Peabody Magazine Fall 2019 Vol. 14, No. 1

PEABODY MAGAZINE

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

AN

Fall 2019

Vol. 14 No. 1

OPEN BOOK The Friedheim Library has taken a giant leap into the 21st century.

ALSO: Reel Drama

ENDOWED CHAIRS. Attracting and retaining key professors.

World-renowned trumpeter Sean Jones — the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at the Peabody Conservatory — is leading a new curriculum to break down the walls between jazz and classical music and “really express what it means to be an American musician at the highest level.”

There’s no question that the excellence that is Johns Hopkins rests on the quality of our faculty. And our ability to create endowed professorships depends on you, our generous donors. These professorships help us attract some of the greatest intellects and innovators to our institution and provide critical support for their work as teachers, scholars, researchers, clinicians, and artists.

To learn more and to hear Jones play, visit – https://giving.jhu.edu/sean-jones

@HopkinsGiving | #JohnsHopkins | #GoHop

CONTENTS 3 Headliners

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An Open Book

By Lacey Ann Johnson Illustration by Steve Rawlings Augmenting a collection rich with musical scores and historical treasures, leaders of the Friedheim Library are taking a giant leap into the 21st century with innovative programming, more digital collections, and state-of-the-art equipment.

‘Energized’ for the Work Ahead

New Peabody CD Features the Work of Aaron Jay Kernis

Peabody Faculty Rankings in Place

Instrumental Engineering

50 Years of Looking to the Future

2019 Commencement in Photos

Reel Drama

By Bret McCabe

Two different films, currently in production, feature Peabody people with important stories to tell about making it in the world of classical music.

Alumni News

Letter from the Director of Constituent Engagement

Alumni Award Recipients

Photos from 2019 Reunion

Nurturing ‘Change-Makers’ in the Arts

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22

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Department News The latest news and accomplishments involving students, faculty, and alumni from the Preparatory and the Conservatory.

35 Fanfare

New Board Chair with a Long Hopkins History Appointed

Ci-Ying Sun and Marc von May Join Advisory Board

Supporting the Health of Young Performers

40

Student Spotlight

Settling New Scores

ABOUT THE PEABODY INSTITUTE OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Located in the heart of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Cultural District, the Peabody Institute was founded in 1857 as the first major intellectual and arts center in an American city by philanthropist George Peabody. Now a division of Johns Hopkins University, the Peabody Institute trains musicians and dancers of every age, stages nearly 1,000 concerts and events each year, and extends music and musical training throughout the community. Building on its rich history of professional music training at the highest level and focused on the five pillars of excellence, interdisciplinary experiences, innovation, community connectivity, and diversity, Peabody is introducing the Breakthrough Curriculum to prepare artists for a world that is constantly changing yet still deeply in need of what music and dance bring to the human experience.

Cover illustration by Steve Rawlings

FROM THE DEAN Peabody Friends, This summer I marked five years at Peabody, and I am pleased and proud to have been reappointed for a second five-year term as dean of Dean Fred Bronstein the Institute. I am as excited now as I was on my first day to lead America’s oldest conservatory into a vibrant future, and I’m grateful to the Peabody community — students, faculty, alumni, staff, donors, and friends — for your inspiration and support in this work.

Milestones like these offer a natural opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been and what lies ahead. Together, we have achieved real successes for Peabody in recent years and established a dynamic vision for the future.

Our work is guided by the Breakthrough Plan, a series of strategic objectives laid out four years ago around the pillars of excellence, interdisciplinary experiences, innovation, community connectivity, and diversity. The initiatives of the Breakthrough Plan are designed to enhance our competitive position and expand our reach to better serve the field of performing arts and artists, while also strengthening Peabody’s financial footing.

The comprehensive nature of our work involves everything from growing existing Conservatory programs and aligning instrumental needs with the reimagined ensembles program, to launching new

undergraduate programs (including the Dance BFA and Music for New Media), to creating online classes and programs on musician health and wellness, career development, and Preparatory learning.

One of the key components of this plan is the new Breakthrough Curriculum, with which Peabody has a unique opportunity to redefine professional music and dance training, take a leadership role in the development of 21st-century citizen artists, and stand out from our peers.

Our collaboration with Johns Hopkins Medicine is another central focus with manifold benefits. The 2018 launch of the Johns Hopkins Rehabilitation Network Clinic for Performing Artists at the Peabody Institute — the first of its kind — was a real moment of pride for all of us.

We can take pride, too, in the numbers that illustrate our growth. Last fall, more than 2,100 students applied to the Peabody Conservatory, a 24% increase since 2017. Faculty reports and audition scores reflect the high quality of the applicants. At the same time, Peabody has enrolled its most diverse student cohort ever, with underrepresented minority students comprising 14% of the student body, an increase of 60% since 2015.

Similarly, we have welcomed many new faculty members to the Conservatory over the last two years and nearly doubled the percentage of underrepresented minority faculty, from 6.5% in 2017 to 11% today.

A critical aspect of diversity is access.

This fall we have our first class of beneficiaries of Michael Bloomberg’s historic $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins,

which included $50 million for Peabody.

Deployed as supplemental grants coupled with merit scholarship, this funding has allowed us for the first time to target need-based funding to students with exceptional financial need. As a result, we have been able to meet, on average, 85% of demonstrated financial need for students who qualify. In addition, the number of incoming students with Pell grants increased from 17 to 25% of the incoming class, helping to increase access to a Peabody education among those who otherwise might not have been able to enroll.

These successes provide the foundation for the work ahead — as we refine and strengthen the curriculum and the ensembles program; expand our online offerings; build our Performing Arts and Medicine programs to scale; develop a more welcoming and inclusive campus climate; and address issues of sustainability, affordability, and accessibility, all the while taking a leadership role in the training of future professionals while helping shape the world they will inhabit.

There is much left to do, and tremendous potential in front of us as we both shape Peabody’s future and prepare young artists to be successful in the world. I look forward to it, and I thank you in advance for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Advertising Leap Day Media Kristen Cooper, Owner kristen@leapdaymedia.com 410-458-9291

Peabody Institute Advisory Board

Fred Bronstein

PEABODY MAGAZINE Editorial Staff Margaret Bell, Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications Michael Carlton, Director of Constituent Engagement Lauren Crewell, Digital Communications Specialist Sue De Pasquale, Consulting Editor Ben Johnson, Senior Graphic Designer Will Kirk, Contributing Photographer Justin Kovalsky, Copy Editor Sarah Laadt, Digital Communications Coordinator Tiffany Lundquist, Director of Marketing and Communications Michele Mengel Scherch, Communications Coordinator Amelia Stinette, Communications Coordinator

Peabody Magazine is published twice during the academic year.

Send us your questions and comments: Peabody Magazine Communications Office 1 East Mount Vernon Place Baltimore, MD 21202 667-208-6561 magazine@peabody.jhu.edu peabody.jhu.edu/magazine

Rheda Becker Paula E. Boggs

(KSAS BS ’81, International Studies)

Barbara M. Bozzuto Richard Davison Larry D. Droppa Leon Fleisher Nancy S. Grasmick, Vice Chair (Ed Cert ’75, PhD ’80, Education)

Michael Greenebaum Taylor A. Hanex

(BM ’75, MM ’78, Piano)

Allan D. Jensen

Abbe Levin Jill E. McGovern, Chair Christine Rutt Schmitz (BM ’75, Voice)

Solomon H. Snyder Ci-Ying Sun

(BM ’92, MM ’94, Piano)

Marc von May David L. Warnock Shirley S. L. Yang

(Bus Cert. ’99, Business of Medicine; MBA ’01, Medical Services Management)

(KSAS BA ’65; Med MD ‘68)

Michiko S. Jones Laifun Chung Kotcheff Christopher Kovalchick

(BM ’06, Violin; Engr BS ’06, Mechanical Engineering)

Emeritus Members Pilar Bradshaw Benjamin H. Griswold IV Turner B. Smith

HEADLINERS

Production photo of Joel Puckett’s The Fix. Courtesy of the Minnesota Opera.

Composition professor DU YUN received a grant from Opera America for her opera Sweet Land, which will premiere with The Industry in Los Angeles, Calif., in February 2020.

This is the fifth cycle of commissioning grants from the organization’s Opera Grants for Female Composers.

She also received the BraVo Award for Best Classical Composition in Modern Performance in March in Moscow.

At the ceremony, the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra performed an excerpt of her piece, The Veronica.

SEAN GALLAGHER

(BM ’85, MM ’89, Piano) and ALON GOLDSTEIN (GPD ’95, MM ’96, Piano) are the first affiliates of the Peabody Conservatory to be inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars, which recognizes Hopkins affiliates who have made outstanding contributions to their fields. Music historian and pianist Gallagher is an internationally recognized authority on music in late medieval and Renaissance Europe and teaches at the New England Conservatory.

Goldstein is known for his international performances and passionate advocacy for music education.

Associate professor and chair of music theory JOEL PUCKETT’s The Fix was premiered by the Minnesota Opera in March. With a libretto by Academy and Tony award winner Eric Simonson, the work depicts the rise and fall of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The Fix was commissioned by the Minnesota Opera as part of its New Works Initiative with a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Puckett says of the work, “This story has everything one expects from grand opera: legendary heroes with massive character flaws, villains, love, greed, betrayal.

In short, this story was already an opera, it just needed some music!”

GIORGIA FANELLI

Brazilian conductor HILO CARRIEL (MM ’19, Conducting) has been awarded a Dudamel Fellowship at the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2019-20 season. LA Phil Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel created the fellowship program in 2009 to provide a unique opportunity for promising young conductors from around the world to develop their craft and enrich their musical experience.

Carriel will conduct five concerts in March and April at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

GB ROBERTSON

FRED BRONSTEIN

was appointed to a second term as dean of the Peabody Institute through June 2024. Since Bronstein’s arrival, he has instituted a comprehensive long-term plan and made significant improvements to the financial stability of the school. During his tenure, Peabody adopted the new Breakthrough Curriculum to prepare aspiring artists for 21st-century careers. The school also launched two innovative academic programs last year, in Dance and in Music for New Media, which have contributed to notable increases in both applications and enrollment.

CORY WEAVER

Watch a trailer for The Fix here: bit.ly/2kLyBWT

Watch the video Introducing Sweet Land: bit.ly/2kzr3qq

Sean Gallagher

Alon Goldstein PEABODY

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‘Energized’ for the Work Ahead

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Joe Rooney has built a career out of supporting other peoples’ achievements.

“People want to do a good job and be successful,” he believes. “I’ve found that to be true no matter where you are. And it’s my job to provide the structures and tools and systems to enable both individual and institutional success.”

As the Peabody Institute’s new associate dean for finance and administration, Rooney oversees staff in human resources, facilities, information technology, and the business office — all areas that provide critical, if behind-the-scenes, support for the more visible academic and artistic work of the Institute.

“Under Dean Bronstein’s Breakthrough Plan, the level of programming at Peabody has been expanded and elevated so quickly,” Rooney notes. “Our challenge now is building out the functional areas that support continued growth and improvement. How do we recognize the critical work people are doing behind the scenes, and how do we help those areas become even stronger strategic partners?”

Rooney, who stepped into the role in May, is not new to this kind of work. A violist in his youth, he comes to Peabody with an MBA from Columbia University and more than 20 years of experience in finance and operations. Most recently with the Brookings Institution, he has previously held leadership roles with the Association of Performing Arts Professionals and the New 42nd Street, the organization responsible for the adaptive reuse of eight historic theaters in New York City.

“Joe brings the right mix of business acumen and affinity for the arts to this job,” says Dean Fred Bronstein. “He has demonstrated success in planning and operational excellence efforts, improving finance and business processes, human resources management, and leading institution-wide initiatives within a creative environment.

We are delighted to welcome him to Peabody and Johns Hopkins.”

For Rooney, his arrival at Peabody also marks a return to Mt. Vernon, where he held his first job at Baltimore Center Stage (following what he describes as an aha moment during his undergraduate years at Oregon’s Linfield College, when he realized he could combine his business degree with his love of the arts to create a career in arts management).

“I knew Peabody from my years at Center Stage,” he says, “and I always thought that the city was so fortunate to have Peabody. Knowing the history and the deep cultural value of the place, and now seeing that there is a real vision for the future with the Breakthrough Plan, I am very energized by the work that’s in front of us.”

—— Tiffany Lundquist

New Peabody CD Features the Work of Aaron Jay Kernis The Peabody Symphony Orchestra’s performance and recording of the second commercial recording in four concerto, in April 2017, followed the years, highlighting the music of com- January 2016 world premiere perforposer Aaron Jay Kernis, features flute mance given by the Detroit Symphony soloist and Peabody professor Marina — both under Slatkin’s baton.

Piccinini and conductors Marin “It was my pleasure to give the world Alsop, Peabody director of graduate premiere of the Kernis Flute Concerto conducting and music director of the in Detroit. When the opportunity to Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and perform and record the work with the Leonard Slatkin, music director of outstanding musicians of the Peabody the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The Symphony occurred, I jumped at the CD, released on the NAXOS label in chance,” notes Slatkin. “This is a true September, was recorded and provirtuoso work for everyone and having duced by the students and faculty of Marina Piccinini as soloist only reinthe Conservatory’s Recording Arts forced the strength of the work.” and Sciences Department.

