Dear Fellow
Peabody Alumni,
Happy summer! I hope you and your loved ones are well. What a great year we have had with the Society of Peabody Alumni (SPA). We welcomed our new dean, Fred Bronstein, into the Peabody extended family. We have hosted numerous receptions for students, graduate and undergraduate, throughout the academic year. We awarded four awards to Peabody Conservatory alumni: Taylor Hanex, Zuill Bailey, Mark Cudek, and Wilda Heiss. We had an amazing Homecoming/Alumni Weekend in April. Alumni participation with Homecoming went up 15%. We even had an alumna travel from Switzerland to attend. It was great to reconnect with classmates.
In addition, some members of the Society of Peabody Alumni have served on the Alumni Council for Johns Hopkins. As I type this I am on the train coming to Baltimore to serve on the Executive Committee of the Alumni Council with Johns Hopkins.
It has been inspiring to see Peabody, or more specifically Dean Bronstein, start a conversation about what classical music looks like in the 21st Century. Did you see the symposium that was held in October? The panelists were Dean Bronstein, Marin Alsop, Ben Cameron, Thomas Dolby, and Marina Piccinini. If you haven’t, please do so at peabody.jhu.edu/symposium. Did you read Dean Bronstein’s op-ed in The Baltimore Sun entitiled “The Future of Classical Music”
(goo.gl/wKFwey)?
It is an exciting time at Peabody. Let us, the Society of Peabody Alumni, know what you are doing. Be in communication with us about your concerts, recitals, master classes, and performances. Tell us about how Peabody has shaped you with what you are currently doing.
Are you preparing for a competition? Did you go on to graduate school? Are you studying for the bar exam? Are you expecting your first child?
Did you go to medical school? Where are you auditioning? We want to know what you are doing. The Society of Peabody Alumni needs your skill-sets, joy, love, and affinity to continue to support alumni throughout the globe. Think about how to give back. Or just come back and visit.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
All the best,
Matthew Rupcich
Class of 1990
Voice and Music Education
Alumni from as far as Switzerland came back to campus in April to share memories, hear performances of current students and alumni, and share their stories of life since Peabody. The campus was in full swing with classes, rehearsals, recitals and concerts, and alumni were invited to take advantage of all the offerings.
The campus has changed significantly in the last 50 years, and even recent grads had not seen the new Centre Street Performance Studio. However, there are many spaces that still look just as they did years ago or similar enough to bring out the ghosts and stories of the past.
If you missed the events or came and want to return again, contact the Alumni Office for a personal tour.
Peabody is also always interested in stories of the past and learning the paths alumni take after they leave our campus, so call or write anytime!
More pictures can be found on the Peabody website and alumni Facebook page. The Alumni Office can be reached at 410-234-4763 or PeabodyAlumni@jhu.edu.
Alumni Return to Peabody
25th Reunion Class 50th Reunion Class 40th Reunion Class
Alumni
S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE SOCIETY OF PEABODY ALUMNI
Dear Alumni,
I could not help but to think about you, our alumni, as I prepared for Peabody’s 133rd graduation ceremony in May. We added 224 students to your ranks, and it was moving and exciting to see these young artists prepare to take the first steps in their careers as they enter the next phase of their lives.
I found myself hoping that you would share your path from Peabody and your experience wherever you are, both with these new alumni and with us. We see the complex and increasingly unpredictable world that the 21st century musician faces, the world in which you are living, working and making a difference. Your experience both within the musical world and outside in the world in general, provide insight into the future of classical music, its role in the 21st century, and the journeys of our future graduates.
Having just concluded my first year as dean of the Peabody Institute, one of the most gratifying aspects of the year has been meeting and talking with so many of you. I look forward to forging a strong partnership with our alumni. My thoughts and some of our exciting plans for Peabody are regularly updated and posted on the Peabody website: peabody.jhu.edu/fromthedean. (If you would prefer to get these updates by letter, don’t hesitate to contact Debbie Kennison, and she would be happy to send these to you.) I’d love to have your feedback on these ideas, new things that we’re experimenting with and are engaged in; but most of all, I would like your continued active engagement with Peabody. Together with Society of Peabody Alumni (SPA) President Matt Rupcich and Debbie Kennison in the Alumni Office, we are looking for better, more dynamic ways to connect with you and for alumni to connect with each other. Let us know if you have any thoughts on this, and be assured that your ideas, stories, and insights are always welcome and can be sent to PeabodyAlumni@jhu.edu
I look forward to hearing from you and to engaging with you in the coming year.
