and were influenced by John Ruskin and Walt Whitman in celebration of their 200th birthdays.
Sunday, May 5 at 4:00 pm
Soprano Kerry Holahan (
MM ’14, Early Music Voice) and master’s student Jared Hancock, baritone, will be featured soloists in “The Cherished Music of Jim Rutter,” as a part of
Bach in Baltimore’s concert at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ellicott City, Md. The Bach in Baltimore Choir will perform Rutter’s
Gloria and
Psalm 150, as well as the
Mass of the Children.
Friday, May 24 at 4:30 pm
The Peabody Renaissance Ensemble has been selected as a Festival Ensemble for the 2019 Young Performers Festival and Showcase, a part of the
Bloomington Early Music Festival in Indiana. They will present a program of Medieval, Renaissance, traditional music, and an all-Spanish program the ensemble performed at the Conciertos de la Villa de Santo Domingo Festival, Dominican Republic, in February.
Saturday, May 25 at 7:00 pm
Making his debut at Carnegie Hall, Rob McGinness (
MM '17, Voice) will be the baritone soloist in Faure’s
Requiem and Mozart’s
Missa Brevis in C major with MidAmerica Productions and the
New England Symphonic Ensemble. McGinness was also selected as a semi-finalist in the Florida Grand Opera Young Patronesses of the Opera Competition.
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Peabody Notes 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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Sean Gallagher/Alon Goldstein
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Sean Gallagher (
BM ’85, MM ’89, Piano) and Alon Goldstein (
GPD ’95, MM ’96, Piano) are the first affiliates of the Peabody Conservatory to be inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. Gallagher is an internationally recognized authority on music in late medieval and Renaissance Europe. Pianist Goldstein is the artistic director for the Distinguished Artists Concert & Lecture Series in Santa Cruz, Calif.
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Holly Mulcahy (
BM '94, Music Education; PC '94, MM '96, Violin) has been appointed as the new concertmaster for the Wichita Symphony Orchestra in Wichita, Kan. She will also be serving in the position of partner for audience engagement for the symphony.
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Soprano Alexandra Razskazoff (
BM ‘14, Voice) won first place, a prize of $3,000, in the Washington, D.C.’s, chapter of the National Society of Arts & Letters Dorothy Lincoln-Smith Vocal Competition.
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Michelle Rofrano (
MM ’15, Conducting) is the assistant conductor at Florida Grand Opera. Last summer, she was the assistant conductor at the Glimmerglass Festival and has previously served as assistant conductor for the New York Youth Symphony.
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Joseph Young (
AD '09, Conducting), Peabody's Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles, has been named the Berkeley Symphony’s next music director. He won the position after a last-minute substitution for a January concert. He will start this position in the 2019-20 season in addition to his duties at Peabody.
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Faculty artist Maria Lambros, viola, performs on this recording with the New Zealand Quartet on Naxos Records. She also recently launched Our Joyful Noise Baltimore, a non-profit organization that presents a series of concerts featuring professional musicians in a veterans’ shelter, women’s prison, cancer treatment residence, and for people living with autism in the Baltimore community.
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Jacqueline Pollauf (
BM ’06, Harp; MM ’07, Harp Pedagogy) has recently published
Exercises in Harmonics through Oakway Studios, her own publishing company. This is the second of Pollauf’s major pedagogical publications, following
Pedal Exercises for Harp in 2016. The corresponding video is an introduction to harmonics, demonstrating many of the techniques used throughout the book.
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