Jazz faculty artist Nasar Abadey was one of three honorees of the 2024 Ronnie Wells Jazz Service Awards, presented at this year's Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival. The drummer/composer also was recently honored with the Howard University Benny Golson Jazz Master Award.
Marin Alsop, professor and director of the Graduate Conducting Program, has been named principal guest conductor for the Philadelphia Orchestra for a three-year term, beginning in the 2024–25 season. She will lead the orchestra in multiple subscription concerts, special events, annual summer residencies, and national and international tours.
Distinguished Visiting Faculty member Darin Atwater has been named artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival. Atwater is only the third, and first African American, artistic director in the history of the festival, which began in 1958. In addition, the Soulful Symphony creator and former Baltimore Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence was awarded the key to the city by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott in honor of his 25 years of artistic service.
Composition Professor Du Yun was elected to the 2024 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
New Focus Recordings has released the recording of faculty composer Michael Hersch and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann's opera Poppaea, a nominee for the 2023 Austrian Music Theater Prize for Best Contemporary Music Theater, starring faculty artist Ah Young Hong as the tragic titular heroine.
The latest album from violin Professor Judith Ingolfsson and pianist Vladmir Stoupel reveals the profundity of the work of British composer Rebecca Clarke, whose passionate Viola Sonata caused a sensation in 1919, disappeared from the repertoire by the 1940s, and began to be rediscovered in the late 1970s. Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel's Rebecca Clarke: Sonatas for Violin, Viola & Piano (Oehms Classics) was supported by a 2023 Dean's Excellence Accelerator Award.
Jazz Chair Sean Jones led Carnegie Hall's National Youth Jazz Orchestra on its first South African tour.
Expanding the Music Theory Canon (SUNY Press), a book by Assistant Professor Paula Maust, grew out of her same-named website and ongoing project to introduce composer variety to music education.
Associate Professor Wendel Patrick delivered the keynote address at Carnegie Hall's 2024 Summer Music Educators Workshop. He also received a regional Emmy Award for his work as co-producer of Maryland Public Television's Artworks program.
Composition Professor Kevin Puts was named Musical America's Composer of the Year, in part for his 2023 Grammy win and adaptation of The Hours, as well as for a Concerto for Orchestra composed for the St. Louis Symphony. The Hours returned to the Metropolitan Opera's stage for a limited run in spring, and Warner Classics released the recording. In addition, Puts has been appointed a distinguished visiting faculty member at Juilliard for the 2024–25 academic year.
Sandbox Percussion—the quartet of Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Terry Sweeney, and faculty artist Ian Rosenbaum—was one of five instrumentalists and chamber ensembles awarded a 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Sandbox is the first percussion ensemble to receive a Career Grant.
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of Folkway Records and its archive of field recordings, now housed at the Smithsonian Institution, electronics artists Matmos—the duo of Peabody faculty artist Martin Schmidt and Krieger School English Professor Drew Daniel—used recordings on albums such as Sounds of North American Frogs, Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, and Sounds of Insects to create Return to Archive (Smithsonian Folkways), an album of music crafted entirely from such nonmusical sources.
Historical Performance faculty artists Richard Stone and Gwyn Roberts took their Tempesta di Mare Orchestra to perform at the 17th International Fasch Festival in Zerbst, Germany. It was the first American ensemble to receive the Johann Friedrich Fasch Prize from the city of Zerbst. The ensemble is currently working on a fourth recording of works by Johann Friedrich Fasch.
Poulenc Trio co-founder and faculty artist Bryan Young was appointed board chair of Chamber Music America, which advocates for the small ensemble music field.
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