Sincerely,
Wilda Heiss -
2015 JHU Heritage Award Winner
Wilda Heiss (TC ’60, BM ’62, AD ’63, MM ’64, Flute) wanted her reunions to be fantastic — and she had many reunions coinciding with her numerous degrees — so she stepped up and chaired the reunion committee for the last three reunions.
She was instrumental in planning the events and increased attendance each time, this year by 15%, by organizing alumni volunteers to make phone calls, send postcards, post on Facebook, and by making many, many calls and connections herself.
Wilda also had a wish to share pictures from Peabody’s past not only with reunion participants during the activities every-other year but all the time. With her knowledge of the contents of the Archives, a small committee, and her own willing- ness to make a gift that would bring it to reality, there is now a permanent photo exhibit at Peabody. She would rush to explain that the exhibit is permanent, but the pictures will be changed every two years with the reunion cycle.
Alumni, students, faculty, and staff have all benefited from her dreams and her willingness to bring them to reality. You can see the results in the pictures throughout this newsletter and by the smiles on people’s faces as they slowly walk up the hallway that connects the Arcade to the Cohen- Davison Family Theatre.
So it was with great thanks and apprecia- tion that Dean Bronstein and Alumni President Matt Rupcich presented Ms. Heiss with the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Heritage Award on the final evening of Homecoming. The official citation can be found in the alumni section of the Peabody website. There you can see that over the years there have been many other contributions to Peabody in time, talent, and treasure, in addition to the ones that were so evident in April. Congratulations to you, Wilda Heiss, and thank you, thank you, thank you as well for what you have done for Peabody.
President of the Taiwan Alumni Chapter President Peter Lee (BM ’06, MM ’08, Voice) and the local alumni committee organized their second annual alumni concert in May. In addition to those living in Taiwan, alumni from the U.S., Korea, and Japan were in attendance. Piano faculty member Yong Hi Moon was the guest artist. For more information about the concert and activities of Taiwan alumni, please visit their Facebook page.
—琵琶地音樂院台灣校友會 Taiwan Chapter Society of Peabody Alumni
Fred Bronstein
Dean, Peabody Institute Johns Hopkins University
Wilda Heiss at the ribbon cutting for the Peabody Alumni/Archives Exhibit. She is joined by Dean Bronstein;
Christine and Paul Heiss, Ms. Heiss’ nephew and his wife;
Dante Beretta, archivist at the Garrison Forest School;
and Jackie Capecci (BM ’87, Viola).
Front Cover:
50th Reunion Class – Back row, left to right: Ernest V. “Duke” Baugh (BM ’65, MM ’71, Voice); Bradley Smith (BM ’64, Music Education); John Van Cura (BM ’65, Voice); Bob Barrett (BM ’65, MM ’69, Music Education);
Front row, left to right: Wilda Heiss (TC ’60, BM ’62, AD ’63, MM ’64, Flute); George Gaylor (BM ’64, Music Education-percussion); Kim Neill Van Cura (BM ’65, Music Education)
40th Reunion Class and classmates – Back row, left to right: Kim Miller (BM ’76, Violin); Linda Gilbert (BM ’75, Piano); Claire Riggle Ingalls (BM ’74, Guitar); Bruce Casteel (’74, Guitar); David Morrocco (BM ’74, Music Education);
Michael Cobbler (BM ’74, Music Education); Keith Ward (BM ’75, Guitar); Front Row, left to right: Vickie Yanics (BM ’75, Violin); Terry Shuch (BM ’76, Music Education; MM ’78, Bassoon); Sandra Goldberg (MM ’75, Violin);
Susan Taylor Dapkunas (BM ’75, Viola; MM ’84, Music Education); Paul Matlin (BM ’70, MM ’72, Violin)
25th Reunion Class – Back row, left to right: Hilary Vrooman Szczublewski (TC ’90, Clarinet; BM ’90, Music Education); Tim Viets (BM ’90, MM ’99, Music Education; TC ’91, Clarinet); Lorne Graham (BM ’90, Trumpet);
Susan Hahn Graham (BM ’90, Flute); Front row, left to right: Jennifer Cumerma Viets (BM ’90, Voice); Sheri Segal Melcher (BM ’90, Piano)
Dean Bronstein (left) and Alumni President Matt Rupcich (right) present Wilda Heiss with the JHU Heritage Award.