Alsop led the performance and “For our students to be able to recording of the other work on the work with not one, but two major CD, Kernis’ Second Symphony, in conductors on this project, and to October 2016. The symphony was create the premiere recording of written in 1991, shaped by the such an important composer, is composer’s reactions to the Persian really pretty extraordinary,” says Gulf War, and signifies, Kernis says Dean Fred Bronstein. “Making this in his notes on the work, “a loss of recording, at this level, with these innocence.” Its three movements, artists, would be a feather in the cap though not meant to be programof many professional orchestras; matic, are titled Alarm, Air/Ground, it’s really special for an ensemble of and Barricade. promising young musicians to have The Peabody Symphony Orchestra’s this kind of opportunity.” new all-Kernis recording on NAXOS is Piccinini is featured in the world available for purchase at naxos.com. premiere recording of Kernis’ Flute —— Tiffany Lundquist Concerto, which was co-commissioned for her by the Peabody Watch a promotional video for the CD: Institute and the Detroit Symphony bit.ly/2mhI5db Orchestra, among others. The PSO’s Marina Piccinini's performance of Aaron Jay Kernis' Flute Concerto with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, with Leonard Slatkin conducting, appears on new CD.

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Peabody Faculty Rankings in Place This fall, the Peabody Conservatory rolled out its first-ever rank and promotion process for faculty members, marking a true milestone for Peabody, which historically had operated under a system of annual contracts.

Seventy faculty members (nearly all of the eligible faculty members who applied) were assigned a rank — of assistant professor, associate professor, or professor — beginning this academic year.

“Given Peabody’s long history of annual contracts for faculty, this is a significant step forward in attracting and retaining the most outstanding artists, scholars, composers, and pedagogues for our faculty,” says Abra Bush, senior associate dean of institute studies, who staffed the Faculty Ranking Committee and was a non-voting member.

The robust faculty ranking process was developed by the Promotion and Evaluation Committee, which included several department chairs.

Under the process, faculty applications were first reviewed by department chairs and recommendations were made for rank. Then the applications moved to the Faculty Ranking Committee, comprising Julian Gray (BM ’79, MM ’82, Guitar), chair of the Guitar Department; Robert Muckenfuss (MM ’94, Piano; DMA ’04,— Ensemble Arts), chair of the Vocal Studies Department; Mary Ellen Poole, director of the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin; and Stephen Gange, executive vice provost for academic affairs at Johns Hopkins University.

This group met for a week last February to individually review every

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application. The committee made recommendations to Dean Fred Bronstein, who then made the final determinations of rank.

“It was profoundly special to be a part of the first — after 162 years — ranking which had been discussed for decades,” says Muckenfuss, who also served as chair of the faculty for several years. The ranking process is important to faculty members, he says, “because it validates your work and standing in your profession. It’s a comparative gauge with other colleagues around the world.”

Bush explains the different ranks as follows: An assistant professor is generally new to the professoriate and receives a three year contract; an associate professor, someone of national esteem, receives a fouryear contract; and a full professor is someone of strong national or international esteem who is granted a five-year contract. Faculty at Peabody remain untenured.

The application was extensive and included a resume or curriculum vitae; a list of recordings, performances, publications, or other artistic or scholarly output; a statement of the faculty member’s teaching philosophy; and student evaluations. Muckenfuss says, “Faculty members’ teaching at Peabody was the most important aspect to their application,” including how their work is in sympathy with the Five Pillars of the strategic Breakthrough Plan — Excellence, Interdisciplinary Experiences, Innovation, Community Connectivity, and Diversity.

“I’m grateful for the thoughtfulness of the faculty who have worked on all of these initiatives over the last several years,” says Bush. “I’m deeply honored to lead changes with Dean Bronstein that will positively impact not only current faculty but future generations of faculty for years and years to come.”

—— Margaret Bell

Instrumental Engineering

LARRY CANNER

Peabody courses that are open to Homewood students are few and far between. Courses that provide an opportunity to get practical experience in a lab setting are also scarce.

For years, the course History and Technology of Musical Instruments has been both. Students spend half of their time in the classroom with Susan Weiss, a faculty member with a joint appointment at Peabody and the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences, and the other half getting hands-on time in the lab making instruments with Nathan Scott, a mechanical engineering associate teaching professor at the Whiting School of Engineering.

Scott — who has a background in woodworking, electronics, and music — has been co-teaching this course for about five years and runs its maker space, a sort of woodworking shop.

Since January 2018, the maker space Nathan Scott and Susan Weiss co-teach a course where students learn to make instruments by hand. has been at Peabody, deep in the basement of Leakin Hall. Before that, students built instruments at other skill required to create an instrument Weiss and Scott believe the instrulocations on the Homewood campus. that has far greater value than one ment-making class is unique among At first, the course started small, that is machine made.”

American music schools and conserwith instruments made from kits and So, in the spring 2019 semesvatories, and that it serves an importthen simpler instruments like cigar ter, the two dozen or so students ant mission in bringing together box guitars and some non-Western in the course set to work in teams students from across Johns Hopkins. instruments. Last year, they upgraded to construct a cello, using wood — “The students from different divito making playable banjos from prelargely Douglas fir — reclaimed from sions bring different talents to the cut pieces. “It’s important for stuBaltimore houses, hundreds of years table,” says Weiss. “It’s so special dents to put their hands on the mate- old. Acquired from Second Chance, to watch the collaboration between rials,” says Scott. “It means students a Baltimore nonprofit that deconthem develop. The spirit that I found have experiences that are academic structs homes and buildings and among the students was dazzling. You but also much beyond academic. then sells the salvage, the wood for don’t see that in too many classes.”

Their experiences connect to their the bellies and backs for the entire —— Margaret Bell lives. All good, high-level education semester cost the program only has that connected quality.” around $70.

Read about Susan Weiss’ experience For the 2018-19 academic year, The cello-making process required making her cello online at the Peabody Scott told Weiss that he wanted to cutting and sanding pieces to a parPost: bit.ly/2kc2AHg think bigger and tackle “harder stuff.” ticular thickness, joining those wood He felt that conservatory students pieces, drilling holes, and chiseling Watch a video of Wade Davis (MM ’11, should be making real instruments both the front and back pieces by GPD ’13, Baroque Violoncello) that are traditionally taught at the hand using a template. There are difperforming on the model cello made school. That’s when they decided to ferent processes for the ribs and neck,

by Scott: bit.ly/2khZSQO tackle making the cello. which are also hand carved and made “This was a level beyond,” says of more exotic and pricier materials.

Weiss. “What was so great about it “The instruments are rough by comwas starting from scratch: You learn mercial standards but they’re going how much work it entails and about to be playable instruments,” Scott the difference in the end product. says. “All it has to be is approximately They learn to appreciate the time and right, and it’ll sound great.”

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50 Years of Looking to the Future Peabody Computer Music enjoys unprecedented standing as the first electronic music studio in a music conservatory in the United States.

Founded by Jean Eichelberger Ivey as a series of summer workshops for music educators in 1967, the electronic music studio began offering year-round courses for Peabody students in the fall of 1969.

In 1982, Geoffrey Wright (MM ’81, DMA ’92, Composition) established the Computer Music Studio as well as Peabody’s performance group in residence, the Computer Music Consort.

The frequency and diversity of collaborations across art forms since then define the greatest achievements of the combined studios, now known as Peabody Computer Music.

McGregor Boyle (MM ’85, Guitar; DMA ’90, Composition) and Wright run the department today. In many ways, the story of Peabody Computer Music at 50 is the story of classical music’s impossibilities told anew.

Through performance, composition, and research, this department has pursued dreams of the future with reverence for the past, unhindered by the limitations of technology.

“When electronic and computer music started, it was very esoteric, very complicated, expensive, and you could only do it in certain laboratories in academic institutions and radio stations,” says Wright. “What’s happened over the years — with technology becoming so cheap, so powerful, and so ubiquitous — we now see all areas of music being touched by this. We now have both the fine arts composers and kids who have never gone to music school using that technology.”

A new exhibit by the Arthur Friedheim Library, shown in the Peabody Mews of the Grand Arcade on campus, celebrates the department’s five decades. It shows items on loan from the Peabody Computer Music studio and the Jean Eichelberger Ivey papers. The objects in this exhibit make up a “time capsule” of essential tools in electronic music composition 8

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Reflection of Jean Eichelberger Ivey in a Moog Synthesizer, ca. 1970s

from the late 1960s and early 1970s and are a testament to the technical progress of the past 50 years, notes Andrea Copland, librarian at the Arthur Friedheim Library.

The exhibit also highlights women in the industry, including Ivey, who saw her own interest in electronic music as a broadening of the compositional tools she could use as an artist and offer as a pedagogue.

Accomplishments by alumna Lynn F. Kowal (MM ’91, Computer Music) and Vivian Adelberg Rudow (TC ’57,— BM ’60, Piano; MM ’79, Composition) are also featured.

“Our international reputation was that our performers and our composers always wrote and performed the best pieces,” says Wright, who worked with Ivey during his time as

a Peabody student. “There’s no question that Peabody was the musical heart [of the computer music community]. To have that go on for 50 years and now to be seen expanding into many directions is just a wonderful experience. Jean would be really happy to see that.”

Celebrations for the 50th anniversary will take place over the 2019–20 academic year. A digital version of the exhibit can be found online at musiclibrary.peabody.jhu.edu/ computermusic. The department will present celebratory events with concerts and lectures by guest artists and alumni during the spring semester.

Visit peabody.jhu.edu/events for more information.

—— Margaret Bell with Andrea Copland

2019 Commencement in Photos

Singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and eight-time Grammy Award nominee Tori Amos, pictured top-left with Dean Fred Bronstein and Johns Hopkins University Provost Sunil Kumar, addressed graduates at the Peabody Conservatory’s Commencement ceremony on May 22. Amos, who studied piano at the Peabody Preparatory from 1968 to 1974, was also awarded the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America. Michael Kannen (top-right), the Sidney M. Friedberg Chair in Chamber Music, received the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award at the ceremony. Baritone Lorenzo Zapata (BM ’19, Voice) and Sean Brennan (BM ’14, GPD ’19, Guitar; MM ’17, Guitar/Pedagogy) were among the graduating performers (bottom-left).

ALL PHOTOS BY WILL KIRK

Watch the 2019 Peabody Commencement: bit.ly/2kguLF3

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AN OPEN

BOOK

By Lacey Ann Johnson

Illustration by Steve Rawlings

Augmenting a collection rich with musical scores and historical treasures, leaders of the Friedheim Library are taking a giant leap into the 21st century with innovative programming, more digital collections, and state-of-the-art equipment.

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WILL KIRK

AT A

GLANCE, Peabody’s Arthur Friedheim Library could be any library. A familiar-looking circulation desk sits on the left side of the lobby, opposite a 20-foot arched window that looks out onto a courtyard. In the middle of the room, students hunch over books at wooden tables, jotting down notes. The building’s 1980s architecture and simple décor make the space feel more traditional than modern — but first impressions can be deceiving.

Over the last three years, the leadership of this 30-year-old music library has been working behind the scenes to propel it into the 21st century with innovative programming, more digital collections, and state-of-the-art equipment. Friedheim’s new technology, coupled with an expertly curated selection of musical scores, have turned it into an essential resource for Peabody Conservatory students.

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WILL KIRK

“A library used to be a place that collected scarce resources,” says head librarian Kathleen DeLaurenti.

“Our role as librarians now is to help our students and our scholars understand what to do with way too much information, and how to process that to make something meaningful.”

Beyond the circulation desk, visitors will find Apple computers outfitted with piano-style MIDI keyboards and the latest software for music notation, sound design, and video editing. Another room boasts a powerful virtual reality workstation acquired to help students in the Music for New Media program research 360-degree sound environments for video games. The library is also home to a full-service audio and video production shop where students can check out amplifiers, electronic pianos, microphones, recording equipment and HD video cameras.

“The access we have to just about everything we would ever need is really incredible,” says Nathaniel Parks, a master’s composition stuedent. “Having a recorder that I can check out and use has been life-changing. I started a music ensemble, and I use it for all the rehearsals.”

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“The access we have to just about everything we would ever need is really incredible.”

—Nathaniel Parks master’s composition student The library’s new offerings have attracted more visitors as well. Between 2016 and 2018, foot traffic increased by 12%, and score and book circulation was up 27%. That amounts to more than 80,000 visits per year, for a campus of only 700 people.

“We are uniquely positioned here to be really responsive to the campus community. Because we’re funded directly through the Institute, we can work closely with administration to launch exciting initiatives that align with the curriculum,” explains DeLaurenti, who joined Peabody in 2017.

HACK I N G HA R M ONY : A MUSI C HACK ATH ON Sophomores Kaden Culp, violin, and Daphne Bickley, viola, shared third place for a device that helps string players develop muscle memory for good bow position. Their invention attaches to the bow of a cello or violin and tracks its movement using an internal accelerometer and gyroscope. The pair is planning to file a patent for their design this year.

“It was an excuse to get back into programming for 24 hours,” says Culp, who used to do computer programming in high school and middle school. “I was really happy with how it all turned out.”

Culp toiled through the night perfecting his project, only leaving the library once for a 30-minute nap.

DeLaurenti also spent the entire night in the library, sleeping briefly on a beanbag chair in her office.

