Five Peabody Conservatory faculty members are among the more than 100 Johns Hopkins faculty recently awarded university grants to support their innovative research and practice. Associate professors Jenine Brown and Sam Pluta received 2023 Catalyst Awards; Brown’s grant supports the Peabody Harmony Lab to focus on the perception of harmonic syntax in the Music Theory department, while Pluta’s will support a new set of AI-driven software instruments to further research machine listening and learning in Music Engineering & Technology. Peabody faculty were also included in the inaugural cohort of Nexus Awards to support projects and programs located at Hopkins’ new home at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Assistant professor Richard Johnson will organize the Afarmusic Conference to explore the impact that changes in technology have on jazz and salsa music and education. Composition chair Felipe Lara’s Nexus award underwrites the spring 2024 Polyaspora Festival that showcases Black and Brazilian perspectives in contemporary music featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble. And Professor Marin Alsop, director of the Graduate Conducting Program, will collaborate with the National Symphony Orchestra on a series of master classes.

Read more Peabody news in the spring 2023 issue of Peabody magazine online—including digital extras such as recent Music for New Media graduate Aaron Gao's first television credit and a Q&A with faculty artist Warren Wolf about his upcoming album, as well as news posts about new faculty hires Barry Banks and Darin Atwater.

It has been some months since I wrote with an update on the ongoing work to make long-needed capital improvements to Peabody’s historic Mount Vernon campus. As I write today, we are about a month away from completing a formal study that will provide options that address the best way forward to improve the student experience on campus, from housing and dining to expansion and renovation of existing programmatic spaces. Working with our consultants and university partners, this study will allow us to make the right decisions regarding whether and how best to work with a third-party developer on housing, while understanding the impact of those decisions on where and how we can make important updates to our programmatic spaces in a way that both respects and celebrates the historic nature of our campus, while ensuring our spaces can serve the needs of generations of students to come. 

Peabody stands at a unique moment. Our academic and artistic trajectory is strong; we have the largest enrollment in our history; and we continue to lead in the innovation of our curriculum, the diversity of our community, and the strength of our faculty—the single most important aspect in attracting students to the Conservatory. At the same time, the obvious needs of an aging campus are driving us to make these improvements in the next three to five years, transforming our physical spaces to ensure our campus keeps pace with our programmatic vision and achievements. I look forward to sharing more about these exciting plans over this next year, as well as other key initiatives designed to take Peabody to yet a new level of access and excellence.

Sincerely,

Friday, June 2, through Sunday, June 4

Canadian writer Amanda Hale’s Pomegranate tells a lesbian love story set in an ancient Pompeiian villa. In her libretto for the opera inspired by that poetry collection and written by cellist/composer Kye Marshall, Pomegranate pairs that relationship drama with another from 1981 Toronto. New York-based soprano Danielle Buonaiuto (MM ’12, Voice), a co-founder of Brooklyn’s dynamic ChamberQUEER, co-stars in the Canadian Opera Company’s world premiere of this timely opera, staged during Pride Toronto 2023 at the Canadian Opera Company Theatre in Toronto; tickets available online. 

Saturday, June 10, 6:00 pm EDT

The chamber duo of Peabody Violin Professor Judith Ingolfsson and pianist Vladmir Stoupel pairs two beautiful sonatas by lesser-known women composers with some dependably intoxicating pieces by Johannes Brahms and Nicolo Paganini for this recital. Germaine Tailleferre’s Sonata No. 1 (1921) and Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata for viola and piano (1919) are lively works whose lushness complements the technical dazzle of Brahms’ Scherzo in C Minor for violin and piano from the “F-A-E” Sonata and Polish composer Karol Szymanowski's addition of piano to Paganini’s Caprice No. 24. Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel plays Bargemusic on the East River moored in Brooklyn Bridge Park; tickets available online.

Saturday, June 11, through Sunday, June 25

French composer Jacques Offenbach and librettist Hector Crémieux’s irreverent, catchy Orpheus in the Underworld reimagines the Greek myth, making Orpheus a music teacher whose wife Eurydice is carrying on with the shepherd next door. Alicia Hurtado (MM ’20, Voice) plays Cupid in the Pocket Opera company production that opens June 11 at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, California, and continues June 17 at the Jarvis Center in Napa, June 18 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, and June 25 at the San Francisco Legion of Honor; tickets available online.

Friday, June 23, 7:30 pm EDT

The Peabody Consort’s “A Tale of Two Centuries” program opens the 57th Indianapolis Early Music Festival with music from England, France, Italy, Scotland, and Spain that dates from circa 1500 and 1600. Peabody Consort founder and Historical Performance Professor Mark Cudek (MM ’82, Lute) is artistic director of the annual summer festival of the nation’s oldest continuous presenter of early music, and he’s joined in the Consort by Liv Castor (BM ’19, Harp), Teresa Deskur (BM ’22, Music Education), Mira Fu-En Huang (MM ’22, Historical Performance), Niccolo Seligmann (BM ’15, Viola da gamba), Sarah Shodja (BA ’22, Historical Performance, Recorder), and Cameron Welke (MM ’20, Historical Performance). Tickets available online.

Saturday, June 24, 7:00 pm EDT

Under the music directorship of Peabody Director of Graduate Conducting Marin Alsop, the National Orchestral Institute + Festival brings dynamic conductors to work with aspiring orchestral musicians and conductors from across the country for a month of rehearsals, professional development, and music making. Joseph Young (AD ’09, Conducting), the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles, leads the NOI orchestra through Hector Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, George Walker’s Lilacs, and Sergei Prokokfiev’s Symphony No. 5 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park, Maryland; tickets 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.