Herbie Hancock’s indelible career as a composer, bandleader, pianist/keyboardist, and educator makes him one of the finest living ambassadors of American music today. A classical music child prodigy turned jazz and composing legend, Hancock’s singular artistry speaks for itself. Equally impressive, however, is his role as a sideman/collaborator to so many peers—not just as a member of Miles Davis’ legendary second quintet, but Hancock’s jazz recording history in the 1960s put him in recording rooms with artists as varied as vibraphonist Roy Ayres, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, guitarist Grant Green, trombonist Grachan Moncur III, and more. By the 1970s, Hancock’s musicianship made him in demand for a variety of recording projects by Bobby Womack, the Pointer Sisters, Stevie Wonder, Phyllis Hyman, Jamaican production duo Sly and Robbie, and Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, and more—a less visible but no less noteworthy example of Hancock’s lifelong musical curiosity and collaborative ethos. Herbie Hancock speaks to Peabody’s 2022 graduates at the May 25 graduation ceremonies, where he will be awarded the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America. Graduation will be streamed at peabody.jhu.edu/live.

Graduation, always a joyful event, is especially meaningful this year as this is our first in-person graduation since May 2019! That in and of itself would be cause for celebration. In addition, this year marks the graduation of our first cohort of Dance BFA students, as well as the first graduates of our Music for New Media program. The accomplishments of this first cohort from these programs are amazing on their own merit, made even more so given all that they had to navigate in the last few years after having come to these programs as “pioneers” of sorts. But as is the case with all our graduates, they have persevered magnificently. This year we will graduate a total of 214 students in the class of 2022. And to add to the festivities, we will not only be celebrating our students, but also recognizing and honoring one of the great voices in American music, jazz icon Herbie Hancock. When the name Herbie Hancock is mentioned, we’re not just talking about one of the great jazz musicians and pianists, but an educator and artist whose work has spanned multiple mediums as a boundary-breaking artist in the world of Jazz, funk and R&B, and in that capacity has collaborated with some of the most notable artists of the last fifty years including Oscar Peterson, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and many others. Recognized as a Kennedy Center honoree, Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, winner of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Herbie Hancock is a humanitarian and artist of unique profile, and we’re honored to be presenting him in a few short weeks with the Peabody Institute’s highest honor, the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America.

Even as we bid farewell to our class of 2022, we have just completed our admissions for the new fall class. We look forward to welcoming 324 new undergraduate and graduate students to campus—6 percent more than we had planned. With returning students, we expect to have 750 students enrolled, representing the largest cohort in Peabody’s history. And it is a class that is not only notable in its size, but also in the very high level of talent noted by our faculty throughout the admissions process. By all reports, it will be one of our strongest classes in recent memory and we are truly grateful to an outstanding faculty who attract these students, and in many cases to our Peabody alumni who encourage their students to aspire to Peabody. There is much to celebrate and I look forward to it all!

Sincerely,

Fred Bronstein, Dean

Professor of Composition Du Yun spent the spring 2022 semester as the first recipient of the Deutsche Bank Fellowship in Music Composition at the American Academy in Berlin, where she worked with the Humboldt Forum on a recording project with the first-generation school children from Yushu, Tibetan Prefecture. She performs her “The Cockroach. The Snake.” at the American Academy Berlin.

Rosa Ponselle Distinguished Faculty Artist Denyce Graves returns to the opera company and work that became one of her signature roles when she makes her directorial debut with the Minnesota Opera’s production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, a role she first sang with the company in 1991. Symone Harcum (MM ’18, Voice), a Minnesota Opera company artist for the 2022-23 season, stars as Micaëla. Tickets for Carmen at the Ordway Music Theater in St. Paul are available online.

Soprano Christine Lyons (MM ’16, Voice) makes her Florida Grand Opera debut in the title role of George Frideric Handel's Agrippina, the fierce empress who schemes to establish her son Nero as the Roman Emperor. The production is staged at the Miami Scottish Rite Temple, and tickets are available online.

Mezzo-soprano Kristen Toedtman (MM ’00, Voice), director of the Community Chorus of Peabody, travels to California as a guest artist in the Jaracarandá Music Concert Series. For the May 21 concert, the Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble spotlights early 20th-century Italian composers, performing Luciano Berio’s Chamber Music in a program that includes Ferrucio Busoni, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Igor Stravinsky; for the May 22 concert she performs in a program featuring Berio’s Folk Songs and works by Franz Liszt and Nicolo Paganini. Both concerts take place at First Presbyterian Church, Santa Monica, and tickets for both the May 21 and May 22 performances can be found online.

Soprano Alexandra Razskazoff (BM ’14, Voice) joins the Bozeman Symphonic Choir as a guest artist for a pair of performances of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, “Choral.” With Bozeman Symphony Orchestra music director Norman Huynh (MM ’13, Conducting) on the podium, the performances take place at the Wilson Auditorium, 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 Conservatory Facebook page.