Collaboration

Walters Art Museum

The Walters has partnered with The Peabody Conservatory to create a unique musical experience for visitors to the exhibition. The installation is grouped into four sections, each with a seasonal theme and mood. Students from the Peabody ’s renowned composition department have drawn inspiration from Courbet’s paintings to create original, ambient music that will encourage the visitor’s complete sensory immersion into the landscape. The music, which is intertwined with sounds such as wind and water, is complemented by subtle lighting effects designed by lighting artist Paul Deeb (founding CEO of the Baltimore-based lighting corporation Vox) that will simulate almost imperceptibly the changing intensity of light from dawn to dusk.

About the Composers

David Witmer-Spring
Jenny Beck-Apbos Aura
Amy Beth Kirsten-Music From the Ice Forest
Matt Diamond, Jerzy Gangi, Scott Sayre-Surface Drift

Press

The New York Times

A Burly Father of Modernism, Presented With Accompaniment By ROBERTA SMITH Published: October 13, 2006

...The idea, the museum’s press representative said, was to create an “immersive” experience. The installation would also involve shifting light levels suggestive of different times of day and season and ambient music composed by students at the Peabody Conservatory here. The effect would be reinforced by dividing the show into four galleries, each painted its own appropriate seasonal color. ... Full article

 

 

Opera Études

History and Philosophy

by Roger Brunyate (2001)

 

The practical rationale for the étude program when I started it in 1985 was as Gebrauchsmusik — music written to serve a particular set of performers. Like most music schools, we had a large number of female singers, while the few males available tended to get used up in regular productions. The repertoire of operatic scenes for women is small and quickly gets repeated. So why not write our own? So we got together three composers, presented them with six sopranos, and told them to write a short opera scene for them: a brief story about some situation which they can relate to, set to music that they can perform. In this first instance, all three operas shared a common theme: a young woman on the eve of her wedding day. The étude program was repeated in 1988, 1991, 1994, 1997, and 1999, with different and generally looser themes. Although many of the composers who got their start in the études (and a few others) went on to write longer works which were produced separately, the basic principle of the études themselves remained the same: to create short operas written for the particular combination of people (indeed, for the particular individuals) who, in our opinion, most needed that opportunity. Among the singers, the main beneficiaries of this program have continued to be the women, although in most years other than the first, there have been a few men who could benefit from the opportunities also.

The word "étude" was chosen for a number of reasons. It reflects the value to the composer of being able to write a small-scale study in preparation for tackling some larger project. It also reflects the value to the singer of having contemporary material as a means of studying operatic acting and performance. But the principal intent was to relate these little operas to, say, the piano études of Chopin: short pieces, complete in themselves, but without the superstructure of exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda found in larger forms. All are necessarily short, but the brevity can be achieved by starting in medias res without extended exposition, and ending as soon as a turning-point has been reached, without tying up all the loose ends.

Opera composition presupposes the availability of opera texts. The most usual practice is to work from some existing story. But this introduces the criterion of fidelity to the original author (let alone copyright issues) which might possibly conflict with the primary need in the études to write specifically for the people available. Almost all the études have been based on original subjects, with the texts generated in collaboration with the singers themselves; generally, this has been done by improvisation. I propose an overall theme; the composer suggests a take on this which he or she presents to the singers, who act it out in various ways until a workable idea is found. These improvisations are recorded, and many of the lines are incorporated into the resultant text. Of course, they still require the services of a librettist to shape the whole; sometimes the composer has served in this capacity; sometimes I have written the libretti myself; sometimes other students have been involved — which I think is the best solution whenever it can be managed.

The process of trying the dramatic material out on the singers serves as a reality check, and gives the singers a sense of ownership.

As the program got going, we discovered various unforeseen educational advantages to the way we had set it up. The process of trying the dramatic material out on the singers serves as a reality check, and helps the composers think beyond their first ideas. It also gives the singers a sense of ownership, which can be extrapolated to pre-existent pieces in turn; nobody who has been through this will ever approach even a Violetta or Susanna in the same way again, without remembering that she too started as somebody's imaginings into the feelings and responses of a real woman. The fact that there is a cohort of composers all going through much the same process at much the same time enhances the instructional aspect of the project, and encourages discussion and feedback among people who more usually work in comparative isolation. This aspect would be further enhanced if we could precede the writing by a team-taught seminar phase; this is something I want to make a special feature of the project this year.

Two years ago, we branched out considerably with a program called Faces of Myth. The intent was to break away from the social realism which tended to be produced by the improv-based approach (more suited to television than the opera stage). We also hoped to make more of the traditional operatic qualities of fantasy, color, and flair. So we presented six works all based upon myths from various other cultures; we allowed the cast size to increase to as many as six (men as well as women); we allowed chamber ensembles (including computer music) as accompaniment; and we stretched the original 12-minute time-limit to 20 minutes or in one case over half an hour. While the resultant works included some very fine pieces, the strain on the department — and more importantly on the composers themselves — was more than we could properly handle while still concentrating properly on the educational nature of the project. This year [2001], I want to pull back strictly to the 12-minute time-limit. The études will be written for two people or at the most three. They will be accompanied by piano with, at the most, one obbligato instrument. For the themes, however, I would like to move away from the workaday world, and suggest topics drawn from history, or set in periods other than our own. This is not hard and fast, however. The actual subjects will be determined after consultation with the composers involved. All I require is that they offer a balance between psychological reality on the one hand (which is the main advantage of having the singers as collaborators) and a certain breadth of conception on the other which seems particularly suited to depiction through music.
The notes above were written for the composers of the 2000–01 set of études, which were eventually presented under the title of Women and Memory.

