Lawrence Manchester (BM ’94, Percussion; BM ’95 Recording Arts and Sciences) might add another statuette to his awards cabinet next year. The 2022 Grammy Award-winner for Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media for The Queen’s Gambit was recently nominated in the Best Musical Theater Album category for his work as co-producer and mixer of Caroline, or Change (The New Broadway Cast Recording). He also recorded Into the Woods (2022 Broadway Cast Recording), which was nominated in the same category, and was the vocal recording engineer for Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, which was nominated in the Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media category. 

Manchester is one of many Peabody faculty and alumni whose creative work was recognized when the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced nominations for the 65th annual Grammy Awards in November. Peabody Preparatory alumna Hilary Hahn's Abels: Isolation Variation was nominated for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Faculty composer Kevin Puts' Contact, from string trio Time for Three's album Letters for the Future with the Philadelphia Orchestra, was nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Engineer/mixer Karl Wingate (MA ’14, Audio Sciences) was nominated for his work on R&B artist Steve Lacy's "Bad Habit," a Record of the Year nominee. The New York Youth Symphony's Works By Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman, led by conductor and music director Michael Repper (DMA ’22, Conducting), was nominated for Best Orchestral Performance.

The score for the video game Call of Duty: Vanguard, for which Scott Bergstrom (MM ’11, Recording Arts and Sciences) was the mixer and music editor, is one of five works nominated for a Grammy Award in Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media, a new category introduced this year. Additionally, for the Producer of the Year, Classical, category, multiple recordings are mentioned for each nominated producer, and Elaine Martone's nomination includes Big Things by Icarus Quartet, co-founded by faculty percussionist Jeff Stern, while nominee Judith Sherman's includes the New York Youth Symphony's Works By Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman. 

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards take place February 3, 2023, at the Crytpo.Com Arena in Los Angeles. Congratulations to all the nominees.

We have all watched with delight and amazement the remarkable growth and trajectory of Peabody’s Jazz program, which has grown from fewer than 15 students only five years ago to more than 50 today, under the leadership of Sean Jones, the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Jazz Studies since 2018. This growth has led Peabody to expand our graduate program to now include a Master of Music in Jazz along with our longstanding Graduate Performance Diploma, and to launch our new graduate jazz fellowships which, beginning in fall 2023, will help fund a small graduate ensemble emphasizing citizenship and social engagement as key components of high-level artistry today.

As a critical part of the American canon, jazz has deep historic roots in the city of Baltimore. Building on Peabody’s Breakthrough Curriculum with its strong commitment to community engagement, Peabody Jazz today reaches deep into the community fostering partnerships with leading jazz institutions such as Baltimore’s Keystone Korner. And speaking of leading jazz institutions, Peabody Jazz has most recently been recognized nationally through an invitation to compete in the prestigious Jack Rudin Jazz Championship 2022 — Jazz at Lincoln Center this January. We are excited about the opportunity to participate in this important event in jazz education. Because of this and for many reasons, I’m confident you’ll be hearing more and more about the special, rapidly expanding program that is Peabody Jazz.

Sincerely,

Fred Bronstein, Dean

Ensemble Phoenix Basel performs the world premiere of faculty composer Michael Hersch's (BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition) one step to the next, worlds ending, commissioned by the ensemble, featuring associate professor of voice Ah Young Hong (BM ’98, MM ’01, Voice), soprano. The concerts take place at the Gare du Nord, Basel, and tickets are available online.

Soprano Kerri Lynn Slominski (BM ’09, Voice) stars as Gretel in Boheme Opera NJ's production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. The matinee production takes place at the College of New Jersey's Kendall Hall Theater outside Trenton; tickets are available online.

Bassoonist-composer Joy Guidry (BM ’18, Bassoon), who recently completed a European tour as part of saxophonist Matana Roberts ensemble and earlier this year was awarded the 2021 Berlin Prize for Young Artists, hits New York's Jazz Gallery for a pair of sets featuring music from Guidry's new project, currently titled Amen. Guidry is joined by bassist Tyrone Allen II, harpist Samantha Feliciano, vocalists Jillian Grace and Imani Rousselle, saxophonist Morgan Guerin, percussionist Jongkuk Kim, and synth player Scott Li (BM ’20, Computer Music). Tickets are available online.

The Baltimore Consort started in 1980 as the Renaissance Ensemble of Baltimore to perform instrumental music from William Shakespeare's time. Led by co-founders Mindy Rosenfeld (BM ’80, Flute) and Historical Performance Professor Mark Cudek (MM ’82, Lute) the Consort has become an enduring, prolific champion of popular early and folk music of the 16th and 17th centuries. They perform a selection of frottole, chansons, and dances at a pair of free concerts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC as part of the Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice exhibition. 

The Mzansi National Philharmonic Orchestra, created as South Africa's first national orchestra to develop and nurture young orchestral musicians, embarks on its first national tour this month with Marin Alsop, professor and director of the Graduate Conducting Program at Peabody, on the podium. The tour features Mzansi NPO performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 to diverse South African communities, starting with Johannesburg, before continuing to Durban December 17 at 7:00 pm and Cape Town December 21 at 8:00 pm.

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