Unlocking the Digital Age: The Musician’s Guide to Research, Copyright, and Publishing is the second free digital book Peabody has published based on coursework developed through the Conservatory’s Breakthrough Curriculum to train performing artists for 21st-century careers. Building on skills and ideas covered in The Path to Funding, Peabody’s first open-education resource, Unlocking is a vital resource for musicians navigating the complexities of research, copyright, and publishing in the digital era. Written by Kathleen DeLaurenti, director of the Arthur Friedheim Library, and Andrea Copland (MM ’19, Oboe and Musicology), a research coordinator at the Répertoire International de la Press Musicale, Unlocking bridges the gap between creative practice and scholarly research, empowering performers, composers, and instrumentalists to share and protect their work as citizen artists. Learn more, meet the authors, and read and download the book for free through Peabody LAUNCHPad.

February means audition time for Peabody, and we just recently completed our main auditions for fall 2024 admissions, with some 1,200 prospective students participating. It is an exhilarating week when we get to see the excitement—and, yes, nerves!—of these aspiring students, and to hear in real time the response of faculty. I always take some time to visit the various audition panels both to hear auditionees and to check in with faculty. Of course, we’ll know more about final results in a few short weeks—as we speak our enrollment committee is hard at work—but the anecdotal feedback broadly across our faculty has been so positive about the level of students who auditioned. This bodes well for the recruitment of our new class.

As Peabody’s enrollment has grown—now some 40%, from 570 students in 2017 to more than 800 students today—so has its competitive position. And with the recently announced infusion of financial aid to meet full need with no loans for qualifying undergraduate students—making Peabody unique among its peers—we are on the cusp of another major leap in the quality and competitiveness of the students attracted to Peabody, with an ability now to remove financial limitations as a barrier for many in our increasingly talented student body. We will, of course, look forward to the impact of all this on growing selectivity for Peabody in the years to come, even as we see the immediate evidence of excellence in the aspiring cohort of students competing for a spot here this fall. And, of course, we’ll look forward to sharing more about the incoming class in the future. 

Sincerely,

Sunday, March 10, 3:00 pm EDT

Mathematician/composer Daniel Collins (MM ’21, Composition, Music Theory Pedagogy) is the Operations Manager of the DC Concert Orchestra Society (DCCOS), which commissioned him to write a new work. Collins led the DCCOS, which includes Karin Caifa (BM ’00, Clarinet), through the world premiere of his Chamber Symphony No. 1 in D Minor, “Villanelle,” on March 3, and they perform the work again at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Capitol Hill, alongside Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Mabel Daniels’ Deep Forest. Tickets are available online.

Sunday, March 10, 8:00 pm CET

Sō Percussion—the contemporary percussion quartet and Princeton University Performers-in-Residence that includes Eric Cha-Beach (BM ’04, GPD ’05, Percussion)—travels to Germany with composer/vocalist Caroline Shaw to perform Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch), her collaborative 2021 album with the group, at the Konzerthaus in Berlin; tickets are available online. On March 14, Sō Percussion joins breath artist Dominic “Shodekeh” Talifero at the Library of Congress to perform Cha-Beach’s 4+9, Talifero’s Vodalities, and works by Angélica Négron, Nathalie Joachim, Pauline Oliverso, and Jason Treuting. The Washington, D.C., concert is free and tickets are required.

Tuesday, March 26, 7:30 pm EDT

Elijah Daniel Smith’s (MM ’20, Composition) Vermilion Glare asks its commissioning chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound to sustain tense microtones to create a blurry, almost menacing mood. And Smith’s texturally nuanced and emotionally oblique work fits snugly among the musical storytelling of this AWS program at Carnegie Hall, which includes Tania León’s Toque and the New York premiere of her Gran Toque, along with the New York premieres of Texu Kim’s Līlā, Christian Quiñones’ Hasta que no pueda, Smith’s Vermilion Glare, Chris P. Thompson’s Hanabi (in-ear extended mix), Bora Yoon’s Casual Miracles, and a preview episode of Damon Davis science-fiction opera Ligeia Mare: A Radio Opera. Tickets are available online.

Wednesday, March 27, 7:30 and 9:30 pm EDT

Bassoonist/composer Joy Guidry (BM ’18, Bassoon), who joined André3000 to play the rapper-turned-flutist’s New Blue Sun album during a tour stop in San Francisco in February, brings their quartet to New York’s Jazz Gallery to play new work. Joined by an all-star lineup of contemporary genre-defying Black artists—vocalist Kyle Kidd, bassist and Irreversible Entanglements collective member Luke Stewart, and percussionist Jessie Cox—Guidry may play music from their upcoming third album, Amen (Whited Sepulchre Records), due in May. Guidry and company play 7:30 and 9:30 sets with tickets available online, and both concerts will be livestreamed.

Wednesday, March 27, through Tuesday, April 2

So far in 2024 Dance faculty artist Brinae Ali has performed in the Unsung Sheroes spotlight of 20th-century Black women tap dancers at the Joyce Theater’s American Dance Platform in New York and traveled to Toronto as part of the Tap Love Tour’s development of its Mars Project debuting later this fall. This month she heads to Sweden for the Stockholm International Dance Festival, where she’ll act as both a performer and faculty member alongside such tap professionals as Cartier Williams and Lisa La Touche. For tickets and more information, visit the festival’s website.

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

I long and seek after

Composer and violist Jessica Meyer’s second composer/performer portrait album, I long and seek after (New Focus Recordings), includes performances by soprano Melissa Wimbish (GPD ’11, Voice; GPD ’14, Chamber Music) and the Lorelei Ensemble, led by founding Artistic Director and Peabody Director of Choral Studies Beth Willer. Lorelei appears in the visually striking video for the title track, a setting of poet Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho fragments as a response to Robert Schumann's Frauen-liebe und Leben song cycle.

Poppaea

Faculty composer Michael Hersch and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann foreground the perspective of Poppaea Sabina, Roman Emperor Nero’s second wife, in their arresting Poppaea, a nominee for the 2023 Austrian Music Theater Prize for Best Contemporary Music Theater which depicts an ancient world falling apart wherein violence, particularly against women, is not only rampant but ordinary. New Focus Recordings releases a gorgeous version of the opera recorded live in Switzerland in 2021 with faculty artist Ah Young Hong as the tragic titular heroine alongside Ensemble Phoenix Basel, tenor Steve Davislim as Nero, and mezzo-soprano Silke Gäng as Octavia. Poppaea is available to stream and purchase online.