Past Events:

Epiphanies (2008)
Brian Lloyd Christian, Charles Halka, Joshua William Mills, Bryan Reis, Nicholas Werner, Chris Whittaker

Facets of Freedom (2006)
Jenny Beck, Faye Chiao, Ruby Fulton, Lane Harder and Matthew J. Viator

Singing Shakespeare (2005)
Kevin Clark, Amy Beth Kirsten, and George Lam

Contrafact, Contrafiction (2003)
Christopher Bassett, Bernadette Brennan, Hee-Seung Choi, Damon Ferrante, Angel Lam, Jeffrey Lindon, and Paul Nelson

 

 

Dance Department

NEW WORK 2007 - A Collaborative Showcase

In celebration of Peabody’s 150th birthday, and the 92nd of Peabody Dance, the oldest dance school in the country, internationally acclaimed director/choreographer Martha Clarke returns to her hometown of Baltimore as distinguished guest artist and Peabody Dance alumnus.  Peabody has opened its doors to leading institutions and local freelance artists to participate in new collaborations mentored by Ms Clarke, to be presented at Peabody on April 14,15, 2007.  Artistic producer of the event is Carol Bartlett who also directs the Peabody Dance program. Composers, singers, choregraphers, dancers, actors and visual artists were invited to meet Ms Clarke in May 2006. As a result of that exchange, choreographers and composers were matched by Ms. Bartlett, and four exciting projects were launched over the summer.  The projects involve artists, faculty and students from Peabody Dance and Conservatory, and the following institutions:  Towson Graduate Theater Arts Program, Goucher College, Baltimore School for the Arts, Washington School of Ballet, Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, and local freelance artists.

Saturday, April 14th at 7:30 pm, Friedberg Hall
Sunday, April 15th at 3:00 pm, Friedberg Hall

Composers

Baris Perker
Angel Lam
Ying-Chen Kao

Martha Clarke

MacArthur Award winner Martha Clarke has maintained a career which spans dance, theater and opera.  Trained at Juilliard under Antony Tudor and Anna Sokolow, she was a founding member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Crowsnest and has choreographed for the Nederlans Dans Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, and The Martha Graham Company, among others. As a director Ms. Clarke’s many original productions include The Garden of Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus, Miracolo d’amore, Endangered Species, An Uncertain Hour, The Hunger Artist, and Vers la flamme. She directed the premiere of Christopher Hampton’s Alice’s Adventures Underground at the Royal National Theatre in London. In opera Ms. Clarke has directed The Magic Flute for the Glimmerglass Opera and the Canadian Opera Company, Cosi fan tutte for Glimmerglass, Tan Dun’s Marco Polo for the Munich Biennale, the Hong-Kong Festival, and the New York City Opera, and Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice for the English National Opera and the New York City Opera. She directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the American Repertory Theater and a music/theater work,Belle Epoque, based on the life of Toulouse Lautrec at Lincoln Center Theater. She has collaborated with Richard Greenberg, Charles L. Mee, and Sebastian Barry, among many others.  In addition to the MacArthur Award, Ms. Clarke has received two grants from the Guggenheim Foundation as well as fifteen grants from the NEA. She has received the Drama Desk Award, two Obie Awards, and the L.A. Critics Award. She has been the subject of a film for PBS, "Martha Clarke, Light and Dark," and her "Garden of Earthly Delights" has been filmed by the BBC.  NEA has just given a grant for the remounting of her "Garden of Earthly Delights" under a program dedicated to the remounting of American masterworks.   Her new "Kaos," based on the works of Luigi Pirandello, has just been given the first Tony Randall Foundation Award; it opens November 3 at the New York Theater Workshop.

Press

Peabody: Martha Clarke guides four 'New Works'

 

 

24hc

What is 24hc?

24hc, the Twenty-four hour concert, is a concert, composed, rehearsed, and performed within a 24 hour period. Composers, are presented with a small ensemble for which they must compose a piece of music within 12 hours (the number of musicians and the individual musicians will be decided for each composer by drawing first a number and then names from a hat). Composers must produce in the 12 hour time period beginning with the ensemble drawing a fully notated composition specifically written for their randomly chosen ensemble. Once the 12 hour time period has passed, the compositions are handed to the ensembles who have 12 hours within which they can practice and prepare the composition. At the end of the second 12 hour period, a concert will be held where all the compositions will be performed.

History of the 24 Hour Concert

The 24 Hour Concert event has a unique and interesting history. Strictly speaking, it began with J. Anthony Allen, a composer of both electronic and acoustic works. Mr. Allen's involvment with the event came about as an association with the Grand Rapids, Michigan based performance group, X-Performance Group. Although similar events happen at other universities and theaters, the 24HC was inspired by the treatme nt of the event of the X-Performance Group. The X-Performance Group began doing 24 hour theater many years ago while some of the members were attending Michigan State University. As their group grew, they became the resident ensemble with the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (link: http://www. uica.org) in Grand Rapids. Mr. Allen heard about the curious event, and contacted the group about becoming involved. Traditionally (if that word can be used for a 24 hour theater event), the X-Performance Group used several playwrights, and did a show of plays created throughout the night. With Mr.Allen's involvement, the group agreed to take a chance on writing a 24 ho ur operetta. Mr. Allen did not meet the librettist until the events began, and they worked feverously throughout the night to create a 20 minute operetta for 3 singers, 2 actors, and 11 musicians. Mr.Allen was so excited about the project, he began carrying it on with composers and musicians. The 24 Hour Concert is directly derived from the X-Performance Group's treatment of 24 Hour Theater.
Unfortunately, the founders of Peabody's 24 Hour Concert failed to cultivate sufficient interest to make it all happen the first year. In 2005, however, a successful 24hc was held, and the tradition has continued since then.

More Information

Rules

Music from the 24hc

Images from 24hc