Financial Management and Wealth Building for Musicians
A Peabody Alumnus Shares the Concepts and Methods that Enabled Him to Invest Well and Retire (in Modest Comfort) in His Early 60s
This is an edited version of the original. The complete version can be found at peabody.jhu.edu/alumni.
We heard it when we were young: “You’ll find that it’s hard to make a living in music.” Making music can have great rewards but they might not be financial. As challenging as our financial lives might be, the application of some very simple con- cepts can make it possible to face the challenges and even overcome them.
ADVANTAGES YOU HAVE AS A MUSICIAN If the subject of money management seems totally foreign to you, keep this in mind: As a musician, you have some strengths that can help you succeed. You’re good at working on long-range projects in which the goal is beyond the horizon.
You have determination, patience, and the courage to take calculated risks. Also, you’re good at math and ratios (even if you think you’re math-phobic):
rhythms are basically ratios, as are many of the mathematical concepts in investing (and, to manage your finances, you won’t need to understand any complicated math anyway). If you spend a moderate amount of time and effort studying this field, you can learn enough to do well.
THREE TIME HORIZONS OF PERSONAL MONEY MANAGEMENT
One of the first things to understand about personal money management is that it includes several subfields: short-, medium-, and long-term money management. The first involves day-to-day and month-to-month finances (often called per- sonal finance). The second is a hybrid of the first and the third, and involves saving for big-ticket items that you’ll want to pay for long before you retire, such as a house or your children’s educa- tion, and also building an emergency reserve in case you’re hit with an unexpected financial bur- den. And the third involves investing for things far in the future, such as retirement.
The most basic element of personal finance is budgeting — estimating your income and expenses in advance for a given time period. One of the most frustrating things about being a musician is our fluctuating incomes: How can we achieve financial stability when our incomes keep going up and down?
But consider this: the incomes of just about every business on earth fluctuate, yet many of them do very well. One accounting tool that businesses use to man- age their finances is simple yet powerful, and you can easily learn how to use it too. It consists of the totals of all income and expenses for a given period (such as a month) with breakdowns by category for each. So yours would include subtotals for income items such as teaching, gigs, a day job, and the like. For expenses, you would have subtotals for housing, transportation, groceries, meals away from home, medical expenses, and so forth. You would add up the subtotals to get grand totals for income and expenses, and the dif- ference between the two grand totals would be your profit or loss for the period.
Just having those figures won’t change your situ- ation, but it will make it crystal-clear, and that can be a first step toward figuring out how to improve it. Can you take on a few more students or gigs?
Can you charge higher fees for any of your work?
Can you cut any of your expenses? Small changes in these things can shift your balance from just barely getting by to prospering, even if modestly, and put- ting money away for your future.
The most important goal of this practice — and if you want to succeed financially, it should be a regular, life-long practice — is to help you figure out how to save money regularly. For that is the key to building a nest egg so that you can be free of finan- cial worries. Many Americans of average means have become wealthy, and almost all have done it in a very unexciting way: gradually, by saving and investing modest amounts regularly over a long period of time.
Another tool for improving your finances is a lit- tle out-of-the-box thinking. Taking money out of the bank is easy, and that can make it difficult to save.
Money you have earmarked for specific purposes is much easier to manage if it is in different accounts or even different places, and there is no limit to the number of accounts you can have. Accounts in mul- tiple places can be a powerful tool to help you save.
While you’re in the early stages of learning about personal money management, it will be good to internalize an old adage: Pay yourself first.
Whenever you receive payment for anything, put off at least for a moment any thoughts about your financial obligations and see the first fraction of that payment going into savings.
One critically important aspect of personal finance is paying off debt. If you have any debt, you want to pay it off as soon as you can. But a slight departure from that very sound principle says that while you’re discharging your debt, save a little, even if it’s just a tiny bit. That will mean taking a little longer to pay off the debt, but having even a small financial cushion will give you some peace of mind. I know those two ideas are contradictory, but I suggest that you mull them over and decide which course is most comfortable for you.
While you’re getting your short- and intermedi- ate-term finances in order, it isn’t too early to start learning about investing to achieve your long-term goals. By learning about investing well before you start doing it, you’ll probably make better choices than you would if you started into it with little preparation. So plan to spend some time building your stores of both knowledge and of funds to invest until you feel ready for the next step.
RESOURCES FOR LEARNING
The resources for learning about investing are vast. There are books, college courses, websites, investment advisors, and TV and radio programs.