“Kathleen is amazing for setting up this whole hackathon thing and all the initiatives in the library over the last year. She very clearly wants to make this school better,” says Culp.

Kathleen DeLaurenti is the head librarian for the Arthur Friedheim Library.

JIM BURGER

Earlier this year, DeLaurenti had the opportunity to orchestrate the educational event of her dreams: a music hackathon. The term “hackathon” typically refers to a collaborative computer programming session held over multiple days, but she had a different vision in mind.

With the help of a $36,000 Johns Hopkins DELTA (Digital Education and Learning Technology Acceleration) grant, Peabody invited students from across the university to spend 24 hours in Friedheim Library attempting to create new instruments and teaching tools for musicians. The competition, which kicked off on February 1, offered a first place prize of $2,000 to the winning team.

“I wanted to promote the library as a space for learning and collaboration, and also create an opportunity for music students and students from computer science, the School of Medicine, and Public Health — anywhere in Hopkins — to come into Peabody and collaborate alongside each other and see what kinds of things they could learn,” says DeLaurenti, who is also a trained opera singer. “What happens when you put them all in a blender?”

At 4:00 pm on a Friday, more than two dozen students arrived to compete in the hackathon. For the next 24 hours they cobbled together a total of eight projects using do-it-yourself electronics kits, sensors, circuit boards, and a mishmash of assorted objects.

Junior voice student Mofan Lai initially wanted to observe the hackathon without competing, but when he saw all the tools provided by the library, he thought, “I can do this.” He teamed up with master’s voice student Cierra Byrd, and the pair used a basic circuitry kit, called a Makey Makey, to turn the library stairwell into a musical instrument, with each step playing a different note.

“People are afraid because they don’t know anything about computer music … but all Peabody majors should have the confidence to attend,” says Lai, who won first place alongside Byrd in the build-your-own instrument category.

A group of students from the Whiting School of Engineering and Krieger School of Arts and Sciences took home the top prize for a wearable device that can teach a prosthetic hand to play an instrument using brain signals. Their prototype was pieced together using a Redbull can, sensors, electrodes, and a ukulele.

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WILL KIRK

A GR OW I N G COLLECTI ON Friedheim’s embrace of all things digital hasn’t stopped it from expanding its assortment of historical treasures. Named after the Russian-born pianist and composer Arthur Friedheim (1859–1932), the library opened in 1990 as the Conservatory’s main library with the help of a $2 million donation

by Friedheim’s son. Since then, it has amassed an impressive permanent collection.

In the upstairs Collections Room, more than 5,000 linear feet of shelving are filled with decades-old concert programs, archival photos of local musicians, delicate reel-to-reel tapes of Peabody recitals, and other memorabilia. A rare books room houses some of the most precious items in the library, such as an original manuscript score handwritten by Beethoven in 1826 and a letter penned by German composer Felix Mendelssohn to his publisher in 1837. One of the most interesting items in the room comes from Friedheim’s own personal collection: two locks of hair that likely belonged to the prolific Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who was Friedheim’s music teacher in the 1880s.

“We found this in Arthur Friedheim’s archival papers, amid other Liszt things,” says library archivist Matthew Testa, conceding that a DNA analysis would be needed to confirm the source of the dark blond wisps. “I often show it when there are class visits, because it usually blows their minds.”

Thanks to a number of recent donations, the library’s collections are continuing to grow. In 2015, private donors gifted items once belonging to the glamorous opera star Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981), who served as the first artistic director of the Baltimore Opera Company. The collection, some of which is on exhibit at the library through December, includes paintings, porcelain figurines, furniture, dresses, sheet music, performance programs, and photographs.

Last year the school received approximately 150 unpublished works by Walter Spencer Huffman (1921–2005), a composer and Peabody faculty member in the 1940s and 1950s. The scores were donated by his widow and include chamber, symphony, and choral music.

“It’s a rich collection that some students have dug into to find pieces to work with,” says Testa.

Friedheim also acquired materials from composer David Simon (1925–2017), who founded the Baltimore School for the Arts, and Grammynominated soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, who taught at Peabody from 1984 to 2017. Singer Marni Nixon

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JIM BURGER

(1930-2016) and her heirs have given multiple donations to the library, including scores, concert programs, clippings, photographs, and recordings. She was well known for her work as a “ghost singer” in the 1950s and 1960s, performing the singing parts in The King and I, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady. In 2012, the institute awarded her the George Peabody Medal for her contributions to American music.

The library started digitizing many of its holdings around 2012, but with more than 200 special collections in its archives, the process has been slow going. In the meantime, Testa is working on a number of projects to improve access to electronic resources, such as a 50-year digital log of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s performance history. Friedheim is also collaborating with the Information Technology staff and the Recording Arts and Sciences Department on a system to provide on-demand streaming access to video and audio recordings of Peabody performances. If all goes smoothly, the new platform is expected to launch during this academic year.

“Some students were just hiring private videographers or streaming things on Facebook Live. If we can offer a more consistent, easy alternative that meets our needs … then that’s ideal,” he says.

DeLaurenti says that Friedheim’s cataloging and collection librarian, Kirk-Evan Billet, inspired her to think of the library’s collection as a living organism with materials that are constantly responding to one another, where the same piece of music may exist as a written score, digital recording, or even a 360-degree performance inside a virtual reality headset.

“The way that the different parts of our collection interact with each other is really unique,” she says.

“There’s this idea that libraries are consumptive spaces. My belief is that music libraries have always been maker spaces. Nobody ever just comes in to get a musical score to read it. They come in to get a musical score to play it — to do something with it.”

“I feel like we’re just extending that into the logical next step for the 21st century.”

Matthew Testa is the library archivist at the Friedheim Library.

Visit the Friedheim Music Library and Archives online: musiclibrary.peabody.jhu.edu

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Tuba player Richard Antoine White walks toward a park in West Baltimore. “This water fountain has to be as old as me,” he says, and is surprised to discover it still works. He chokes up a second, then says, “That was my bathroom, man,” referring to a time in his life when he was homeless.

Maestra Marin Alsop, director of the Peabody Conservatory’s graduate conducting program, recalls being told that girls couldn't lead an orchestra and that she would never succeed. “Without that sense of challenge,” she says, “I wouldn't be the strong person that I am.”

Both of these moments take place onscreen, in footage from documentary film projects.

R.A.W. Tuba is the roughly half-hour documentary that illuminates the life of White (BM ’96, Tuba), from his hard-scrabble early years in West Baltimore and on to becoming principal tubist of the New Mexico Philharmonic. Alsop's road, from being a reluctant pianist at the young age of 4 to becoming a classically trained violinist and founder of the all-female swing band String Fever, is being explored in an ongoing project with the working title We Conduct, directed by documentary filmmaker Bernadette Wegenstein, professor of media studies and director of the Center for Advanced Media Studies at Johns Hopkins. Both films are aimed to come to a film festival or a streaming service sometime in the next year.

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“Richard, his story is just incredible,” says Darren Durlach, who co-directed R.A.W. Tuba with his filmmaking partner David Larson. Speaking by phone in May, Durlach had recently returned from the documentary-focused Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, Colorado, where the short debuted. “It got standing ovations each run, and you could hear a lot of sniffling and tears in the theater. Richard performed after each [screening], and it was really powerful and moving.”

White's mother battled alcoholism, and as a kid he often couch-surfed or slept outside or in abandoned row houses. The foster parents who raised his mother eventually took him in, providing stability, and when an injury sidelined his teenage sports career, he found his way to the Baltimore School for the Arts, brass instruments, Peabody, and eventually becoming the first African-American to earn a DMA for tuba performance (from Indiana University).

A doctoral degree wasn't originally part of his plan, but a chance encounter on Baltimore’s subway changed his mind. White was telling his dad that he

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wasn't going to pursue a doctorate because he already had jobs lined up, when a nearby young man overheard him. “This little kid tugged on my shirt and said, ‘Hey, mister, you're going to be a doctor?’” White says. “And I was, like, damn, I gotta finish this to let him know that he can do it. That's my ultimate dream for kids in Baltimore and all over, to see this film and turn the word ‘impossible’ into ‘I'm possible.’”

Changing the narrative about who can be a classical musician also drives the We Conduct film project, which explores an emerging diversification of who gets to be on the podium, using Alsop’s story as a vehicle. “Marin has the capacity to really take a viewer on a journey and grab them by the heart,” says Wegenstein. “At first, I came into this project because of the feminist theme, the exclusion of women to this profession, but as we started shooting, her charisma and the music took over. Sure, she'll tell us about how hard it was for her, but we're also going to see her through the eyes of her students, who are diverse and who have also been excluded from the canon."

JOHN WAIRE/EARLY LIGHT MEDIA

Peabody Goes to the Movies The interior and exterior of Peabody’s iconic Mt. Vernon campus have appeared in popular movies and television programs including:

House of Cards, Season 1, Episode 5 (2013) The Peabody Institute stood in as Georgetown's Hotel Cotesworth, and the plaza was the location of a charity gala given by Claire Underwood (Robin Wright).

Liberty Heights (1999) Directed by Baltimore native Barry Levinson, the film includes a scene where Van (Adrien Brody) has a conversation on the institute stairs, which stands in as the University of Baltimore’s library.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993) Annie (Meg Ryan), a reporter at The Baltimore Sun, visits her brother Dennis (David Hyde Pierce), who works at the George Peabody Library. She walks through Mt. Vernon Park with the exterior of the institute shown.

Conservatory alumni have also been active in the film business. Some recent examples include:

Getting to Carnegie (2018):

The We Conduct film crew captured Marin Alsop leading a rehearsal by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil.

Julian Gargiulo (MM ’97, Piano) is the focus of the short documentary, which was named an “Official Selection” in the New York City Independent Film Festival.

Lego DC Super Hero Girls: Brain Drain (2017)

“That's my ultimate dream for kids in Baltimore and all over, to see this film and turn the word ‘impossible’ into ‘I'm possible.’”

—Richard Antoine White

Bijan Olia (BM ’11, MM ’12, Computer Music) won a Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Award for his work as music editor on this film. Olia has composed additional music for the documentary feature Served Like A Girl, the virtual reality video game Resident Evil VII Biohazard, and the Freeform TV series Siren.

Jumping the Broom (2011) Dontae Winslow (BM ’97, MM ’99, Trumpet) appears in feature film where he plays jazz trumpet during the wedding reception in the final scene.

Mother (2009), The Host (2006) Byeong Woo Lee (GPD ’98, Guitar; GPD ’00, Chamber Ensemble) composed the film score for these and other South Korean films.

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“I hope any girl that sees me thinks, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a viable possibility for me.’”

—Marin Alsop

Alsop and film crew backstage at Peabody’s production of Bernstein’s MASS (left to right): Shana Hagan, director of photography; Alsop; (seated) Annette Porter, producer, and Bernadette Wegenstein, director; Alexa Rinn, composition master’s student; Andreas Hamza, sound engineer; (kneeling) Vanessa Richards, production assistant, and Troy Tower, production manager

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Jonathan Rush (MM ’19, Conducting) is one of those students who appears in the film. He says the classic Looney Tunes “Long-Haired Hare” cartoon, in which Bugs Bunny disguises himself as Leopold Stokowski, first made him aware of conductors when he was about 6 years old — “I would practice with my mom's crochet needles in the mirror,” he says — but the idea of becoming one himself felt like a far-away dream.

“Being African-American, I wasn't sure if it would ever be a reality because I wasn't seeing many conductors who look like me,” he says. He adds that he grew up with both classical music and gospel, and that a family friend told him to stick with gospel because she didn't want to see him fail, implying success was a longer shot in traditionally and overwhelmingly white classical music.

“So straight away I almost gave conducting up,” he says. He enrolled to study music education at Ohio State University, pursuing a path to teaching. Then a friend passed away his sophomore year, which Rush calls a wake-up call that he had to pursue his dreams. He conducted an OSU student orchestra, using the video footage to apply to Peabody, where he was mentored by Alsop.

“Working with Marin is one of the greatest things because she never lets me settle for just good enough,” he says. In 2018, Rush was named a conducting fellow with the Chicago Sinfonietta, where he will be assistant conductor for the 2019-20 season. “A lot of conductors teach their students to essentially be copies of them. Marin doesn't look at it that way. She wants us to be our own selves while on the podium.

She helps refine our skills and pushes us to dig even deeper into the music.”

Like Rush, most conductors don't get the chance to study the craft until graduate school. The We Conduct project checks in with a few Peabody Preparatory students — in middle and high school — who are exploring conducting through a program created by Elijah Wirth (BM ’99, Tuba; MM ’02, Music Education), director of the Peabody Preparatory Wind Orchestra. The program was in full swing when one of his students, Sumaya Elkashif, took a soccer ball to the face and couldn't play her instrument. He told her she should show up to orchestra practice anyway and try conducting, and she showed up with the score, raring to go.

In We Conduct, Wegenstein spends some time with Elkashif and Keyona Carrington, another Peabody Preparatory conducting student, including some of their interactions with Alsop, who “came to a couple of classes to watch them and gave them comments,” Wirth says. “Marin is this incredibly strong female figure in a very powerful position, [and] the effect she has on these young girls can’t be overstated. Getting to see her do what she does and being able to interact with her has had an enormous effect on these students.”

