Cummings addresses Peabody graduates

The Peabody Conservatory celebrated its 133rd graduation exercises on Thursday, May 21, with an address from Congressman Elijah Cummings. Cummings' impassioned and dynamic speech thanked graduates "for cultivating your gifts" and urged them to "Trust the journey." Voice faculty artist Stanley Cornett was presented the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award. The George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America was presented in absentia to soprano Jessye Norman. Seventy-three Bachelor of Music degrees, 106 Master of Music degrees, 10 Master of Arts degrees, 25 Graduate Performance Diplomas, and 10 Doctor of Musical Arts degrees were awarded at the Peabody Commencement ceremony. Earlier that day at the Homewood campus commencement ceremony, faculty artists Marin Alsop and Leon Fleisher received honorary degrees from Johns Hopkins University.  


FROM THE DEAN

 

Conservatories tend to be "conservative" as the name indicates. Here at Peabody we are moving in a new direction. This in part entails a commitment to music of our time from bold new compositional voices writing today for new audiences and new venues. How is that manifesting itself?

 

Peabody has a world-class Composition Department with Kevin Puts, Michael Hersch, and Oscar Bettison. In addition to the Peabody Modern Orchestra, Peabody will launch a flexible new music ensemble beginning this fall. Also this fall, Peabody presents Michael Hersch's opera, On the Threshold of Winter, sure to be a major event. And putting Peabody on the international stage in the area of commitment to music of our time, BSO Music Director Marin Alsop records works of Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Kevin Puts with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra for release on Naxos in 2016. In addition, the New Music Gathering - a national conference of performers and composers - will be hosted here in Baltimore at Peabody in January 2016. Peabody will also be part of a co-commissioning consortium that includes the Detroit Symphony for a flute concerto by Aaron Jay Kernis, written for flute faculty member Marina Piccinini, with the PSO giving the mid-Atlantic premiere during the 2016-17 Season.

 

Look for more to come as Peabody makes music of our time a vital hallmark of our brand.   

 



Fred Bronstein, Dean
ON STAGE / OFF CAMPUS

Wednesday, June 10, 11:00 am 

Peabody's baroque ensemble, Different Birds, competed for and won a grant from Early Music America to participate in the organization's Young Person's Festival at the 2015 Boston Early Music Festival. They will perform a program of French baroque music titled "La Doleur Exquise," dedicated to the memory of recorder student Christine Chen. Different Birds features soprano Abigail Chapman (BM '15, Voice); master's student Theodore Cheek, lute; GPD student Alan Choo (MM '14, Violin, Early Music); Patrick Merrill (BM '13, Piano; MM '15, Early Music Harpsichord); baritone Corbin Phillips (MM '15, Early Music Voice); Niccolo Seligmann (BM '15, viola da gamba); and GPD student Aik Shin Tan, Baroque flute.


 


Thursday, June 11, 8:00 pm           

Peabody's Director and Chair of Jazz Studies Gary Thomas, saxophone, will perform at the Washington, D.C., Jazz Festival. His trio will play with Preparatory alumnus Warren Wolf's trio and the Young Lions at Hecht Warehouse. Mark Meadows (GPD '13, Jazz Piano; JHU BA '11, Psychology) and his group Somethin' Good will also be performing on Sunday, June 7, at The Phillips Collection and Thursday, June 11, at Dukem Jazz.   

 


Saturday, June 13; Sunday, June 14

Devin Gray (BM '06, Jazz Percussion) will hold CD release parties for his new jazz album, RelativE ResonancE, which came out this month. The events will take place at the Greenwich House Music School in New York on June 13, and in Baltimore on June 14 at An die Musik Live.    
   

Friday, June 19, 8:00 pm          

Roger Zare (MM '09, Composition) was commissioned to compose a piece for the 30th Annual Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, which will be held in Easton, Md., from June 7 through June 21. In honor of the 30th Festival, Artistic Directors J. Lawrie Bloom and Marcie Rosen commissioned Zare to write "New Horizons," a piece for piano, oboe, clarinet, and cello, which will be featured at concert in the Avalon Theater.  

 


Friday, June 26, 11:00 am

Faculty member Oscar Bettison will speak at a composer's talk on Friday, June 26, at 11:00 am, at the Crested Butte Festival's "Time Spans" mini festival in Colorado. On June 27, at 7:00 pm, the Talea Ensemble will perform Bettison's An Automated Sunrise at the festival. 

Peabody Events highlights select off-campus performances featuring Peabody performers. For other events, please visit our Peabody Institute Concerts Facebook page. For the complete weekly list of concerts at Peabody, subscribe to Events at Peabody at peabody.jhu.edu/news.    
   
ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS


Tung-Chieh Chuang  

Tung-Chieh Chuang ('10, Conducting) has won the 2015 Malko Conducting Competition, an international competition for young conductors held by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Taiwan native won the Mahler Competition in 2013 and, in February, he won the second prize and audience prize at the most recent Solti competition; no first prize was awarded. 



Dylan Gregg
Dylan Gregg, a Preparatory voice student of Alina Kozinska, won first place in the NATS MD/DC auditions in his category.
 

Erik Meyer 
Erik Meyer (BM '02, MM '04, Organ) won the JHU Song Contest with "Truth Guide Our University-The Spirit of JHU," a reworking "The Johns Hopkins Ode." "The Hopkins Black and Blue," composed by Tariq Al-Sabir (BM '15, Voice), was a close second. 


Gemma New 
Gemma New (MM '11, Conducting) has been appointed music director of Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Ontario, Canada. For the 2014-15 season, she was the recipient of the Dudamel Fellowship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted eight education concerts in Los Angeles. 


Meng Su 

Meng Su (PC '09, GPD '11, Guitar; GPD '15, Chamber Music) won the gold medal, the Jack Marshall Prize of $30,000, in the fourth triennial Parkening International Guitar Competition in Malibu, Calif., on May 30. The Parkening Competition offers the largest prize purse of any classical guitar competition. Ms. Su performed the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaqu�n Rodrigo in the final round. She is a master's student of Manuel Barrueco and a member the Beijing Guitar Duo. Petrit �eku (GPD '11, Guitar), also a student of Barrueco, was the winner of the last Parkening Competition. 


RECENT RECORDINGS


Faculty cellist Amit Peled released Collage with pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera. The CD includes performances of Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19; David Popper's Tarantella, Op. 33; and a mid-20th century cello sonata by the Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze. 

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