Peabody alumni Gemma New (MM ’11, Conducting) and Jonathan Rush (MM ’19, Conducting) were recently named 2022 Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Award recipients. New—the Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and recently appointed Artistic Advisor and Principal Conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in her native Wellington—received the Distinguished Alumna Award for professional achievement and humanitarian service. Rush, the Assistant Conductor for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra who leads the BSO through its three Star-Spangled Spectacular performances and Music for Maryland regional tour in July, received the Outstanding Recent Graduate Award, which spotlights graduates of the past decade who exemplify excellence and ingenuity. Congratulations to New and Rush, who join a distinguished collection of previous Peabody recipients of Johns Hopkins alumni awards, which includes Guitar Professor Manuel Barrueco (BM ’75, Guitar), Awadagin Pratt (PC ’89, Piano; PC ’89, Violin; GPD ’92, Conducting), and André Watts (AD ’72, Piano).

With graduation and the academic year now behind us, and as we near the close of our 2022 fiscal year, this is an appropriate moment to share some key metrics tracking our institutional progress at Peabody.

When Peabody launched its Breakthrough Plan in 2015, and then revitalized it in 2019 as the Breakthrough Plan 2024, we committed ourselves to an ambitious effort to build a 21st-century curriculum, launch new degree programs, increase scholarship aid, enhance community engagement, upgrade our overall operations, and tackle the historic diversity, equity and inclusion challenges of our field, and to underpin these efforts with a plan to create a more financially sustainable and healthy model for the future, and in the process eliminate long-standing structural deficits.

Many of these goals have since been realized. New and expanded academic programs at Peabody have both broadened and strengthened the academic mission and the financial underpinning as demonstrated by enrollment growing 27 percent from 571 students in 2015 to 725 in 2022, accompanied by net tuition growth of 56 percent, from $13.8M in 2017 to $21.5M in 2022.

Another key part of Peabody’s strategy has been to increase fundraising capacity to both support new initiatives and enhance financial sustainability. For the current fiscal year, Peabody has raised $9.92 million on a goal of $6.95 million, or 143 percent of goal, exceeding last year’s total of $9.74 million raised. By way of comparison, in FY18-FY20 annual fundraising ranged between $4.6 million and $7.2 million. We have made significant inroads and are working to ensure we can sustain the kind of annual effort we have seen over these two years, even as we layer in plans for capital fundraising needs in the coming years.

While COVID certainly created many challenges that will have slightly delayed our business plans, we nonetheless have continued to make substantive, material financial progress. For the prior three years, FY19 through FY21, Peabody’s planned deficits or “negative margins” (the gap between revenue and expenses) hovered between 6 and 8 percent. Those negative margins for this current fiscal year, which ends June 30, are currently projected to be 1.5 percent, a dramatic reduction. And while we plan for some spike in that deficit in FY23 from residual COVID impact and larger than expected university-wide expense allocations, we fully expect to generate surpluses beginning in FY24.

All in all, we are pleased to see that our business and financial plans remain on track to fully support Peabody’s expanding academic and artistic mission.

Sincerely,

Fred Bronstein, Dean

The “Future Is . . . Festival: ChamberQUEER 2022”—curated by the eponymous ChamberQUEER organization founded in 2018 by Danielle Buonaiuto (MM ’12, Voice, Musicology), Brian Mummert (MM ’15, Voice), Jules Biber, and Andrew Lee to highlight classical music’s historically underrepresented queer figures—includes two performances at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY, with performers including Melissa Wimbish (GPD ’11, Voice; GPD ’14, Chamber Ensemble). Tickets for both June 10 and June 12 shows can be found online.

Composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie’s opera Harvey Milk, about the life and assassination of the pioneering activist and politician, debuted in 1995 as an epic involving more than 80 players spread over nearly three hours. A co-commission by San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis invited Wallace to revisit his score, resulting in a streamlined two hours that gets its world premiere this month. Carolyn Kuan (GPD ’04, Conducting) leads the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis through this updated work at the Loretto-Hilton Center in St. Louis, and tickets are available online.

Classical Movements and the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts present “Steps Towards Freedom: A Juneteenth Remembrance,” honoring the day in 1865 that enslaved African-Americans in Galveston, Texas, were notified of their freedom. The program includes spirituals, songs, storytelling, and dance to animate this new American holiday, and performers include Assistant Professor of Voice Carl DuPont and vocal coach Lester Green. Two performances take place at The Secret Garden at the Rectory in Alexandria, VA, and tickets are available online.

Celebrated classical guitarist Ana Vidovic (AD ’07, Guitar) travels to Spain for the International Guitar Festival of Madrid, a country and city that has left indelible marks on the instrument and its repertoire. Vidovic performs a solo recital at the Auditorio Nacional and tickets are available online.

For a 2021 album, pianist Inna Faliks (BM ’99, MM ’01, GPD ’03, Piano) performed responses to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126, or Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit written by nine contemporary composers, including Paola Prestini (’95, Composition). This summer, Ukrainian-born Faliks, whose memoir Weight in the Fingertips is due next year, performs those commissioned responses at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, CA, and tickets are available online.

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