JOHN WAIRE/EARLY LIGHT MEDIA

JOHN WAIRE/EARLY LIGHT MEDIA

On the R.A.W. Tuba film shoot, Richard Antoine White (left) and filmmakers Darren Durlach and David Larson (right) with King Pinnock (on shoulders) who portrays White as a child in the film.

Shooting for the documentary started in 2017, with most footage shot during the long rehearsal process and performance of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS that the Peabody Institute mounted in October 2018. Alsop, Wegenstein, and her producing partner Annette Porter debuted a sizzle reel of footage in May. The roughly 10-minute cut of teaser showcases a gorgeously shot, moving documentary that explores the challenges women have faced ascending to the conductor's podium.

“I hope any girl that sees me thinks, ‘Oh yeah, that's a viable possibility for me,’” Alsop says in voiceover.

Wegenstein spent the summer editing the footage into a cut they can submit to festivals; she aims to debut it at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2020. “I think in the editing room is where we will give birth to the film,” she says.

Durlach understands that ethos. He first started shooting with White in May 2018, visited New Mexico over the summer, shot a bit in Baltimore with White and his local friends and relatives in the fall, and then “edited and re-edited and re-edited and re-edited from

September to February,” he says. R.A.W. Tuba had a first-look screening at White's Baltimore School for the Arts alma mater before its Mountainfilm debut. It has since screened at the San Francisco DocFest and the Columbia Film Festival, and Durlach is hoping that Netflix or Amazon Prime becomes interested in streaming it.

White simply hopes that young people who can relate to his situation get to view it.

“Seeing a film like this when I was a kid would have changed the social consciousness of my own mind,” he says. “This is not a story about basketball or boxing. It's a story about classical music, where less than 4% of the people in symphonies are AfricanAmerican. Seeing a film like this would have changed my world, because I would have thought, ‘Wow, my dreams are possible!’”

Watch a trailer for R.A.W. Tuba: bit.ly/2lOEMty

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ALUMNI NEWS Dear Alumni and Friends, I’m so pleased to join the Peabody Institute as director of constituent engagement. In my role, I hope to deepen the connection that alumni and parents, both from the Conservatory and the Preparatory, have with this institution, which has served as the foundation for excellence in your music and dance journeys over the years.

A continued focus for the alumni office will be to expand our partnership with the team at Peabody LAUNCHPad. Under the direction of Zane Forshee (MM ’01, GPD ’03, DMA ’11, Guitar), LAUNCHPad helps students and recent alumni forge successful careers and launch entrepreneurial ventures, and provides comprehensive services in support of these goals. Your feedback

from the recent alumni survey has indicated a strong desire for more meaningful mentoring and networking opportunities with students and recent graduates—your request has been heard!

First, I encourage all alumni to join the Johns Hopkins Alumni networking platform at GoHopOnline.com.

Here you can connect with other alumni from across the Hopkins and Peabody family, and network for industry-specific resources, connections, and mentoring opportunities.

I also encourage you to submit feedback and ideas for how you would like to be involved by sending an email to peabodyalumni@jhu.edu and stay tuned for additional communications about direct involvement with LAUNCHPad here at Peabody.

This year we will also celebrate two alumni (see below for details): Kevin Kenner (BM ’86, MM ’89, AD ’89, Piano) and Joseph Young (AD ’09, Conducting). Please join me in congratulating Kevin and Joseph for their outstanding achievements and thanking them for their distinguished representation of Peabody.

Sincerely,

Michael Carlton Director of Constituent Engagement

Alumni Award Recipients Kevin Kenner (BM ’86, MM ’89, AD ’89, Piano) will receive the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumnus Award for his three decades of accomplishments and accolades in the field of music. Kenner has won numerous prestigious awards, including the top prize at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, the International Terrence Judd Award in London, and third prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow. He has gained a reputation as a superlative performer on period instruments, recording and appearing in concert with the Orchestra of the 18th Century. His recent CD Chopin Resonances was Gramophone magazine’s Editor’s Choice and was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards in France. Kenner has been teaching at the Frost School of Music since 2015. Previously, he taught for 11 years at the Royal College of Music in London and has served as visiting professor at the Academy of Music in Łódź, Poland, where he was recently awarded an honorary doctorate.

CHRIS HARTLOVE

Joseph Young (AD ’09, Conducting) will be given the Johns Hopkins Outstanding Young Alumnus Award. Young has served as the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles for the Peabody Conservatory since 2017 and began his tenure as music director for the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for the 2019-20 season. Prior to this position, he was assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony and served as the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra. Young made his major American orchestral debut in January 2008 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and has since appeared with the Saint Louis Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Bamberger Symphoniker, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica y Coro de RTVE (Madrid), and Chicago Sinfonietta, among others. Young is a recipient of the 2015 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards for young conductors, an award he also won in 2008 and 2014.

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2019 Reunion Weekend

ALL PHOTOS BY JIM BURGER

Last April, Peabody celebrated reunion weekend with events, performances, and award presentations. Allan and Claire Jensen and Paul Matlin (BM ’70, MM ’72, Viola; Bus BS ’81, Mathematics; ENGR MS ’84, Computer Science) received the Johns Hopkins University Heritage Award (below). Vivian Adelberg Rudow (TC ’57, BM ’60, Piano; MM ’79, Composition) received the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni Award (right). Zachary Herchen (BM ’06, MM ’09, Saxophone;BM ’07, Recording Arts & Sciences) performed and received the Johns Hopkins University Outstanding Recent Graduate Award (far right).

Daniel Trahey (BM ’00, Tuba, Music Education) received the Johns Hopkins University Community Hero Award from Dean Fred Bronstein and Assistant Vice President of Alumni Relations Susan deMuth (below right).

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For years, Beth Stewart (KSAS BA ’04, Latin American Studies; BM ’04, MM ’06, GPD ’09, Voice) had an idea floating around in her head.

As the founder of Verismo Communications, a boutique public relations firm that represents classical musicians and arts organizations, and as a former producer and vocal performer herself, she’d noticed that the arts industry is especially hard on freelancers who are working outside an established institutional framework — and she wanted to do something about it. But she didn’t feel equipped to make a move.

And then she heard these words: “Philanthropy is giving what you have.”

Stewart’s thought process went like this: “I have some time, not a ton, and some expertise. But what I really have is the capacity to connect brilliant people and ideas. Maybe I can bring that to the table.” journalists Anne Midgette and The idea that had been percolating Celeste Headlee, conductors Lidiya was a foundation to foster one-onYankovskaya and Nicole Paiement, one mentorship between exceptional and women’s rights advocate artists and mentors. In particular, Amanda Mejia. she wanted the foundation to benefit The next step was to find the right talented women, people of color and artists to be mentees. To identify Turn other arts professionals from tradithe Spotlight fellows, Stewart and her tionally underrepresented groups, board looked specifically for people who were already engaging their with clear personal missions who were communities and working toward strengthening their communities. “As social justice. artists, a lot of our professional energy “I started calling brilliant women is focused inward. And that’s a liabilthat I respect across the country,” ity,” says Stewart. “We’re strongest says Stewart. In the summer of 2018, when we use our art to connect.”

Turn the Spotlight was born. The The first cohort of Turn The nonprofit aims to identify, nurture, Spotlight fellows was composed of and empower leaders in the arts.

11 women and people of color, most Stewart’s vision? A more equitable of whom had already founded orgaarts industry. nizations geared toward the greater For the pilot project, she recruited good. Peabody alumna composer 10 industry-leading arts profesFrances Pollock (MM ’15, Voice) was sionals from a wide range of fields among them. Stewart says each — including film makers, arts activfellow had a season-long project that ists, opera singers, a composer he or she worked on over the course and designer — to serve as menof the mentorship. tors. Among them were Peabody For example, violinists Elena alumnae soprano Corinne Winters Urioste and Melissa White developed (MM ’07, Voice) and arts educator an app called Intermission, which Alysia Lee (MM ’06, Voice). Then provides movement and mindfulshe put together an advisory board ness techniques geared to musicians. composed of 10 women, including 24

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JACOB FELDMAN

Nurturing ‘Change-Makers’ in the Arts

Andrew Lee, a violinist, pianist, and conductor, worked to expand the education programs at DC Strings, an organization that brings classical music to underserved areas of the Washington, D.C., region. Lucy Dhegrae, a vocalist and founder of the Resonant Bodies Festival, created a series of concerts called “The Processing Series,” exploring how the body processes trauma.

Stewart said the Spotlight leadership team paid close attention to what worked in the pilot project — and what didn’t.

“Our next cohort launches in January 2020, and the new crop of Turn The Spotlight fellows will have 18 months to collaborate with their mentors – and with each other,” Stewart says. “We’re really looking to build a network of women and people of color in the arts.”

Stewart has ideas for how Turn the Spotlight could evolve, but will stay true to the mission of pairing up mentors and fellows whose work resonates with each other. “I want this to grow organically,” she says. “I’m looking for change-makers.”

—— Christine Grillo

DEPARTMENT NEWS Peabody student, faculty, and alumni news all in one place, sorted by department to make it easier for you to find your colleagues and classmates.

BR A S S NEW FACULTY

DAVID BILGER is a Distinguished Visiting Artist for 2019-20 and has held the position of principal trumpet of The Philadelphia Orchestra since 1995. Prior to joining the orchestra, he held the same position with the Dallas Symphony. Bilger has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with which he recorded Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto.

Elisa Koehler (BM ’87, Trumpet, Music Education; DMA ’96, Conducting) began a new position as Music Department chair and professor of music at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. This spring she was elected secretary of the International Trumpet Guild.

Doctoral candidate Rachel O’Connor, horn, has been awarded the $10,000 Presser Graduate Music Award. Her project involved a teaching artistry and performance tour focused on enriching musical communities in La Paz, Bolivia; Panguipulli, Chile; and Durango, Mexico; through brass pedagogy and performance training.

Harry Oehler (BM ’16, Trombone, Music Education; MM ’18, Trombone) has been named principal bass trombone of the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra in Johnstown, Pa. NEW FACULTY

NEW FACULTY

A native of Austin, Texas, faculty artist BILLY HUNTER has been principal trumpet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 2004. He is also a former member of the Grammy-nominated Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago.

His awards include the Roger Voisin Outstanding Trumpeter Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center in the Berkshires and first prize in the Kingsville International Solo Competition Brass Division.

Faculty artist ANTHONY PRISK joined The Philadelphia Orchestra as second trumpet in August 2013. Previously he was a member of the Houston Symphony and the New World Symphony. He has performed internationally with orchestras and music festivals including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Moscow Philharmonic, and others. Prisk won two international trumpet competitions through the International Trumpet Guild.

See Dan Trahey in Preparatory

C O M PO SITIO N Faculty artist Judah Adashi (MM ’02, DMA ’11, Composition) released Love into Concrete, performed by doctoral candidate Lior Willinger, as a musical response to Baltimore Ceasefire’s Sacred Space Rituals.

Camila Agosto (MM ’19, Composition) was named a finalist at the National Composer Intensive at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where her new piece Tybontoan was premiered by the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Josh Armenta (MM ’14, Composition; MM ’15, Computer Music) premiered Ice Shall Cover Nineveh in February with Indianapolis Opera, which commissioned the work in celebration of the 35th season of chorus master John Schmid.

Composition Department Chair Oscar Bettison’s chamber concerto, Livre des Sauvages, was recorded live and appears on Ensemble Musikfabrik’s latest CD. Bettison’s piece was a co-commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Musikfabrik.

Douglas Buchanan (MM ’08, Composition, Music Theory Pedagogy; DMA ’13, Composition) and librettist Caitlin Vincent (MM ’09, Voice) premiered a new opera titled Bessie and Ma, commissioned by the University of Connecticut as part of the 2017/2019 Sackler Prize in Music Composition in March. The opera tells the story of the intersecting lives of Bessie Coleman, the first female aviator of color in the United States, and Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, the first female governor of Texas.

Zach Gulaboff Davis (MM ’19, Music Theory Pedagogy; DMA ’19, Composition) was awarded second prize in the Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Award, Chamber Music Category, sponsored by the National Federation of Music Clubs. His piece On Fractured Memories, a concerto for piano and 12 instruments, won him the award and a $4,000 prize.

See Elijah Wirth in Preparatory See Rachel Zephir in Music Education

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Composition professor Michael Hersch (BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition) has been selected the 2019–20 composer-in-residence with the Camerata Bern, a highly acclaimed chamber orchestra located in Switzerland. Soprano Ah Young Hong (BM ’98, MM ’01, Voice), associate professor of voice, will premiere Hersch’s new work Agatha in February.

Sun-Young “Sunny” Park (DMA ’19, Composition) is the director of the South Korean section of the Asia-America New Music Institute. The group released an album on Delos Records called Transcendent, which features her music.

Park was also commissioned by Ebb & Flow Arts, a music presenter in Hawaii, to premiere her piece Heem.

See Michael Hersch in Vocal Studies

Jake Runestad (MM ’11, Composition; MM ’12, Music Theory Pedagogy) released new compositions, including A Silence Haunts Me and Proud Music of the Storm. His piece Your Soul Is Song had its Carnegie Hall premiere last spring.

