The Johns Hopkins Alumni Association honored three Peabody graduates at its 2025 awards celebration in October. Both Alyssa Eve Bowlby (MM ’04, Voice) and Karl Wingate (MA ’14, Audio Sciences), were among the Distinguished Alumni Award recipients, presented to alumni who bring credit to the university by their personal accomplishments, professional achievements, or humanitarian services. Bowlby was nominated by the School of Education for her work as co-founder and Executive Director of the Yleana Leadership Foundation, providing scholarships, transportation, and year-round support services to students from New York, Baltimore, and Boston. Wingate is a Los Angeles-based recording engineer and mixer who earned a 2023 Record of the Year GRAMMY nomination for his work on R&B singer Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit” and took home the Best Progressive R&B Album GRAMMY for Lacy’s album, Gemini Rights.

Conductor Michael Repper (DMA ’22, Conducting) was honored as an Outstanding Recent Alumni, an award which recognizes alumni from the past ten years for outstanding achievement or service in their professional or volunteer life. Repper became the youngest North American conductor—and the second youngest of all time—to win a GRAMMY for Best Orchestral Performance in 2023, when the then 30-year-old accepted the award for the New York Youth Symphony’s debut recording, Works by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman (Avie Recordings). Repper will join the Alumni Association’s first webinar celebrating the university’s 150th anniversary on December 9, Excellence in Action.

The Johns Hopkins Alumni Association is currently seeking nominations for its 2026 awards. Know an alumnus whose accomplishments deserve wider recognition? Honor the Impact and nominate a Peabody alum before the December 15 deadline.

Every other year I teach a seminar on Arts Leadership that looks at everything that goes into leading a non-profit arts institution, including governance, operations, fundraising, artistic vision and planning, financial management, and more. It’s a whirlwind tour designed to help students better understand the world they are going into and be better informed community members wherever they pursue their careers. I do this for two reasons. First, even if a student is not going to end up managing a major symphony orchestra, they may end up playing in one, and I genuinely think that a musician with some savvy about administration is going to be a better ensemble member. And if they do end up on the management end, well, they’ll certainly have a better idea of what they’re in for. Or they may end up starting their own organization. At the very least, they will get some sense of institutional complexities and what goes into making decisions. And second, this course is a welcome opportunity for me to better get to know a handful of our students. I don’t get that opportunity as much as I’d like, and this is a way of ensuring that happens.

This fall my class has been on this whirlwind journey. I am always buoyed by the curiosity and intelligence of our students. Yes, they’re here to study music and dance, but most are looking for a broader view of the world and what lies ahead. I think that’s good because I do think that flexibility and adaptability are essential qualities for artists today, and I like to challenge them to understand themselves as artists and their place in the world. They also need to understand the workings of arts institutions as it’s going to be on them to help sustain those institutions, and that will require an ever-evolving rediscovery of institutional purpose, artistic vision, and sustainability, as well as their own roles in that ecosystem. We’re just a few weeks away from the students presenting to the class their capstone projects, which include building a whole organization as well as a story and everything that supports that story about their organization. It’s a chance at getting a glimpse of what they’ve absorbed, but more important, for creativity, strategic thinking, problem solving, and importance of communication, testing their skills of persuasion in “selling” their artistic institution or initiative to their peers. I’m looking forward to seeing how they meet this challenge.

Sincerely,

Fred Bronstein, Dean

Saturday, November 1, 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm EDT

The Peabody Dance Ensemble travels to California to perform at Collective Collaborative 2025, which spotlights seven companies including host Santa Barbara City College Dance Company. The showcase features a variety of movement—from contemporary and ballet to jazz and experimental works—and takes place at the Center Stage Theater. Tickets are available online and the performances will be livestreamed.

Saturday, November 1, 7:30 and 9:30 pm EDT

Baltimore’s Black Cherry Puppet Theater’s Tales of Horror collaborates with the Pique Collective for a spooktacular evening of experimental puppetry, poetry, and music. The Pique Collective—Peter Kibbe (BM ’12, Cello), Jeremy Lyons (MM ’11, DMA ’15, Guitar; MM ’15, Musicology), Nonoka Mizukami (BM ’15, GPD ’17, MM ’18, Percussion), Stephanie Ray (MM ’12, Flute), and Lisa Perry (MM ’11, Voice)—performs works by Steve Reich, James Young, Kaija Saariaho, Jeremy Lyons, Lisa Lerry, Camille Saint-Saens and more. Tickets available online.

Sunday, November 9, 5:00 pm EST

The Brooklyn Art Song Society’s Cycles II: Dichterliebe Reimagined features sopranos Kristina Bachrach and Lucy Fitz-Gibbon, faculty artist and baritone Randall Scarlata, and pianists Lyndsi Maus and Ryan McCullough performing Katherine Balch’s estrangement, a Brooklyn Art Song Society commission, selections of Bernard Foccroulle’s Zauberland, and Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe Op. 48 at Roulette in downtown Brooklyn. Tickets are available online.

Friday, November 14, 7:00 pm EST

Jonathan Zapuche, a Preparatory Tuned-In violin student and member of the Peabody Youth Orchestra, is a featured performer at Salisbury University’s Peter & Judy Jackson Chamber Music Series on the Eastern Shore. The concert takes place in Holloway Hall on the Salisbury campus and free tickets are required are available online.

Sunday, November 30, 3:30 pm EST

Pianist Wan-Chi Su (MM ’11; GPD ’13; DMA ’22, Piano), co-founder of Duo Sorolla with Preparatory faculty artist Ismar Gomes (BM ’09, MM ’11 Cello), joins musicians from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor as part of the Community Concerts at Second series. The concert, at Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, is free.

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

Between Systems

Composer/pianist Thomas Kotcheff (BM ’10, Piano) and composer/electronic artist Bryan Curt Kostors collaborate on creative interpretations of piano works by two closely associated figures of the 20th-century American avant-garde: John Cage’s In a Landscape and Morton Feldman’s Natures Pieces, Intermission 3, and Intermission 5. Between Systems (Post Tonal) is available to stream or purchase on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music.

Task: Original Series Soundtrack 

Baltimore composer Dan Deacon has emerged as a nimble film and television composer whose recent score for the harrowing HBO drama Task features Allison Clendaniel (BM ’14, Voice), Peter Kibbe (BM ’12, Cello), Sarah Manley (BM ’17, Trombone), Tyrone Page, Jr. (BM ’16, MM ’18, Saxophone; BM ’16, Music Education), Stephanie Ray (MM ’12, Flute), and James David Young (DMA ’14, Composition). Task: Original Series Soundtrack (Lakeshore Records) is available to stream or purchase online.