Aaron Copland Fund for Music Performance Grants

Since 1993, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music has awarded grants supporting performers and organizations that encourage and improve public knowledge and appreciation of contemporary concert music and jazz by American composers. An exciting number of Peabody alumni and faculty were recently named among the 161 awardees of the Copland Fund’s 2024 Performance Program Grants. Performing groups that received awards include the Khemia Ensemble, with Mary Matthews (MM ’10, Flute); the icarus Quartet, cofounded by Matt Keown (MM ’17, Percussion) and faculty artist Jeff Stern (MM ’14, Percussion); the Lorelei Ensemble (pictured), founded by faculty artist Beth Willer and which includes Taylor Hillary Boykins (MM ’14, Voice); Loop38, featuring Chelsea de Souza (MM ’18; GPD ’19, Piano); Sandbox Percussion, which includes faculty artists Victor Caccese (BM ’11, Percussion), Terry Sweeney (BM ’13, Percussion), and Ian Rosenbaum (BM ’08, Percussion); Sō Percussion, which includes Eric Cha-Beach (BM ’04, GPD ’05, Percussion); The Thirteen, which includes Julie Bosworth (MM ’14, Early Music Voice), Kate Jackman (MM ’11, Voice), TJ Callahan (MM ’24, Vocal Studies), Katelyn Jackson (MM ’19, Historical Performance Voice), Sara MacKimmie (MM ’11, Voice), Fatma Daglar (MM ’95, GPD ’97, Oboe), Jason Fisher (BM ’05, Violin), faculty artist Adam Pearl (BM ’99, Piano; MM ’01, DMA ’09, Harpsichord), and William Simms (MM ’91, Guitar); and the Wet Ink Ensemble, co-directed by faculty artist Sam Pluta. Additionally, the Savannah Music Festival in Georgia received a grant to present faculty artist Allison Miller’s multimedia jazz suite Rivers in Our Veins in April. 

With the spring semester well underway, I am pleased to provide a brief update on Peabody’s campus-wide capital improvement initiative. Work on short-term, immediate projects continues across the campus in the renovation of infrastructure such as restrooms and elevators. These are, of course, critical improvements, but perhaps a bit more artistically inspiring, the work on Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall will begin in June, to be completed in early 2026. This is an exciting opportunity to make important infrastructure and acoustical upgrades to this prized and historic venue.

In anticipation of students moving in 2026 to our recently purchased Waterloo apartments, we have moved forward with a call for proposals to assemble the team for the planned renovation and repurposing of the on-campus housing towers. We expect to be interviewing firms in February and March, with a goal for the team to begin its work in April. It is all very exciting to see actual work moving forward on these long-sought capital improvements across the Peabody campus.

I look forward to providing further updates on this transformational project later this spring.

Sincerely,

Fred Bronstein, Dean

Tuesday, February 18, 8:00 pm CST

Composer, inventor, and MIT Media Lab Professor of Music and Media Tod Machover’s duo for marimba and AI receives its world premiere performance by Ji Hye Jung (BM ’07, Percussion) at Vanderbilt University’s Turner Recital Hall. The performance is paired with a presentation by Machover on artificial intelligence and music. Free tickets for the concert are available online and it will be livestreamed.

Friday, February 21, 8:00 pm EST

Artist and educator Qiujiang Levi Lu (MM ’23, Computer Music) was named one of four Artists-in-Residence at the ISSUE Project Room, the interdisciplinary arts and experimental music venue in Brooklyn. Lu performs their solo work-in-progress Metanoia—which incorporates geophone sensors, a customized in-mouth speaker, feedback, body drumming, and interactive light installations—that amplifies and externalizes the otherwise unseen and unheard internal body. The performance takes place at ISSUE Project Room and free tickets are required.

Friday, February 21, and Saturday, February 22, 7:30 pm EST

Faculty artist Brinae Ali has been researching the late Baltimore tap dance legend Laurence Donald Jackson, best known as “Baby” Laurence, to bring more awareness to a tap pioneer—and reemphasize the rhythmic innovations that tap dancers such as Jackson bring to jazz. She’s workshopped her research into compositions and performances through grants, such as the 2024 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works award, and residencies at Jacob’s Pillow Dance in Massachusetts and as the inaugural performing artist in residence at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson in Baltimore. Her Baby Laurence Legacy Project celebrates the life and legacy of this underknown America artist with a pair of shows at the Creative Alliance featuring the faculty ensemble Baltimore Jazz Collective and faculty artist Wendel Patrick February 21 and 22; in-person and livestream tickets are available online.

Wednesday, February 26, 7:30 pm PST

San Francisco Conservatory of Music graduate student Fiona Cunninghame-Murray, a former member of the Preparatory’s Young People’s String Program and Performance Academy for Strings who studied violin with Preparatory faculty artist Lenelle Morse, makes her Davies Symphony Hall debut performing Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor alongside Joshua Bell. The collaborative performance brings together SFCM students with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chamber orchestra under Bell’s direction. The program also includes Haydn’s Symphony No. 29 and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Tickets are available online.

Wednesday, February 26, 8:00 pm EST

DMA conducting candidate and Charleston Symphony Youth Orchestra conductor Ryo Hasegawa makes his Carnegie Hall debut as part of A Charleston Concert, featuring the Charleston Symphony, the College of Charleston Orchestra, and more. Hasegawa leads the CSYO through Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia as well as works by two composers born in the South Carolina city: Edmund Jenkins’ Charlestonia and the world premiere of Thomas Cabaniss’ Charleston Mix. The concert takes place at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage 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 events page.