The vocal group VOCES8 released his work Let My Love Be Heard on their album Enchanted Isle. An album of just Runestad’s works recorded by Conspirare was released in August. He was also awarded the Raymond W. Brock Memorial Commission from the American Choral Directors Association.

A work by Amy Beth Kirsten (DMA ’10, Composition) titled h.o.p.e. was featured on Nadia Shpachenko’s CD Poetry of Places. Pianist Adam Swayne featured her titular work for vocalizing pianist on his CD, Speak to Me. Kirsten’s music-driven theatre work Savior was listed as one of the 10 best classical concerts of 2018 by the Chicago Tribune.

2019-20

Choral Arts ON

T UR!

ANTHONY BLAKE CLARK Music Director

Baltimore Choral Arts charts thrilling musical voyages in our 54th season, performing choral masterpieces from America, England, France, Hungary, Italy, and Vienna. Our tour theme also extends to our new concert home at Shriver Hall Auditorium and a tour to England.

Monteverdi Vespers Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 3 pm Shriver Hall Auditorium Mozart Requiem Sunday, May 17, 2020 at 3 pm Shriver Hall Auditorium SUBSCRIPTIONS NOW ON SALE!

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Jacomo Bairos (GPD ’11, Conducting) made his subscription debut conducting the Boston Pops in June and led the Atlanta Symphony in a performance with Ben Folds.

Peter Bay (MM ’80, Conducting) conducted his final concert as part of the Hot Springs Music Festival on June 15 in Hot Springs, Ark. He will continue to work with the Austin Symphony Orchestra, where he is the music director.

Gonzalo Farias (GPD ’18, Conducting) has been named Jacksonville Symphony’s new associate conductor. In his new role, Farias will conduct Jacksonville Symphony concerts and take part in planning education and community programs throughout the year. Farias was also a semifinalist in the Malko Competition.

Peter Folliard (MM ’09, Conducting) has been named the new director of orchestras at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, S.D. Christopher Franklin (DMA ’99, Conducting) conducted the San Francisco Opera for its production of Hansel und Gretel in November. He also conducted a recording of bel canto repertoire with tenor Petr Nekoranec and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and concerts with tenor Juan Diego Flórez in Spain. He completed a run of performances of La Traviata at Minnesota Opera, Turandot at San Francisco Opera, and Peter Grimes at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia.

Erin Freeman (DMA ’16, Conducting) was named a finalist for Performance Today’s inaugural Classical Woman of the Year Award. In June, she conducted Mozart’s Coronation Mass at La Madeleine in Paris; led the Defiant Requiem with the Asheville Symphony and Voices of Terezin chorus; and conducted Elijah in Boston Symphony Hall with Berkshire Choral International.

An American Suite: From Billings to Bernstein Sunday, November 3, 2019 at 3 pm Shriver Hall Auditorium Christmas with Choral Arts Tuesday, December 3, 2019 at 7:30 pm The Baltimore Basilica

C O N DUC TIN G

JOIN US ON TOUR! January 10-20, 2020

Baltimore Choral Arts is touring England, highlighted by a prestigious invitation to sing Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary celebration. The Chorus will also perform at venues in London and Oxford.

BaltimoreChoralArts.org | 410-523-7070

See Elisa Koehler in Brass In July, Gemma New (MM ’11, Conducting) conducted the San Francisco Symphony and was interviewed by the San Francisco Classical Voice.

Doctoral candidate Michael Repper, conducting, was recently appointed artistic director of the Northern Neck Orchestra of Virginia.

Michelle Rofrano (MM ’15, Conducting) serves as the assistant conductor at Florida Grand Opera.

Jonathan T. Rush (MM ’19, Conducting) and Paola Avila (MM ’18, Conducting) were the Project Inclusion Conducting Freeman Fellows with the Chicago Sinfonietta for the 2018–19 season.

DANCE

NEW FACULTY NEW FACULTY

Assistant professor DIEDRE DAWKINS is the founder of the Dance is Healing mentoring program for middle school girls. For eight years, she was a member of Ronald K. Brown/Evidence Dance Company, where she had the privilege of teaching and performing internationally. Dawkins is the modern dance instructor at Alvin Ailey Camp/Towson and a teaching artist with Young Audiences of Maryland.

NEW FACULTY

Louis Stewart (DMA ’91, Conducting) conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in a recording of one of his works. In the summer of 2018, he recorded with the Los Angeles Recording Orchestra, and this fall, he will assume the interim directorship of the Merrimack Valley Philharmonic.

The San José State University Wind Ensemble and their Director of Bands David Vickerman (DMA ’14, Conducting) were selected to perform at the College Band Director’s National Association Western/Northwestern Division Conference in March 2020.

Joseph Young (AD ’09, Conducting), Peabody’s Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles, has been named Berkeley Symphony’s next music director. He assumes this position in the 2019–20 season in addition to his regular duties at Peabody.

KATHERINE HELEN FISHER will be the artist in residence for the BFA dance program in the fall. She is a Los Angeles-based director, choreographer, and performer. Working both commercially and within the art world, she has movement-directed music videos for Radiohead and Rufus Wainwright. Her work has been featured by the Smithsonian, The Hammer Museum, the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and The New York Times.

The artist in residence for the BFA dance program in the spring semester will be BRIAN GERKE. He has served as the director of the Contemporary Dance Department at the National Ballet Academy of Iceland. Gerke joined the Iceland Dance Company in 2012 and is the first American dancer to be bestowed with the Icelandic Griman award for Dance Performer of the Year.

G UITA R Serap Bastepe-Gray (BM ’96, MM ’99, Guitar), assistant professor and co-founder of the Center For Music and Medicine, was featured in the April edition of She Shreds magazine in an article titled “A Seat at the Table: The Women in Higher Guitar Education.” In May, Arts Biomechanics Journal published BastepeGray’s article “Improving Musicians’ Occupational Health: A Proposal for New Perspectives,” discussing the diagnoses of playing-related injuries and how to improve musician self-reporting. Also, her SmartGuitar group won first place in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Whiting School of Engineering Design Day. Senior Ian Blanchardon, guitar, runs an app startup called “Blismo,” a mobile payment app that finds discount codes as users shop online. Blanchardon is one of several Peabody students using the services of FastForward U, Johns Hopkins’ hub for student entrepreneurship.

See Andrew Dickenson in Piano

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DMA candidate Zachary Grim, guitar, was hired as the guitar teacher for the Community Arts program of the Community College of Baltimore County system.

NEW FACULTY

Master’s student Andrew Oswinkle, guitar, was awarded third prize in the annual Philadelphia Classical Guitar Society competition.

See William Simms in Historical Performance David Starobin (BM ’73, Guitar) and Becky Starobin (BM ’73, Violin) wrote the libretto for the opera The Thirteenth Child, which was previewed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and premiered at Santa Fe Opera in July.

Meng Su (PC ’09, GPD ’11, MM ’16, AD ’18, Guitar; GPD ’15, Chamber Ensemble) recorded Sun Wukong’s Toccata, written for her by Sergio Assad for Guitar Coop, an online platform aiming to be a global hub for guitar aficionados. She also appeared with Al Di Meola in February in North Carolina.

THOMAS VILOTEAU joins the Conservatory as a faculty artist in guitar. He’s won both the Guitar Foundation of America and the Francisco Tàrrega competitions. In 2013, Viloteau won the Northern Trust/Piper Enrichment Award, which allowed him to commission the Suite Brasileira 3 from composer Sergio Assad. He was the artist in residence at the show Performance Today in 2017, broadcasting his playing to more than a million people across the U.S.

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Preparatory faculty artist Anastasia Pike (MM ’07, Harp), a former student of Jeanne Chalifoux, performed with her students from the Preparatory, Christopher Newport University, and Columbia University at New York City’s historic Trinity Baptist Church. She also performed a concert with travel writer Rick Steves and joined the Smithsonian Chamber Players and actress Katja Herbers in performances of Reinbert de Leeuw’s Im wunderschönen Monat Mai.

Brian Kay (BM ’13, MM ’15, Lute) and William Simms (MM ’91, Guitar) performed as members of Cleveland-based Baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire on Songs of Orpheus, which won the Grammy for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Members of the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble performed in the Conciertos de la Villa de Santo Domingo Festival in February, and the group was also selected as a festival ensemble for the 2019 Young Performers Festival and Showcase, part of the Bloomington Early Music Festival in May. See Nola Richardson in Vocal Studies Master’s historical performance candidate Cameron Welke will take up residence at Springwell in Baltimore’s Mount Washington neighborhood as part of Peabody’s Musicians-in-Residence program.

JA ZZ STUDIE S Faculty artist Nasar Abadey, jazz percussion, is part of an interdisciplinary team selected as one of 32 winners of the 2019 Johns Hopkins Discovery Awards. Abadey will collaborate on the “Billie Holiday Project: Bridging Art, Local History and Community Wellness” with faculty from the Kreiger School of Arts & Sciences, Sheridan Libraries, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

NEW FACULTY

Jacqueline Pollauf (BM ’06, Harp; MM ’07, Harp Pedagogy) published Exercises in Harmonics through Oakway Studios, her own publishing company. She also published Pedal Exercises for Harp in 2016.

H I STO RICA L PERF O RM A N C E Amy Domingues (MM ’12, Viola da Gamba) is a founding member of the early music ensemble Sonnambula, which released its debut recording Leonora Duarte (1610-1678): The Complete Works.

Duarte was the only known woman to write music for the viol in the 17th century.

Faculty artist LUKE BRIMHALL is currently a member of The U.S. Army Blues, a premier military jazz ensemble in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the Army Blues, Brimhall was a member of the Jazz Ambassadors of the U.S. Army Field Band, with whom he toured the United States performing public jazz concerts and teaching master classes in jazz trombone.

NEW FACULTY

LI B E R AL A RTS NEW FACULTY

M USIC EDUCATIO N See Elisa Koehler in Brass See Holly Mulcahy in Strings See Dan Trahey in Preparatory See Elijah Wirth in Preparatory

Assistant professor and jazz pianist RICHARD D. JOHNSON was a member of Wynton Marsalis’ Septet and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra from 2000 to 2003. He also started the Reach Afar program for young people ages 7 to 17, educating them about elements of jazz in hip-hop. As a Musical Ambassador under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, he shared the gift of jazz in more than 76 countries.

Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies Sean Jones was interviewed in the March 2019 issue of Downbeat Magazine about how he has restructured the Jazz Studies Department at Peabody.

He emphasizes the importance of living where you work in order to fully immerse oneself into the community.

Mark G. Meadows (BM ’11, GPD ’13, Jazz Piano; KSAS BA ’11, Psychology) has released a new single titled Be the Change.

He continues to perform throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C., including at the National Arboretum, the Atlas Theater, and the Signature Theatre.

Associate professor DANIEL H. FOSTER chairs the Liberal Arts Department. A scholar with a particular interest in the intersection of music, literature, and drama, he is the author of Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks and is currently at work on From Bards to Blackface, or How the Minstrel Changed His Tune. At the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, he was also the director of the media center, where he led development of digital humanities projects and worked to incorporate technology into the classroom.

NEW FACULTY

Eleanor Roosevelt Sr. High School Chamber Winds in Greenbelt, Md., directed by Rachel Zephir (PC ’02, Trumpet; MM ’02, Music Education), and Mount View Middle School String Orchestra in Marriotsville, Md., directed by master’s student Matthew DeBeal, will perform at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in December.

M USIC TEC H N O LO GY See Josh Armenta in Composition Faculty artist Wendel Patrick, recording arts, received an Art Works grant of $20,000 for his podcast Out of the Blocks.

M USIC TH EO RY See Douglas Buchanan in Composition See Zach Gulaboff Davis in Composition NEW FACULTY

MERYL LAUER is a cultural anthropologist specializing in ethnographies of bodily practice. Her research interests all explore how codified movement practices engage with or resist larger structures of power. Her current research project, an ethnography of South African ballet, examines everyday choreographies of social inequality, made apparent in dance practice and performance. Lauer’s teaching pulls from across anthropology, feminist and queer studies, Africana studies, and postcolonial theory.

JESSICA HUNT is equally at home in orchestral, chamber, vocal, and dramatic settings, and her music has been performed in concert by the Chiara Quartet, CCM Chorale, Axiom Brass, and more. Her research interests include the phonetic and articulatory phenomena of sung text, harmonic vocabulary, and phrase-based syntax in musical theater, and championing the works of under-represented composers through creative analysis.

See Jake Runestad in Composition

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Faculty member Kathleen DeLaurenti is the head librarian of the Arthur Friedheim Library, which is a co-publisher of the Public Domain Song Anthology, alongside the University of Michigan and University of Virginia. The anthology consists of songs in the public domain that have been arranged for a modern performer.

See Imani Mosley in Woodwinds Patricia Puckett Sasser (MM ’06, Musicology) was promoted to associate librarian of music. Sasser serves as the director of the Maxwell Music Library at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.

Jordan Prescott (MM ’19, Organ), a student of John Walker, was named one of Diapason Magazine’s “20 Under 30” in its May issue.

P E RCUS SIO N Sandbox Percussion — Victor Caccese (BM ’11, Percussion), Terry Sweeney (BM ’13, Percussion), Ian Rosenbaum (BM ’08, Percussion), and Jonathan Allen — presented their Summer Percussion Seminar in July on NYU’s campus.

