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Peabody Institute 2008-2009
Concert Season Opens Sept. 24

September 15, 2008, Baltimore, MD: Can you say Piobaireachd? The Gaelic term for traditional bagpipe music, it is the title of a work for piano trio by Scottish composer Sally Beamish. Piobaireachd, pronounced PEA-brach (the second syllable rhymes with Bach), will be presented at a Peabody Faculty Chamber Music Concert on Wednesday, Sept. 24, at 8:00 pm in Peabody’s Miriam A. Friedberg Hall. The performers are guest artist Jonathan Carney, concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, violin; Maria Lambros, viola; Alison Wells, violoncello; and Peabody Director Jeffrey Sharkey, piano.

“The Beamish piece is a haunting work, one of the most intriguing pieces in the 20th-century repertoire for piano trio,” said Sharkey, who toured Europe and the United States as a founding member of the Pirasti Piano Trio. “Though the musical idiom is very different from that of the other works on the program—Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 and Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1—the work has an intimacy that draws in the listener and sets the stage for the more familiar repertoire to follow.”

The concert, which opens the Sylvia Adalman Artist Recital Series, is also the first of the 2008-2009 season at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute, one of the world’s most highly regarded music schools. Tickets are $15, $10 for seniors, and $5 for students with I.D.

Other highlights of the fall schedule include:

• The Peabody Symphony Orchestra performing the winning work of the Macht Orchestral Composition Competition, Shadows of the Infinite by Peabody alumnus Geoff Knorr, on Saturday, Sept. 27. Also on the program: Richard Strauss’ Don Juan and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major.  
• Students of Peabody faculty artists Donald Sutherland and John Walker performing on Peabody’s custom-built 3,000-plus-pipe Holtkamp organ on Sunday, Oct. 19, as part of Organ Spectacular, an international day of celebration. The American Guild of Organists has designated 2008-2009 as the International Year of the Organ.
• Opera Potpourri on Monday, Oct. 20, part of Free Fall Baltimore. The program offers a sampling of one-act operas sung in English, including Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea.
• A Peabody Symphony Orchestra concert on Tuesday, Oct. 21, with Gustav Meier, director of Peabody’s Graduate Conducting Program; graduate conducting student Vladimir Kulenovic; and Peabody/Baltimore Symphony Conducting Fellow Joseph Young on the podium. Kulenovic will conduct Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave); Young will conduct Bartók’s Two Portraits and the U.S. premiere of Fang Man’s Noir; and Meier will conduct Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
• The Peabody Symphony Orchestra’s Halloween performance of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, best known from the scene in Disney’s Fantasia in which the spirits of the dead are summoned; another Mussorgsky work, Songs and Dances of Death, featuring Kevin Wetzel, baritone, winner of the Sylvia L. Green Voice Competition; and a suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
  
• The Peabody Brass Ensemble’s free “Sounds of the Season” concert after the Washington Monument lighting on Thursday, Dec. 4.

Complete program information may be found at www.peabody.jhu.edu/events. Many Peabody concerts are free, though some require advance ticketing. Other concerts are $15, $10 for seniors, and $5 for students with I.D., while opera productions are $25, $15 for seniors, and $10 for students with I.D. Tickets and subscriptions are available through the Box Office at 410-659-8100, ext. 2.


About the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University
Located in the heart of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Cultural District, the Peabody Institute was founded in 1857 as America’s first academy of music by philanthropist George Peabody. Today, Peabody boasts a preeminent faculty, a nurturing, collaborative learning environment, and the academic resources of one of the nation’s leading universities, Johns Hopkins. Through its degree granting Conservatory and its community-based Preparatory music and dance school, Peabody trains musicians and dancers of every age and at every level, from small children to seasoned professionals, from dedicated amateurs to winners of international competitions. Each year, Peabody stages nearly 100 major concerts and performances, ranging from classical to contemporary to jazz, many of them free — a testament to the vision of George Peabody.