Awadagin Pratt Launches New Piano Competition
With a $100,000 grant from the Sphinx Organization, Awadagin Pratt (PC ’89, Piano; PC ’89, Violin; GPD ’92, Conducting) is launching a new piano competition to spotlight African-American talent. The Nina Simone Piano Competition is set to debut in the summer of 2023, with applications open in December. Pratt, who became the first Black pianist to win the prestigious Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1992, named the competition after the peerless Simone, a classically trained artist who became a singular force across genres. “I’ve heard of too many young, prodigiously gifted pianists not having the opportunities that people who don’t look like them have,” Pratt told the Cincinnati Business Courier about the contest in a January interview. “I think there have been young pianists who’ve come up, are professionals and still don’t see that their opportunities matched their gifts.” The competition will be presented every two years in collaboration with the Art of the Piano Festival, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where Pratt is professor of piano. For more information, sign up for the mailing list at the competition’s website.
From the Dean
More than a year ago, Peabody embarked on development of a comprehensive campus facilities planning project—a key initiative in our Breakthrough Plan 2024—working closely with the architectural firm of Hord Coplan Macht and our colleagues at Johns Hopkins University Facilities. Peabody is fortunate to have our wonderful and historic Mt. Vernon campus, but we also recognize that as an older campus, and especially given our significant programmatic expansion in recent years and the ever-changing needs of our students, it is time for us to take on a major capital project, which we believe will benefit our faculty, students, staff, and broader community for decades to come.

With completion of a first phase of study focused on the modernization and improvement of the student life experience, especially as it pertains to on-campus living and dining, we are now in a second phase that is focusing on future needs for programmatic space across our campus. This part of the study, expected to be completed in April, is assessing overall space utilization on the Peabody campus, and how that may be reconfigured, adapted, and utilized in the future both as it pertains to programmatic use and student life. On a parallel track, Peabody is developing its financial plan that includes an assessment of debt and philanthropic capacity to support a major campus improvement project. This June we will seek trustee approval of a formal study as a final step toward establishing detailed plans for the project.

You can expect to be hearing much more about this exciting, transformational vision of the Peabody campus as planning continues. More to come!



Fred Bronstein, Dean
On Stage
Thursday, February 10, 7:30 pm EST; Saturday, February 12, 7:30 pm EST; and Sunday, February 13, 2:00 pm EST

Symone Harcum (MM ’18, Voice) stars as the young, disillusioned-with-romance widow Léotine in Minnesota Opera's first-ever production of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges' 1780 comedy The Anonymous Lover. The production takes place at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts and tickets are available online.

Thursday, February 17, 7:30 pm CET; Friday, February 18, 8:00 pm CET; and Saturday, February 19, 8:00 pm CET

The Age of Anxiety – An American Journey concert series is a six-night mini-festival organized by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in Hamburg, Germany, to spotlight American music during its turbulent 20th century. Conductor Marin Alsop, director of the Graduate Conducting Program, leads the orchestra for two of those concerts, both featuring Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra (The Age of Anxiety) and works by John Adams and Samuel Barber. The February 17 program features the new music group Ensemble Musikfabrik performing Peabody composition professor Oscar Bettison’s Animate Objects along with works by John Cage, Elliot Carter, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, and Joseph Lake. The February 17 concert takes place at the Elbphilharmonie’s small hall and tickets are available online; the February 18 and 19 concerts take place at the Elbphilharmonie’s great hall and tickets are available online, and a livestream is available for the February 19 performance.

Friday, February 18, 8:30 pm EST

The Peabody Wind Ensemble, under the direction of associate professor of music education Harlan D. Parker, performs Omar Thomas’ Come Sunday and the world premiere of Robert Langenfeld’s Symphony No. 1 – The Great Machine, a five-movement work for wind ensemble and electronics. The concert, honoring Parker's 30th anniversary of teaching at Peabody, takes place as part of the College Band Directors National Association Eastern Division Conference, which Peabody is hosting, and will be livestreamed.

Thursday, February 24, 8:00 pm EST

Charles Hulin (BM ’94, DMA ’02, Piano) accompanies soprano Shudong Braamse in a program featuring Chinese folk songs and operatic works to mark the Lunar Year of the Tiger. The concert takes place in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York and tickets are available online.

Friday, February 25, 7:30 pm EST; and Sunday, February 27, 2:00 pm EST

Assistant professor of voice Carl DuPont stars as a state department official who begins an affair with a young man fighting communism during Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s witch hunts that included identifying and firing gay employees of the federal government. Based on the Thomas Mallon novel of the same name, Fellow Travelers is performed at the Southern Theater in Columbus, Ohio, 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.
Artistic Achievements
Headshot of Monica Daly
Monica Daly
Monica Daly (GPD ’20, Vocal Accompanying) joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst as Vocal Coach and Accompanist, following a year as a resident artist at Opera Columbus in Ohio, where she served as pianist, chorus master, and vocal coach for productions such as A Tale of Two Cities, La Bohème, and The Marriage of Figaro.
Headshot of Thomas Dolby
Thomas Dolby
Music for New Media Professor Thomas Dolby was appointed Chairperson of the Ascend Through Music Advisory Board, a program of the nonprofit Living Classrooms Foundation. Ascend Through Music provides children and adults in Baltimore and Washington with access to music education, instruments, mentorship, and performance opportunities.
Headshots of Lauren Edwards and Kaytoya Ichoku
Lauren Edwards, Kaytoya Ichoku, and Lowrider James
Lauren Edwards, violin (far left); Kaytoya Ichoku, horn (near left); and Lowrider James, tuba—Peabody Preparatory students participating in the Baltimore Washington Musical Pathways program—have been accepted into the Chicago Youth in Music Festival and National Pathways Summit, which brings together students from across the country for three days of learning and collaboration in April.
Headshot of Richard Grouser and Gabriel Petkaitis
Richard Grouser III and Gabriel Petkaitis
Gabriel Petkaitis (BM ’21, Recording Arts and Sciences, Jazz) (near left) and Richard Grouser III (MA ’19, Recording Arts and Sciences) (far left) were recently hired as audio engineers for military bands— Petkaitis for the US Air Force Academy Band, Grouser for the Army Field Band.
Headshot of Sam Kaestner
Sam Kaestner
Sam Kaestner (BM ’00, Clarinet), recently retired from the U.S. Army's West Point Band, in 2020 founded Stretto, which allows audiences and performers to interact during livestreams. Stretto was recently named a finalist for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards.
Recent Releases

Outcalls—the art-pop duo of Britt Olsen-Ecker (BM ’09, Voice) and Melissa Wimbish (GPD ’11, Voice; GPD ’14, Chamber Ensemble)—released its latest album this month. Cheekily titled Greatest Hits, Vol. 1, it continues Olsen-Ecker and Wimbish’s beguiling blend of contemporary pop’s electronic bounce and flow with cabaret’s intimate wit, melodicism, and chutzpah.

This three-part virtual film series celebrates composer Philip Glass’ 85th birthday with performances shot in the American metropolitan areas that shaped his life: Baltimore where the young Glass spent his youth and attended Peabody Preparatory; studying at the University of Chicago; and the artist who moved to New York City in 1967 and matured into one of contemporary music’s more exploratory composers. The first film, which was partly shot on the Peabody campus, begins screening online February 27.
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