Kramer Milan (BM ’14, Percussion) won a position as a full-time instructor of percussion at the University of Northern Iowa.

Faculty member Susan Forscher Weiss, musicology, presented a seminar at McGill University called “Roman de Volvelle: Revolving wheels in Renaissance music theory texts.” In July, she traveled to Basel where she presented a paper at the Medieval Renaissance Meetings.

COLUMBIA PRO CANTARE - 43rd SEASON

MOZART: REQUIEM Saturday, October 26, 2019, 8 PM Laura Lee Fischer, Conductor Pre-concert lecture 7 PM, Silent Auction 6 :15 PM, Post-concert Reception Columbia Pro Cantare • Alex Razskazoff, soprano • Randa Melhem, mezzo Kyle Tomlin, tenor • Chris Edwards, baritone • Festival Orchestra Jim Rouse Theatre for the Performing Arts, 5460 Trumpeter Road, Columbia, MD Pre-concert lectures at JRT sponsored by Rotary Club of Columbia Patuxent

HANDEL: MESSIAH Sunday, December 8, 2019, 7:30 PM Frances Motyca Dawson, Conductor Pre-concert lecture 6:30 PM Post-concert Reception Columbia Pro Cantare • Amy Van Roekel, soprano • Leah Kaye Serr, mezzo Charles Reid, tenor • Lester Lynch, baritone Henry Lowe, positiv organ • Festival Orchestra

Jim Rouse Theatre

Christmas Noël with CPC Chamber Singers Sunday, December 15, 2019, 3 PM Frances Motyca Dawson, Conductor Christ Episcopal Church, 6800 Oakland Mills Rd., Columbia 21045 Tickets & Information: www.procantare.org or 410-799-9321 30

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Born in South Korea, Distinguished Visiting Artist JI SU JUNG (BM ’16, GPD ’17, Percussion) was the first prize winner of the 2018 Ima Hogg Competition. In 2015, Jung was invited by NPR radio host Fred Childs to be a young artist in residence on Performance Today. Since 2018, Jung has appeared in performances throughout the U.S. and Asia with the Percussion Collective.

Peabody Dean’s Incentive Grant recipient Adam Rosenblatt (BM ’10, Percussion; A&S BS ’10, Molecular/Cellular Biology) was an artist-in-residence with Creative Alliance and performed Michael Gordon’s percussion sextet Timber there in March.

Faculty artist Jeff Stern (MM ’14, Percussion) and Matt Keown (’17, Percussion) are two of the four members of the icarus Quartet, a group of two percussionists and two pianists. The group won the Chamber Music Yellow Springs 34th Annual Competition for Emerging Professional Ensembles on April 28.

PIA N O Jennifer Nicole Campbell (BM ’14, MM ’15, Piano) was recently appointed vice president of the Main Line Music Teachers Association, a branch of MTNA. As artist in residence with the Delaware County Symphony, she presented an outreach program in April teaching children to conduct. Campbell also premiered her work, Clandestine Lullaby, with fellow faculty at Cecil College in an event celebrating women composers in February with Andrew Dickenson (BM ’00, Guitar) conducting.

See Hyejin Kwon in Vocal Accompanying

Matthew Odell (MM ’03, GPD ’05,— Piano) released his debut album, Connections: The Music of Olivier Messiaen and His Students, in February on Albany Records.

DMA candidate Sun-A Park, piano, a student of Boris Slutsky, won second prize and the Rosa Sabater Award, which is given to the best Spanish music interpretation, at the 61st International Jaén Piano Competition in Spain in late April.

Roberta Rust (BM ’76, Piano) released a new album, DIRECT CONTACT, on Navona Records. On the record are works of eight composers with whom she had direct contact over the years.

Daniel Wnukowski (BM ’03, Piano) performed a sold-out recital at Weill Hall in Carnegie Hall in May. He released volume one of the complete solo piano music of Karol Rathaus in March. His other long-term projects include an outreach program in Canada called Piano Six and a blog called Bagatellen.

Graduate student Min Joo Yi (MM ’18, Piano), a student of Yong Hi Moon, won the bronze medal in the 18th Concours International Piano Campus Competition, which was held in Cergy-Pontoise, France, in February.

P R E PA R ATORY

Peabody Preparatory’s PreConservatory Violin Program (PCVP) traveled to Nashville, Tenn., in April to perform concerts and participate in classes. There, they collaborated with Western Kentucky, Belmont, and Vanderbilt Universities.

Preparatory voice students Hayden Spitzer placed first and Elisabeth Stevens placed third in the Youth Division at the Maryland/D.C. National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Audition. Laura Stanell won second place in the Lower High School Division.

In June, the Preparatory’s Tuned-In Wind Brass Percussion Congregation, led by faculty artists Dan Trahey (BM ’00, Tuba, Music Education) and Elijah Wirth (BM ’99, Tuba; MM ’02, Music Education), traveled to Detroit, Mich. for a week of collaborations, performances, and classes. They partnered with the Detroit Symphony, Detroit African American Culture Museum, Detroit’s Juneteenth Celebration, and many local artists as well as an educational weeklong workshop with Accent Pontiac where Preparatory students led classes and conducted the Pontiac students.

In July, professor Victoria Chiang, viola, and Michael Mermagen (BM ’84, Cello) performed as members of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School.

Huan Ci (MM ’19, Violin), joined the Symphony Orchestra of Central Conservatory of Music, a world-renowned institute of music in China, as section violin.

Viacheslav Dinerchtein (MM ’99, GPD ’01, Viola; GPD ’02, Chamber Ensemble) recorded a two-CD set of the complete viola sonatas by Mieczysław Weinberg.

This is a three-year project to be released worldwide by Sony Music in a special centenary edition.

Edenwald in Towson will host junior violinist Claire Hebeisen as part of Peabody’s Musicians-in-Residence program. Hebeisen pursues solo, chamber, and orchestral performance and loves new music.

NEW FACULTY

In March, harp faculty artist Michaela Trnkova and her Preparatory harp students traveled to Richmond, Va., where they performed in a master class.

Preparatory and Tuned-In alumna Iman Williams, a junior at Virginia Commonwealth University, won the 25th annual Sigma Alpha Iota scholarship competition for VCU women in the Music Department in 2019. She was also awarded the Frances Blaisdell scholarship through the National Flute Association 2019.

ST RI NGS Zuill Bailey (BM ’94, Cello) was the artistic director for the Northwest BachFest in Spokane, Wa., in March.

Nikita Borisevich (GPD ’13, MM ’17, Violin; GPD ’15, Chamber Ensemble) See Irina Kaplan Lande in Woodwinds and DMA candidate Margarita Loukachkina (BM ’10, MM ’12, Piano) Preparatory student Joseph Mostwin, made their debut for the Venetian Arts cello, was a winner of the Londontowne Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition. Society at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center in Florida in March.

He performed with the Londontowne Symphony Orchestra in March.

Professor JUDITH INGOLFSSON, violin, performs regularly as soloist, chamber musician, and in recital as the Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel. She was a prize winner of the celebrated Premio Paganini Competition in Genoa and the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York. Ingolfsson was also the recipient of the Chamber Music America/WQXR Record Award for her debut CD. Ingolfsson is co-artistic director and founder of the Festival “Aigues-Vives en Musiques” in France.

See Anastasia Pike in Harp

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Daniel Jacobs (MM ’15, GPD ’17, Viola) joined the teaching artist faculty at Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) program as a viola teaching artist. He worked at the Camino Nuevo Charter Academy site, a new addition to the program allowing students to study outside of school.

Faculty artist Maria Lambros, viola, released a recording of the two Brahms Viola Quintets with the New Zealand Quartet on Naxos Records in February.

She also recently launched Our Joyful Noise Baltimore, an organization that presents concerts in a veterans’ shelter, women’s prison, and a cancer treatment residence, and for people living with autism in the Baltimore community.

Si-Yan Darren Li (MM, AD ’08, Cello) coached award-winning ensembles as a member of the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music, including Arcus Trio and Callisto Quartet.

Holly Mulcahy (BM ’94, Music Education; PC ’94, MM ’96, Violin) has been appointed as the new concertmaster for the Wichita Symphony Orchestra in Wichita, Kan. She will also be serving in the position of partner for audience engagement for the symphony.

See Becky Starobin in Guitar Chuanzi Wang (MM ’19, Violin) has accepted a position as section violinist with the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra in China.

Yat Sze Wong (GPD ’19, Violin) has accepted a section violin position with the Phoenix Symphony.

VO CAL ACC OMPAN YI NG Nathan Cicero (MM ’18, Vocal Accompanying) was music director for Skylark Opera Theatre’s production of Così fan Tutte at the Historic Mounds Theatre in St. Paul, Minn., in March.

The production also featured Laurent Kuehnl (MM ’13, Voice) as Ferrando.

Cicero has also been appointed assistant director and pianist for South Metro Chorale and director of music and organist for the Church of St. Mark in St. Paul.

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GPD candidate Monica Daly, vocal accompanying, joined the music staff at Opera Steamboat last summer.

NEW FACULTY

Johanna Kvam (MM ’16, Vocal Accompanying) has been selected as a Sandford Studio Artist Resident Pianist at Kentucky Opera in Louisville for the 2019–20 season. She is also an emerging artist pianist at Virginia Opera.

Hyejin Kwon (BM ’09, Piano; MM ’11, Vocal Accompanying) has joined the faculty as pianist coach for Long Reach Opera Workshop, an intensive summer opera training program located in Toronto. She was also a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program for pianists.

Christine Pulliam Melamed (MM ’10, Vocal Accompanying) in 2017 founded Prelude Opera, which continued its programming of children’s opera with The Three Billy Goats Gruff in 2019. As music director of the opera company Dramma per Musica, she directed Don Giovanni, Xerxes, Giulio Cesare, and Ariodante.

VO CA L STUDIE S Tariq Al-Sabir (BM ’15, Voice) performed selections from his song cycle #UNWANTED in the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center in February and the full work in June at The Shed. #UNWANTED centers on black people’s navigation through social media and access to technology and incorporates videos, a mix of genres, and a unique ensemble.

Soprano Rachel Blaustein (MM ’15, Voice) won second place in The American Prize in Vocal Performance — the Friedrich & Virginia Schorr Memorial Award, Professional Women’s Division in Opera. She won an Encouragement Award in both the Annapolis Opera Competition and the Metropolitan Opera Auditions Central Region, and won the Audience Choice Award in the Harold Haugh Light Opera Competition.

Peter Scott Drackley (’12, Voice) performed in Opera St. Louis’ production of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma as Pollione, and Christine Lyons (MM ’16, Voice) portrayed the title role of the high-priestess of the Druids.

Assistant professor CARL DUPONT is a bass-baritone performer, teacher, and researcher with operatic credits including The Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Carolina, and El Palacio de Bellas Artes. He has performed with leading orchestras. His particular passion is sharing the wealth of songs by black composers, and he released a solo debut album of these works titled The Reaction.

Robert Feng (BM ’18, Voice) won second place in the New York Classical Music Society Artist International Voice Competition in May. Gabrielle Goodman (BM ’90, Voice) released a CD titled Black Portraits, which features her own classical compositions.

The CD includes an original Brahms- and Gershwin-influenced song cycle that takes listeners on a journey from slavery to freedom.

In August, the 2019 Gateways Music Festival presented Peabody Rosa Ponselle Distinguished Faculty Artist Denyce Graves, mezzo-soprano, as its featured guest artist with the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra at Eastman Theatre in Rochester, N.Y. She also appeared in Marnie on a PBS Great Performances at the Met in February.

Sarah Hayashi (BM ’13, MM ’13, Voice) won second place in the Handel Aria Competition in Madison, Wis. She also performed the role of Blondchen in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail with the Bronx Opera in New York, the role of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with the Mediterranean Opera Studio and Festival in Sicily, and the role of The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with the Lyric Opera Studio Weimar (Germany).

In April, Ah Young Hong (BM ’98, MM ’01, Voice), associate professor of voice, presented a recital at Spectrum in Brooklyn performing rake forth the embers by Michael Hersch (BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition), Philomel by Milton Babbitt, and …wie stille brannte das Licht

by Distinguished Visiting Artist Georg Friederich Haas.

See Ah Young Hong in Composition Samantha Hornback (MM ’19, Voice) performed the role of Tytania in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival in Waimea, Hawaii, in July. There, she also appeared in its “Red, White, and Blues” concert featuring music from the Great American Songbook.

Shelley Jackson (BM ’07, Voice) won second prize in the 40th International Maria Callas Grand Prix in Athens, Greece.

See Laurent Kuehnl in Vocal Accompanying

Tenor Israel Lozano (GPD ’02, Opera) and mezzo-soprano Jopei Weng (MM ’02, Voice) sang the roles of Radames and Amneris in Verdi’s Aida with The Singapore Lyric Opera in Singapore in June 2018.

Two Peabody alumni were featured in performances with Teatro Nuovo. Soprano Christine Lyons (MM ’16, Voice), a resident artist of the company, performed the role of Alaide in Bellini’s La Straniera.

Baritone Rob McGinness (MM ’17, Voice) played Fabrizio in Gioachino Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra. The performances took place in July at both the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.

Soprano Christine Lyons (MM ’16, Voice) won first place in the New England Regional Finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions that were held at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in January.

