Thank you for your continued interest in the Peabody Institute, and for coming to this space to learn more about our initiatives.\u00a0 There are a number of important updates.<\/p>\n
One of the most important initiatives underway currently is the work ongoing with the Peabody Curriculum for the Future Task Force and the Reimagining Ensembles at Peabody Task Force.\u00a0 We have charged these groups comprised of faculty, administration, students, and advisory board members with the critical task of helping to shape future training for our students at Peabody.\u00a0 To help with their work, we recently conducted a survey of our alumni to better understand their experience as it pertains to specific skillsets around life in the professional music world today, skills that go beyond traditional conservatory training alone, to skills around communication, audience development, and community connectivity.\u00a0 More than 250 alumni responded to the survey.\u00a0 The results were telling and compelling.\u00a0 We learned that these skills were generally of great importance in 80-95% and more of the responses in the careers of our alumni, and while we are doing an impressive job of preparing our students in their musical development, there is sizable gap, between 30% and 55%, in what is required of alumni in the professional world and the consistency in traditional training around 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century skills.\u00a0 This is the very reason that Peabody is committing itself to a new approach of tending to these skills, not at the periphery of study but actively integrated into the training of every Peabody student.<\/p>\n On October 25, 2016,\u00a0Friedberg Hall<\/a>, Baltimore\u2019s first concert hall, will be 150 years old.\u00a0 Anyone who has sat in this wonderful space knows the ambience of its \u201cold-world\u201d and elegant feel.\u00a0 And what a history of performances!\u00a0 Because its history is so important, and it is indeed at the very center of what Peabody is about \u2013 performance \u2013 we are seizing this moment in its history to make it even better.\u00a0 To accomplish this objective, we have engaged one of the most prominent acousticians in the world, Lawrence Kirkegaard of\u00a0Kirkegaard Associates<\/a>, responsible for renovations in Orchestra Hall, home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and many other world-renowned concert halls, to advise and design a remedy for some of Friedberg\u2019s acoustical challenges, especially as they pertain to on-stage hearing by musicians, as well as further improving the audience experience.\u00a0 The first phase of this $1.6 million project will take place this summer, and will entail expansion of the stage and acoustical treatment of the walls above the stage.\u00a0 There are other things that will happen later in the project but as an educational institution, our first priority is to make sure we can provide our students with the best opportunities for learning and achieving musical perfection.\u00a0 This first phase is possible thanks to a very generous gift of $500,000 from the France-Merrick Foundation.<\/p>\n While much of the activity and action at Peabody is centered around the Mt. Vernon campus and its wonderful venues such as Friedberg Hall, increasingly our commitment extends to connecting to communities in new and different ways, to ensuring our students are part of that engagement and are learning a set of skills around making these community connections.\u00a0 One initiative representative of this growing area of focus \u2013 which directly relates to the work of the Curriculum Task Force discussed above \u2013 is an exciting partnership that will begin next fall with\u00a0Young Audiences of Maryland<\/a>.\u00a0 Details will be forthcoming but suffice it to say that Peabody students and Preparatory faculty will be prominent on the Young Audience roster next year, and in doing so will be bringing music to many schools across the region.\u00a0 This will be one of several exciting new partnership-initiatives designed to connect Peabody in a deeper way with communities, and especially children, while at the same time providing our students with invaluable experience in what it means to be an artist in communities today.<\/p>\nAn Anniversary and an Acoustical Makeover<\/h3>\n
Community Connectivity<\/h3>\n
Building on a World-Renowned Faculty \u2013 Midori<\/h3>\n