By Fred Bronstein
Guest Columnist
The Johns Hopkins University
As I
was preparing comments for the Peabody Conservatory’s 135th
graduation I was struck by the fact that these graduates’ years at Peabody have
been during a transformative time, for both Peabody and the music world. Over
the last several years, Peabody has moved forward to reimagine the training of
musicians at the highest level, now in the context of what that means in this
second decade of the 21st century.
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| Fred Bronstein |
As
the oldest conservatory in the United States, Peabody holds a special place in
the traditional training of professional musicians. While we have adhered to our
core commitment to excellence in performance, composition, and other elements
of the musical arts, we are now building on that tradition and recognizing that
excellence is vital and necessary, but not enough. There is a greater context for
training artists and how we see ourselves as musicians. Having run orchestras for
nearly twenty years before arriving at Peabody, I have become convinced that it
is time to put a stake in the ground around this issue.
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| The Peabody Institute |
Peabody
is about to launch a new curriculum for the 21st Century, our
Breakthrough Curriculum, which for the first time integrates into the training
of every Peabody student essential
skills of communication; audience development; real experiences in community
engagement; the impact of technology on music today, and how to leverage its
benefits; and the ability to be a flexible, facile musician able to step into
professional roles that require an unprecedented ability to stretch musically.
Many Peabody
students have already taken part in this work through task force discussions, Dean’s
Incentive Grants, or piloting community outreach components of the new
curriculum – a curriculum which redefines what professional music training must
be in this new world.
There
are already multiple examples. Two that come to mind are the Peabody Student
String Sinfonia, spawned from a Dean’s Incentive Grant, which has performed
throughout the community at sites as diverse as homeless shelters, veteran
organizations and prisons, along with the Peabody Pop-Ups that this past fall sent
more than 30 Peabody students out across Baltimore for a series of impromptu
performances. These examples highlight new ways to engage audiences, and to
make music relevant and accessible for more people – to truly give the gift of
music.
What
we do is about more than any single recital, performance or audition, as
important as that is. We must prepare for expansive roles as artists. If we don’t
think about our role in developing and growing audiences, who will be there to
listen? If we don’t think about diversifying and broadening our view of what
our field entails, how will we broaden and diversify our audiences?
Who
benefits from this? First, our students because they learn to be musicians in
the context of a different world. The community benefits because what better
way to serve our community than by making it an extension of the classroom and
studio. And performing arts organizations will benefit from a bright, new
perspective needed in the world of the performing arts, especially music, and
most especially classical music.
As we
approach the 40th anniversary of Peabody’s affiliation with Johns
Hopkins University, we are taking steps to better leverage the competitive
advantage that we hold as part of a world-renowned research university. An
evolving Center for Music and Medicine has as its dual focus an emphasis on
injury prevention and wellness for performing artists who depend on their
bodies in the same way that athletes do, along with studying the palliative use
of music on diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. Already underway are screenings
for vocalists so they understand their own physiology, a health and
wellness-focused seminar series, a study of the impact of side-by-side singing
focused on Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers, and development of a
clinic for performing arts injury on the Peabody campus. Imagine the benefit
this work can have for our students who in coming to Peabody can learn how to
navigate and perhaps even avoid career threatening injury. These projects, and
others, are already bringing together more than 70 partners in various medical
disciplines across JHU.
We
are also expanding our footprint by growing Peabody’s on-line presence
including programs in wellness that can serve our alumni and other
professionals. We are starting a conservatory-level dance program, and a new
media program focused on creating and producing music for video games,
augmented and virtual reality. The Music for New Media program itself builds on
a core Peabody strength in composition and recording arts (we recently added our
second Pulitzer-Prize winning composer to the faculty), and complements an
expanded commitment to music of our time demonstrated through the new music
ensemble, Now Hear This, and two recordings in as many years by the Peabody
Symphony Orchestra for Naxos records’ American Masters series, conducted by renowned
conductors Marin Alsop and Leonard Slatkin.
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| Peabody Symphony Orchestra |
At
the same time, Peabody is sharpening its focus on diversity in programming and
curriculum, recruitment of students from underrepresented minorities, and
general issues of inclusion and diversity on campus. If we want to broaden and
expand audiences, we must broaden the backgrounds of the artists on our stages.
That will result in a broader depth to the excellence we always seek, and it
does in time build audiences by welcoming new people to the experience. It’s
both the right thing to do and enlightened self-interest.
Although
much of this is new, the class of 2017 has already experienced a sense of
change. The fact that these students have been in an environment discussing
change and innovation should be good training for what they will encounter.
Because make no mistake about it, ready or not, the changes that have impacted
so many fields and professions are going to continue in our profession
unabated. The young artist’s ability to be flexible, navigate, and embrace
changes in our field, in audiences, programming, venues, is essential. Our very
definition of what constitutes performance is being reexamined.
When the
astonishing Peter Sellars visited Peabody recently for a Dean’s Symposium, he
and I had a chance to talk about Peabody’s four strategic pillars of
Excellence, Interdisciplinary Experiences, Innovation and Community
Connectivity, the bedrock strategies of our Breakthrough Plan. Peter looked at
the pillars and remarked, “This is great but reverse these. Begin with
community and innovation, and when you do that right, that results in
excellence.”
Like
many things in life, we come full circle. Peabody was founded as a cultural
center; a concert series, a museum, a lecture series, a library, even before it
became a conservatory. Digging into our institutional DNA, we build on our
tradition of excellence but understand that we must be in and of the community;
the university community, the civic life of Baltimore, and the international
community. We have a major role to play, and with all its accomplishments of
the last 160 years, I am sure that Peabody’s best days are ahead, but I’m
equally sure it won’t look like the past. Nor will our field, and why should
it? Nothing stays the same.
(Excerpt: Kevin Puts Symphony No.2 courtesy of Kevin Puts and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra.)
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