Solen Mainguené (BM ’10, Voice) won first place and the prize for the Best Interpreter of Italian Repertoire in the 26th International Singing Competition of Clermont-Ferrand (France).

Baritone Rob McGinness (MM ’17, Voice) made his Carnegie Hall debut on May 25 as the baritone soloist in Faure’s Requiem and Mozart’s Missa Brevis in C minor with MidAmerica Productions and the New England Symphonic Ensemble. He was also selected as a semifinalist in the Florida Grand Opera Young Patronesses of the Opera Competition.

In February, bass William Meinert (MM ’19, Voice), who studies with William Sharp, won first place in Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition and was selected as an apprentice artist at the Santa Fe Opera.

Construction on our new 8-story addition with 58 spacious residences is underway. So don’t wait, we expect the Grand Expansion to be completely sold out when construction is complete in spring 2021.

Reserve today while the opportunity to customize your residence remains: 410.891.6800 Ready for Move-in Spring 2021 | RolandParkPlace.org | Pending final approval from Maryland Department of Aging

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Alexandra Razskazoff (BM ’14, Voice) won first place in the 31st Annual Opera at Florham/Violetta Dupont Vocal Competition, where tenor John Chong Yoon Noh (BM ’16, Voice) was also a finalist and was given the Encouragement Award. Razskazoff also won first place in the National Society of Arts and Letters DC Dorothy Lincoln-Smith Vocal Competition.

Nola Richardson (MM ’10, Voice, Pedagogy; MM ’11, Early Music Voice) won the Grand Rapids Bach Festival Competition in March in Grand Rapids, Mich. She was the recipient of the Linn Maxwell Keller Distinguished Bach Musician award, which included a $10,000 prize.

Jessica Satava (MM ’04, Voice) has been appointed the executive director of the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra in Pa. Satava was also accepted to attend Essentials of Orchestra Management sponsored by the League of American Orchestras and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Tenor Jongwoo Woo (MM ’18, Voice) won first prize in the European Music Academy Vocal Competition in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as the Beethoven Award, and performed in the gala concert with the North Czech Philharmonic.

WOO DWIN DS Sophomore Gemma Baek, clarinet, a student of Alexander Fiterstein, won third prize in the Sidney Forrest Clarinet Competition at the University of Maryland in April.

Doris Hall-Gulati (BM ’85, Clarinet) was the clarinet soloist on the Grammyaward winning recording of Lansing McLoskey’s oratorio Zealot Canticles, which was recorded by The Crossing. She is also a member of Trio Clavino which has been twice awarded a Fulbright-Hays grant to perform and teach in China.

Imani Mosley (MM ’10, Bassoon, Musicology) will be the visiting assistant professor of musicology at Wichita State University.

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NEW FACULTY

Associate professor RANDALL SCARLATA, baritone, is a regular guest performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Lyric Fest, and Chamber Music Northwest, among others. Known for his versatility and consummate musicianship, Scarlata’s repertoire spans five centuries and 16 languages. A sought-after interpreter of new music, he has given world premieres of works by George Crumb, Paul Moravec, Richard Danielpour, Ned Rorem, and Lori Laitman.

An orchestral player, chamber musician, soloist, and teacher, faculty artist ERICA PEEL has been the piccoloist of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2017. She has performed with the Omaha Chamber Music Society, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Art of Elan, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and Houston Symphony.

See Caitlin Vincent in Composition

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The Poulenc Trio — Bryan Young (BM ’96, Bassoon); Preparatory faculty artist Irina Kaplan Lande, piano; and Liang Wang, oboe — performed at the National Gallery of Art in a concert featuring composers inspired and influenced by Ruskin and Whitman in celebration of their 200th birthdays.

IN MEMORIAM In February, obituaries for Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Dominick Argento (TC ’50, Piano; TC ’51, Theory; BM ’51, MM ’54, Composition) appeared in The New York Times, Opera News, The Washington Post, and on PBS’ Newshour, among others.

John “Jack” Beyers (TC ’60, BM ’61, MM ’63, Piano) Elaine Bonazzi former voice faculty artist Raymond Hardy Jr. (BM ’55, MM ’63, Music Education) Longtime Peabody faculty member Ruth Inglefield died in February. Since 1988, Inglefield trained generations of harpists now in the profession.

Inglefield’s family started the Ruth Inglefield Memorial Harp Scholarship Fund in her memory. To donate, visit secure.jhu.edu/form/peabody and specify the Ruth Inglefield memorial scholarship.

Ann Jensen Lanzillotti-Black (BM ’46, Music Education) Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick (’06, Voice), who wrote a book The Encore, about her two double lung transplants, died at age 35 in April. Her story was told on CBS News, NPR, and BBC News.

Lydia Ignacio Russo (MM ’61, AD ’62, Piano)

FANFARE New Board Chair with a Long Hopkins History Appointed Growing up, Jill McGovern played the violin from age 5 through high school, when she reached the first chair of the second violin section in her school orchestra, the pinnacle of her violin career. Looking back on her time as a young musician, McGovern never thought she would be in the position she is in today: chairing the board for the Peabody Institute under the visionary leadership of Dean Fred Bronstein.

McGovern is enthusiastic about Dean Bronstein’s vision of preparing young musicians to have successful careers in today’s world, which, for many of them, may not include the historically traditional career goal of obtaining an orchestral position.

As such, Peabody is offering new courses and degree programs, such as a Bachelor of Music degree called Music for New Media. Launched in 2018, this program prepares students to compose and produce music for film, television, virtual reality, computer games, and other types of media — positions that are in high demand today.

“Peabody is trying to prepare students to use their talents in other ways and to think about other opportunities,” says McGovern, who has been on the Peabody Institute Advisory Board since 2012. “It’s a privilege to be associated with Fred, who is leading an organization that’s being transformed before our very eyes. That’s what I find exciting about Peabody, and I want to be an advocate this year as I chair the board.”

Bronstein adds, “Jill is the ideal, wonderful volunteer — level-headed, wise and generous. I’m personally grateful to have her leading the Advisory Board this year.”

McGovern — who has worked for Johns Hopkins University in the past, first as an American Council on Education Fellow in 1981, then as a senior executive assistant to the president — is also honored to be chair of the board because of her late husband, Steven Muller, who was president of the Johns Hopkins University from 1972 to 1990.

(McGovern and Muller were married from 2000 to 2013.) In 1977, it was Muller — who played the violin as a child in Hamburg, Germany, and sang with an a cappella group as a young man in Los Angeles — who created the university’s affiliation with the Peabody Institute, then a highly regarded independent conservatory that was struggling financially.

This was the beginning of Peabody becoming a thriving academic division within Johns Hopkins.

“Of the many things that Steve accomplished while he was president of Hopkins, I think one of the most meaningful to him was making possible that affiliation between Peabody and the university,” says McGovern, who was CEO of The Marrow Foundation from 1993 to 2007.

McGovern has been involved with other projects at Peabody through the Jill E. McGovern and Steven Muller Fund. In 2013, she launched an annual Peabody Symphony

Orchestra memorial concert as a way to pay tribute to Muller and preserve his legacy. The seventh Steven Muller Memorial Concert — an event that will one day be fully endowed — will be held on February 7, 2020.

McGovern — along with the entire advisory board — is also committed to providing scholarships for Peabody students. For the last three years, she has supported Tavifa Cojocari, a senior violin performance major. “It’s been wonderful to watch the development of a talented young person like this,” says McGovern, who has attended Cojocari’s recitals and gotten to know her family through the years. “Peabody is such a remarkable part of Hopkins, and it’s a pleasure to continue to be associated with the Hopkins community.”

—— Jennifer Walker

PLAYING through PAIN?

PLAY WELL instead.

Playing Well is a groundbreaking series of online courses that provide practical, scientifically grounded approaches to avoid injury and maintain health for peak performance and career longevity.

Learn more about Playing Well: peabody.jhu.edu/online

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Ci-Ying Sun and Marc von May Join Advisory Board The Peabody Institute is pleased to announce two new additions to the Peabody Institute Advisory Board (piab). They are Ci-Ying Sun and Marc von May, two longtime supporters of Peabody.

Ci-Ying Sun (BM ’92, MM ’94, Piano) is a part-time independent art advisor and was senior vice president with Christie’s Asia, responsible for business development in Asia.

She spent most of her professional career in the banking sector with Merrill Lynch and ubs. As a professionally trained classical pianist,

she organized and performed a fundraising recital benefiting the Asia Society in 2013 in its newly opened Hong Kong Center. Sun is a fellow of the third class of the China Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Sun has supported Peabody by funding a Steinway piano in honor of her teacher Ellen Mack and the Breakthrough Curriculum.

Marc von May, currently a private investor, is a retired insurance, investment, and tax advisor in New York City. He was educated in Switzerland

Have a night out.

It’s on us.

All performances at Peabody are FREE, from classical to contemporary, from jazz to dance.

Find your favorites at peabody.jhu.edu/events, or by calling 667-208-6620.

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and France and worked for Nestlé and Citibank. He earned doctoral degrees in French business law and U.K. and U.S. common law. At Peabody, he has established several four-year named scholarships for Conservatory voice and cello students. He has supported the Peabody Opera productions, the Piano Fund, the Tuned-In program, and the Preparatory’s Estelle Dennis/ Peabody Dance Training Program for Boys. Seeing the importance of helping artists further their professional careers through training, audience development, marketing, and technology, von May is also committed to supporting the newly created LAUNCHPad program.

“We are fortunate to have an outstanding group of volunteers who serve on the Peabody Institute Advisory Board. They are critical to helping us think through strategy, garner resources and advocate for Peabody to the world,” says Dean Fred Bronstein. “Both Ci-Ying and Marc, even before coming on our board, have been so generous to Peabody. We are so delighted to welcome them in their official roles as Advisory Board members.”

—— Margaret Bell

As a former dancer and educator, Lori Raphael has seen firsthand how injuries can jeopardize a career. “One of the things that gets in the way of a long career is this belief that musicians and dancers should never get injured,” says Raphael, whose son, Ben Merliss (BM ’14, Jazz Bass), graduated from Peabody. This assumption can prevent performers from seeking treatment early on, when they first need it.

To support the health of young musicians and dancers, Raphael and her husband, Mike Hemmer, have made a generous $250,000 gift to support Peabody’s performing arts and medicine program. The program includes the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine, a collaboration with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Johns Hopkins Rehabilitation Network’s (jhrn) Clinic for Performing Artists at the Peabody Institute, as well as initiatives aimed at injury prevention and research.

The jhrn Clinic for Performing Artists treats musicians and dancers with performance-related pain or injuries by providing physical therapy, occupational therapy, and hand therapy. The central location of the clinic, which is housed on campus in the Peabody Wellness Center, is convenient for students — and also intentional in reducing any stigma associated with getting care. “You’re not going to get sent off campus if you have a repetitive stress injury to get your ‘secret’ therapy somewhere,” says Raphael, who also has a background in recreation therapy. “It is going to be right on campus, and we’re going to acknowledge that to have a lifetime of productive performance, you are going to need to know how to care for yourself.”

The performing arts and medicine program at Peabody also focuses on injury-prevention education. A workshop series called Peak Performance Fundamentals trains students in how to monitor and protect their physical and mental health as performers, and the online Playing Well

RICHARD ANDERSON

Supporting the Health of Young Performers

Top: Lori Raphael and Mike Hemmer; Bottom: Amanda Greene, a physical therapist at the JHRN Clinic for Performing Artists, works with Peabody Conservatory dancer Chase Benjamin.

curriculum focuses on the anatomy of movement, common injuries and their treatments, and prevention and rehabilitation strategies.

The performing arts and medicine program is one component of the work that Peabody is doing through its Breakthrough Curriculum to prepare students to have long careers in the 21st century. “Peabody has a much broader notion of what a graduate from a conservatory can be or do, so the school is helping students understand that they need to be entrepreneurial and they need to have some business skills,” says Hemmer, who spent his career as a lawyer for airlines and railroads such as Union Pacific Railroad.

But it is the performing arts and medicine program that has the potential to change the culture in the field surrounding performers and injuries. Adds Raphael, “We hope that Peabody’s leadership with this program will inspire other educational and performance organizations to focus on the mental and physical health of their artists. The culture of performing arts is changing, and Peabody is leading the way.”

—— Jennifer Walker Watch a series of videos introducing Playing Well: bit.ly/2lNJgRi

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GEORGE PEABODY SOCIETY We recognize those philanthropic visionaries whose lifetime cumulative giving has matched or exceeded George Peabody’s founding gift of $1.4 million. Their generosity has expanded and transformed the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. The names are ordered by the date when they joined this elite group of donors.

George Peabody Sidney M. Friedberg Charitable Trust The Blaustein-RosenbergThalheimer Philanthropic Group Eric and Edith Friedheim Loretta Ver Valen Arabella Leith Symington Griswold

Wendy G. Griswold and Benjamin H. Griswold IV Elizabeth J. and Richard W. Case Florence H. and Charles R. Austrian Michael R. Bloomberg Anonymous Tristan W. Rhodes

Hilda P. and Douglas S. Goodwin Claire S. and Allan D. Jensen Marc von May Thomas H. Powell Anonymous John L. Due Taylor A. Hanex Rheda Becker and Robert E. Meyerhoff

Laifun Chung and Ted Kotcheff Sandra Levi Gerstung and the Levi Family Fund II of the Baltimore Community Foundation Cynthia and Paul Lorraine Nancy Grasmick

LEGACY CIRCLE The Legacy Circle consists of individuals who have made a provision in their estate plan for the Peabody Institute in the form of a bequest, a life income gift, or a trust arrangement, thus becoming a part of the Peabody legacy — and a part of its future.