Sean Campbell

Musician, educator, and arts administrator Sean Campbell (MM ’17, Saxophone) was named Executive Director of Emerald City Music, the Seattle-based organization that curates eclectic, intimate, and social chamber music experiences. Campbell comes to Emerald City Music from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Eric Cha-Beach

Recording engineer Jonathan Low and artist-educator Eric Cha-Beach (BM ’04, GPD ’05, Percussion) accepted the 2024 Grammy award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for Rectangles and Circumstance (Nonesuch) during the February 2 awards ceremony. Paul Avgerinos (BM ’81, Double Bass) was an engineer on Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration which won for Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording

Andrew Kosinski

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Kosinski (MM ’22, Composition, Music Theory Pedagogy) wrote the official hymn for the state funeral procession of former President Jimmy Carter that took place in early January in Washington, D.C. Given the extreme cold, he avoided the use of brass valves in the work, titled “Frigidus (For the Commander).”

Hsiang-Yu Meng

Hsiang-Yu Meng (BM ’24, Violin) was named to a tenure-track position with Virginia Symphony Orchestra, the Norfolk-based orchestra that performs throughout southeast Virginia. A former student of faculty artist Keng-Yuen Tseng, Meng co-founded the Changhua Chamber Music Society (CCMS) with current graduate student Pei-Wu Chen (BM ’24, Violin), aiming to connect classical music more closely with local communities in their native Taiwan.

Chenguang “Edmond” Wang

Artist-educator Chenguang “Edmond” Wang joined the University of Virginia faculty in 2024 as a trumpet instructor. He is currently pursuing a DMA at the University of Michigan, where he is a member of the University of Michigan Faculty Brass Quintet.

The Art of Collaboration

Violinist-turned-leadership-scholar Dorianne Cotter-Lockard worked with the Cavani String Quartet and its founding violinist, Annie Fullard, Peabody’s Sidney M. Friedberg Chair of Chamber Music, to study the rehearsal practices and philosophies that bond an ensemble. Their work—best practices that facilitate conflict resolution and strategies for successful collaboration —has been distilled into The Art of Collaboration: Chamber Music Rehearsal Techniques and Teambuilding (Oxford University Press). The book is available to pre-order online.

Brave the Dark: OST

Composers Jacob Yoffe (BM ’02, Composition; GPD ’04, Jazz Saxophone) and his creative partner Roahn Hylton wrote the taut, moody soundtrack to the recently released drama Brave the Dark. It is Hylton and Yoffe’s first feature film soundtrack following their work on Peacock’s Bel-Air, ABC’s The Wonder Years, NBC’s Vampire Academy, the Amazon miniseries Free Meek, Netflix series Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up, the HBO Documentary series Shaq, and Peacock’s recent SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night documentary series. The soundtrack is available to buy or stream online.

In All Directions: Chamber Music for Flute, Cello, and Piano by Michel Merlet

American pianist Matthew Odell (MM ’03, GPD ’05, Piano) first contacted Michel Merlet to inquire about the French composer’s studies with Olivier Messiaen when Odell was preparing to perform all of Messiaen’s solo piano music in 2010. Odell came to know Merlet’s own solo piano works and other compositions, and In All Directions (MSR Classics) presents all of Merlet’s pieces for flute (both solo and with piano), cello, and piano, and his Trio Op. 24 for all three instruments. Odell is joined by flutist Leslie Stroud (BM ’84, Flute) and cellist Peter Zay, and the CD can be purchased online.

A Few Words about Chekhov: Songs and Cycles of Dominick Argento

Late composer Dominick Argento (BM ’51, MM ’54, Composition) won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975 for his song cycle “From the Diary of Virginia Woolf,” and his life-long love of prose informs his compositional oeuvre, a fondness easily heard on the new A Few Words about Chekhov. Released on Bridge Records, founded by David Starobin (BM ’73, Guitar) and Becky Starobin (BM ’73, Violin), the album includes Argento’s settings of fragments, lines, and sentences by Petrarch, Walt Whitman, Walter de la Mare, Alun Lewis and, for the titular song cycle, excerpts from Anton Chekhov’s letters to his wife. These works are performed by mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala, baritone Jesse Blumberg, and pianists Martin Katz and JJ Penna, and the album can be purchased online.

Saxifraga

Composer Amy Beth Kirsten (DMA ’10, Composition) names her 2019 musical portrait of Wyoming’s wide-open countryside, avalanche lily, and a few of its movements after regional wildflowers. Its bluesy, arresting opening movement is named for a hearty perennial that the New Thread Quartet also chose as the title for its second album for New Focus Records. Saxifraga features the New York-based saxophone quartet, which includes Zach Herchen (BM ’07, MM ’09, Saxophone; BM ’06, Recording Arts), performing works commissioned by the NTQ from Victoria Cheah, Scott Wollschleger, and Kirsten. Saxifraga is available to buy or stream online.

Prelude for Organ (Wise)

When studying with composer Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1960s, Preparatory alum Philip Glass often visited the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral to listen to its organs. The instruments survived the 2019 fire that destroyed the wooden spire and roof, and Glass composed a new work to be performed on one of the organs during Notre-Dame’s recent reopening. Organist Olivier Latry premiered Prelude for Organ on January 7, 2025, and Wise Music released a recording of that performance on January 31, 2025—Glass’ 88th birthday. The work can be streamed or purchased online.

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