Marin Alsop to lead conducting program
Maestra Marin Alsop, an inspiring and powerful leader in the international music scene, has been appointed to lead the graduate conducting program at Peabody. Music director of both the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Alsop is recognized for her deep commitment to education and her gift for communicating with and building audiences. In addition to her other positions, she has been music director of California's Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music since 1992. Ms. Alsop, who made history as the first woman to head a major American orchestra, first joined the Peabody conducting faculty in 2006 as a Distinguished Visiting Artist. Many graduates from the highly selective conducting program now hold positions with prestigious ensembles in the United States and abroad.
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FROM THE DEAN A changing of the guard is taking place this fall at Peabody. After 18 years as director of the graduate conducting program, Gustav Meier is retiring. Maestro Meier's name has been synonymous with the careers of numerous conductors who have appeared on the podiums of orchestras and opera companies around the globe, among them Carl St. Clair, Jun Märkl, Antonio Pappano, and Marin Alsop. Through these artists, and others including many students that he has worked with at Peabody, Gustav Meier is singularly responsible for more professional conductors today than almost any teacher. We at Peabody are enormously grateful for Gustav's unique contribution in making Peabody's conducting program what it is and wish him the very best in a retirement that follows such a distinguished career.
As we often find in life, when one door closes, another opens. It seems therefore especially fitting that Marin Alsop, a student in her formative years of Gustav Meier, will this year take the reins of the graduate conducting program at Peabody. There is more than a bit of serendipity and synergy here. At a time when Peabody is focusing increased attention on the community and the importance of training young musicians as citizen-artists, Marin's great commitment to community connectivity coupled with her world-wide reputation provides a wonderful next phase to our conducting program, and all our efforts here at Peabody.
Fred Bronstein, Dean |
ON STAGE / OFF CAMPUS
Sunday, September 6, 7:30 pm; Tuesday, September 8, 7:30 pm
Ensemble Loadbang will play two free concerts at Peabody's Centre Street Performance Studio, 5 E. Centre Street. The Sunday evening concert will feature favorite pieces from their repertoire including The Tiger Oil Memos by Scott Lee (MM ' 13, Composition). On Tuesday they will perform the world premiere of A Baby Bigger Grows Than Up Was, a monodrama by faculty member David Smooke (MM '95, Composition).
Mondays, September 14 and 28, 7:30 pm A Conservatory jazz ensemble-alto saxophonist Nathan Hook, bassist Alex Fournier, and percussionist Jonathan Baez -will perform at An die Musik in Baltimore. For tickets, visit andiemusiklive.com or call 410-385-2638.
Saturday, September 19, 8:30 and 10:00 pm
The Jazz at the Johns Hopkins Club series, under the artistic direction of Jazz Studies Chair Gary Thomas, begins its season with a concert by the Paul Bollenback Quartet featuring faculty artists Paul Bollenback, guitar, and Gary Thomas, tenor saxophone with Jared Gold, organ, and Jeff "Tain" Watts, drums. The group will play two sets, at 8:30 and 10:00 pm, at the Johns Hopkins Club on the Homewood campus.
Sunday, September 27, 3:30 pm Faculty artist and pianist Boris Slutsky will perform in the Community Concerts at Second concert series with violinist Dmitri Berlinsky and cellist Suren Bagratuni. Works by Schubert and Shostakovich are on the program, and the performance will take place at the Baltimore's Second Presbyterian Church.
Thursday, October 1, 8:00 pm; Sunday, October 4, 3:00 pm
Students in the Peabody Conservatory's Opera Department will perform in the chorus for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's performance of scenes from Mozart's Don Giovanni on Thursday, October 1, at 8:00 pm, at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and Sunday, October 4, at 3:00 pm, at Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda.
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.
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ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS
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Denyce Graves
Voice faculty artist Denyce Graves was interviewed in Master Singers: Advice from the Stage, a book by Donald George. Master Singers provides vocalists making the transition from student to professional with indispensable singing advice. Ms. Graves also wrote an essay on performing Margaret Garner for the University of Virginia Press.
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Norman Huynh
Norman Huynh (MM '13, Conducting), who studied with Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar, has been selected for the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholarship. This includes a three-week residency in September at the Mendelssohn Festival in Leipzig to study privately with Kurt Masur.
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Maki Kubota
Maki Kubota (BM '13, Cello), who was a student of Alan Stepansky, is one of 10 outstanding Music Academy of the West musicians who has been selected to participate in the second year of the New York Philharmonic Global Academy Fellowship Program. The program offers opportunities to train and play with Philharmonic musicians.
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Bilal Smith
Bilal Smith, a Baltimore School for the Arts graduate, was offered a full scholarship to Carolina Ballet's summer dance intensive in Raleigh, N.C. After spending the summer at that program, he was offered an apprenticeship with Carolina Ballet, a critical first step in a professional dance career. Mr. Smith was a student in the Estelle Dennis/Peabody Dance Training Program for Boys.
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Dontae Winslow
Dontae Winslow (BM '97, MM '99, Trumpet) wrote and performed the orchestral intro and also arranged horns for Dr. Dre's new album, Compton, the soundtrack for the 2015 movie Straight Outta Compton.
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RECENT RECORDINGS
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Elizabeth Hungerford (BM '10, Voice) and Andrew Arceci (BM '08, Viola da Gamba; Double Bass) released an album of works for soprano and viola da gamba with Gramophone Award-winning engineer/producer Adrian Hunter. The album, Love & Lust, will feature early English and Italian works by Caccini, Monteverdi, Hume, Simpson, Campion, and Purcell.
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Maggie O'Connor (BM '13; MM '14, Violin) released the new album Duo with her husband Mark O'Connor. The CD is a series of American classics and originals in a violin duet setting, with beautiful and virtuosic interplay.
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Faculty artist Denise Tryon, horn, has released her debut album So-Low on Bridge Records. Her disc features newly commissioned compositions that feature the low area of the horn's register.
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