Marilyn Abato Ethel R. Akers-Leet Sallie M. Albright Frances K. and George Alderson Anne T. Darlington Andrews The Estate of Robert Austrian Mary B. Barto Mary Lou Bauer Catherine H. Beauchamp Lisa D. Bertani Dorothy Bevard Alma T. Bond Esther B. Bonnet* Tammy Bormann and Mark Paris Barbara and Thomas Bozzuto Saul William Brusilow Don Buchanan Laura R. Burrows Elana R. Byrd John F. Cahill Carol Cannon Josepha Caraher

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Angela G. Casagrande Frances T. Cheng-Koors* and James C. Koors Kathryn Chilcote The Estate of Virginia C. Cochran* Joanne Cohen Carol M. Condon David C. Dasch Doris S. Davis Jane E. Donato Miriam B. Dorf Ronya J. Driscoll Sara Crawford Drogheo Jane R. Dummer Phillip T. Dunk Jr.* Beverly Kinsman Eanes and Edward Eanes Ruth L. Fisher Stephen W. Fisher Leon Fleisher E. Carl Freeman Jr. Owen B. Fuqua Jr. Daniel M. Graham Janet Rayburn Greive Beatrice C. and Frederick N. Griffith

Wendy Goodyear Griswold and Benjamin H. Griswold IV Marian E. Hahn Taylor A. Hanex Wilda M. Heiss David Wayne Helseley* Alice Fitzsimmons Hill* Reginald D. Hobbs Jr. Christina M. Holzapfel and William Bradshaw Amy Elizabeth Hutchens Milla Ilieva Allan D. and Claire S. Jensen Laima Kallas Thomas Kaurich Dale R. Kellenberger Harriet Kessler Tinka Knopf de Esteban Laifun Chung Kotcheff and Ted Kotcheff Gretchen R. Kraft Galan Kral Doris M. Lam Paul and Cynthia Lorraine Maj. Amy Elizabeth McDougal

H. Bruce McEver Jill E. McGovern Janet Melnicoff-Brown John R. Merrill* Martha K. Nelson William A. Nerenberg and Dorothy L. Rosenthal Nancy W. and William Nicholls Michele Parisi David and Claude Paulsen Alan J. Pearlmutter Scott Pender Anthony Piccolo Thomas H. Powell Miss Virginia M. Reinecke* Tristan W. Rhodes and Daniel Kuc Howard Rosenfeld Winifred J. Ross Doris Rothenberg Eda Joan Scheir Rubin Joseph Russ* Christine Rutt Schmitz Karen A. Schwartzman Carol Scruggs Huntington Sheldon*

Carolyn J. Sienkiewicz Arlene Putnam Singer and Len David Singer Hardwick R. Spencer Beatrice E. Stanley Walter C. Summer Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Donald S. Sutherland Carol* and Roy R. Thomas Marc C. von May Charles Emerson Walker Larry L. Walker Robert M. Worsfold* Martin P. and Barbara P. Wasserman Carol Schultz Weinhofer Deloris Elinor Wilkes-Williams and Neville Williams Charlotte L. and Bruce M. Williams Peter J. Wolf Thomas G. Worrall Phyllis A. Zheutlin* Carrie May Kurrelmeyer Zintl Trust

* Deceased

THE 2018–19 FRIEDBERG SOCIETY This society is named in honor of Sidney and Miriam Friedberg, whose generosity launched a new era of philanthropic leadership at the Peabody Institute. Friedberg Society donors sustain and enhance Peabody by giving $1,000 or more over the course of a fiscal year.

The donors listed below have made outright gifts or pledges at the Friedberg Society level between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019.

CHAIRMAN’S CIRCLE $100,000 AND ABOVE Anonymous Barbara and Thomas Bozzuto Jack R. Byrd* Jane and Larry Droppa Margaret and Robert Fisher Nancy Grasmick Wendy and Benjamin Griswold IV The Hearst Foundations J. Michael Hemmer and Lorraine Raphael Claire and Allan Jensen The Estate of C. Albert Kuper III* The Estate of Paul McAdam* Mary and James Miller Clarence and Audrey Plitt Trust Carolyn Sienkiewicz

Hyun Joo Park and Sangyun Choung Lynne Church and James Skiles The Charles Delmar Foundation Helen P. Denit Charitable Trust Estelle Dennis Scholarship Trust Slyvia Dodd* Evergreen House Foundation Inc. Ira Fader Jr. Edith Hall Friedheim and the Eric Friedheim Foundation Laura and Edward Asher Peggy and Yale Gordon Charitable Trust Amy Gould and Matthew Polk Jr. Michael Greenebaum Wilda Heiss Nina Houghton Michiko and Jay Jones

Barbara J. Cowie, Rheda Becker, and Robert E. Meyerhoff COMPOSER’S CIRCLE $50,000 - $99,999 Robert Austrian* The Brookby Foundation Ann Schein Carlyss Diantha Johnson Jill McGovern John Merrill* Thomas Powell Reba A. Will Foundation Marc von May

MAESTRO’S CIRCLE $25,000 - $49,999 Paul M. Angell Family Foundation Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation, Inc. Brown Advisory Inc. Marian Buck-Lew* Doris Davis Jane W.I. and Larry D. Droppa Taylor Hanex Laifun Chung and Ted Kotcheff Hank Sopher

VIRTUOSO’S CIRCLE $10,000 - $24,999 Laura B. Garvin-Asher and Edward J. Asher Liza Bailey and Michael Musgrave Rheda Becker Christina M. Holzapfel and William Bradshaw Christina and William Bradshaw

Christopher Kovalchick Judith and Randall Krum Abbe Levin Jan and Kris Loeber Catharine and Charles McClure Bruce McEver Maria and Vanda McMurtry A. Wallace Moore* Misha Petkevich+ Presser Foundation Rockjensen Foundation Roland Corporation U.S.+ Barbara and David Roux Christine and Robert Schmitz Adam G. Shapiro John W. Skouge, M.D. Solomon H. Snyder, M.D. T. Rowe Price Foundation Trust For Mutual Understanding Esther C. Viros Wells Fargo Foundation Thomas Wilson Sanitarium for the Children of Baltimore City Shirley S. L. Yang

CONCERTMASTER’S CIRCLE $5,000 - $9,999 ALH Foundation Inc Stanley Altan Aurelia Bolton William R. Brody Liz and Fred Bronstein Lydia Duff Pod and Charles Duff Maria Figueroa Bodner+ Sandra L. Gerstung Isidore Grossman Foundation

Barbara S. Hawkins, Ph.D. Hecht-Levi Foundation Jephson Educational Trusts Koret Foundation Barbara Leons Clara Juwon Ohr Peabody Institute Fund of The Baltimore Community Foundation Edythe and Charles Rock Patricia Skurzynski Lisa and Christopher Smith Jr. Speedwell Foundation Anne Luetkemeyer Stone Sharon and Edwin S. Toporek Barbara and Martin Wasserman

PRINCIPAL’S CIRCLE $2,500 - $4,999 Frances and George Alderson Marin Alsop Alsop Family Foundation Abra Bush Constance Caplan Lewis Diuguid Abigail Ochs and Ryan Frederick Kathryn and Jon Inglefield Sonja Inglefield Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies++ Patricia E. Kauffman The Links, Inc. Columbia Maryland Chapter Cynthia and Paul Lorraine Thomas MacCracken Barbara and John McDaniel Gary Melick Lloyd E. Mitchell Foundation Trust Donald Regier Turner B. and Judith R. Smith Linda and Richard Snurr Martha Stein Marguerite VillaSanta Margaret and Patrick Walsh Jennifer Widom and Alex Aiken

Hsiao-Ying Lin, piano, and Caleb Park, cello Susan Baisley Baltimore Homecoming Inc. Carol and Steven Batoff Anders V. Borge Victoria Bradley and Joseph Coons Susan and John Brantley Helene Breazeale Anne Brodsky Alice and Lawrence Brown Phyllis Bryn-Julson and Donald Sutherland Annamaria Calabro and Shankar Subramaniam Mary Morgan and David Callard Carol Cannon The Denise Caves Trust L. Chinsoo Cho Heasoon and Young Chung Kathleen Whalen and Frederick Cohen Sarah Whalen-Cohen and the Harry & Helen Cohen Charitable Foundation Joanna Coogan Barbara J. and William H. Cowie Jr. Ruth and Arno* Drucker Hildegard and Richard Eliasberg Ernst & Young Foundation++ Kimberly and Donald Evans

Ruby and Robert Wesley Hearn Lynnie and Ian Hoffman Daniel Holik Cynthia and Roland* Hoover Su-Ting Hsu Nancy and Robert Huber Donna and Eric Kahn Nancy Kass and Sean Tunis Harris Kempner Jr. Irene Kitagawa and Stephen McCall D.L. Langdon Linda and Julian Lapides Cecile and Ulysses Lupien Carol Macht Valerie and Michael Marcus Deborah and Paul Mathews Carol and Paul Matlin Audrey McCallum Cynthia and Michael McKee Terry Meiselman Shuch and Neal Meiselman Sharon and Andrew Nickol Eleanor Simon and Patrick O’Neall Elizabeth and Jonathan Peress Michael Pham Anthony Piccolo Townsend and Kimberly Plant Thomas Pozefsky Joseph Rooney and Ian Tresselt Vivian Adelberg and David Rudow Judi and Burr Short Thomas Silverman Barbara and Joseph Skillman Edith Stern and Allan Spradling Angela and Daniel Taylor Sheila and Erick Vail Beverly and Richard Weber* Susan Weiss, Ph.D. Susan Wolman Ireneus Bohdan Yaromyr Zuk

Barbara and Martin Wasserman DIRECTOR’S CIRCLE $1,000 - $2,499 Iris Albstein Lisa Alexander Annapolis Musicians Fund for Musicians Anonymous Avedis Zildjian Company

Lisa Flanagan and Edwin Monuki Carole and Hang Fung Patricia Gallagher Wendy and Robert Ginsburg Google Inc.++ Suruchi Mohan and Prabhat Goyal Janet and Tyrone Greive Halle Family Foundation

* Deceased + In-Kind Gift ++ Matching Gift

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT Settling New Scores Interview by Judith Lloyd

What brought you to the Music for New Media program at Peabody?

I wanted a program where I could balance my classical background with the technological skills needed for film scoring. Peabody was the only conservatory with this new program, where we’d be pioneers in the field.

What classes did you take your first year, and which were your favorites?

My first semester I took core classes, Music for New Media, and basic recording techniques for musicians. My second semester I took music and law and intro to programming. My favorite was the recording class. I’d never focused on the recording process or mixing in general, but I discovered a real love for it.

How would you classify the music you are composing now?

I primarily write orchestral and chamber music. Since I started interacting with my Peabody colleagues, I’ve been dabbling with electronic works.

Who and what inspires you?

I’m inspired every day by the musicians at Peabody! Whenever I feel stuck, I can go to a dance or music performance and see other 40

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JIM BURGER

Ashna Pathan discovered her love of music listening to her father’s favorite albums. At 5 years old, she wanted to join a rock band. Her mother enrolled her in classical piano lessons. By middle school, she’d found her primary instrument in the clarinet. Now a sophomore in the inaugural Music for New Media program at Peabody, she intends to score for film and television. During her first year, she collaborated with MFA filmmaking student Qianhui Zhang from the Maryland Institute College of Art (mica) to score his thesis film Golden Apple. people doing what they love at a high level of skill. It’s the instant cure for writer’s block.

How did you come to work with student film directors in the MICA community?

The first semester, we watched trailers for mica student thesis films.

Afterward, we could approach the directors and ask to score their films.

A couple of us were able to land films that way. This semester, we talked to students who are just starting to think about their thesis films. Our professor Thomas Dolby spoke, and we helped with a Q&A session about the best methods for directors and composers to work together.

Has collaborating with filmmakers influenced your composition process?

The process is definitely different from the classroom setting. We’re communicating with real people to get a real project done. Typically, the directors I’ve worked with aren’t coming from a music background.

It’s been an experiment in communication to bridge that gap. There’s such a strict timeline in film. You have about half to a third of the time that you’d get to score something in a

more classical setting. I’m coming up with ideas faster and learning to roll with those first ideas, shaping them as close as possible to what I want the music to achieve.

Your first year coincided with the first year of Peabody’s Music for New Media program. How’s it going?

It’s interesting, because we’re surrounded by programs that have been around for years and years. There’s usually a strict path and not much wiggle room for what you can take outside of your major. Our professors want us to explore and dive more deeply into what we discover. This year, I’m taking a lot more classes in jazz studies because I want to build that side of my knowledge, along with more recording classes because I really enjoyed that last year. Some of my peers are taking programming classes so they can better score for video games. I really like that our major gives us the freedom to develop our own areas of concentration and that we have the flexibility to explore what we really want to explore.

Watch a spotlight video for the Music for New Media program: bit.ly/2mc9QUc

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