Books have the advantage of allowing you to learn at your own pace, and in college courses — and there are many inexpensive ones at community colleges geared toward beginning investors — you can ask questions until you’re satisfied that you understand everything that’s covered in the course. My recommendation as the best place to start is a general, introductory book that proceeds logically through the various aspects of investing. You’ll find comments about sources of information on both investing and personal finance in the online version of this article.
THE BASIC INVESTING CONCEPTS
The first subject you’ll encounter as you learn about investing is the many kinds of investments that are available to you. Making your initial choice will take time because you’ll need to sift through so many possibilities. There are stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, collectibles, and a seemingly infinite variety of mutual funds, which pool the money of many investors and buy and sell the stocks, bonds, real estate, or whatever the fund consists of, for all of those investors at once.
I’m not going to name specific mutual fund companies, but the large, well-known ones are reputable, and with at least one of them, you can start investing in low-cost, relatively low-risk funds with as little as $100.
An extremely important fact about stocks and mutual funds is that past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. Be wary of recent performance; look more at a stock or fund’s overall soundness and long-term performance.
Diversification is a concept you’ll encounter early in your studies. It simply means dividing your invest- ments among different things; some will do better than others, and by diversifying you can spread the chances of achieving good results and the risks of poor performance among your investments.
SOME IMPORTANT CONCEPTS THAT HELPED ME Beyond the basics of deciding what to invest in, here are the concepts that helped me the most in my years of investing:
UNDERSTANDING RISK
An old truism states that low-risk investments tend to produce low returns and high-risk investments have the potential for yielding higher returns. That is known as the risk-reward relationship. Many inves- tors manage their overall level of risk by dividing their holdings among low-, medium-, and higher- risk investments in order to try for higher returns from some investments while keeping some of
their money in safer ones. So risk is a good thing to learn about. All investing, like everything else in life, involves risk, but reasonable risks can yield substantial rewards.
UNDERSTANDING VOLATILITY
A basic fact about investments is that their value goes up and down. There is a natural tendency, after you’ve bought a stock, to want to see it go up and up, but that will seldom happen. It will go up some days and down on others. But that can work to your advantage. If you accumulate shares in a mutual fund, you’ll probably buy them over a period of years, and if you buy a fixed dollar amount at fixed time intervals, you’ll get more shares when the price is below its average, and the number of shares you accumulate will be greater than it would be if you bought all of them at once at a higher price. That practice is called dollar cost averaging, and it is a time-honored way to take advantage of volatility and leverage one’s limited buying power.
Here is my most important suggestion of all:
DO NOT, DO NOT get all excited when stock prices are going up and then start buying shares of stocks or mutual funds. The market will eventually top out, prices will fall, and after they have gone below the level where you bought, you’re likely to wonder if you made a mistake and then sell your shares.
Simple arithmetic will tell you that that is a sure-fire way to lose money, and it cannot be called investing.
TAXES AND INVESTMENTS
You’ll also need to learn about how investments are taxed. There are two broad classes of investment accounts: taxable and tax-advantaged. In the first, you have to pay taxes on dividends you receive and on gains you realize from the sale of assets. In the second, your requirement to pay taxes is usually delayed until you retire. If you have taxable invest- ments, you’ll probably need to have an accountant prepare your tax returns.
FINANCIAL CALCULATIONS
Finally, learn how to do some basic financial calculations. This will take some of the mystery out of the mathematical side of investing; you’ll find that much of it isn’t as complicated as it might look.
Many sources are available online, as well.
FROM LEARNING TO DOING
After you’ve decided that you know enough about investing to start doing it, the next steps are simple.
All you need to do is fill out a form and submit the first payment to your new investment account.
Soon after you’ve made your first investment, you’ll undoubtedly check to see how much it went up, but the chances are about 50-50 that it went down a bit. Because you studied this subject before you invested, you’ll view both increases and decreases with equanimity. You will not be tempted to get into day trading, but you will occasionally rebalance your portfolio.
Most importantly, you’ll continue to add to your holdings regularly — a little at a time (or a lot at a time, if your circumstances permit), over a long period of time.
And as your portfolio grows, you’ll have a grow- ing sense of financial comfort, and that will give you a peace of mind that will enhance your ability to do one of the greatest things humankind has ever invented, which is bringing music into the world. I wish you great success in both your musi- cal and financial endeavors.
The author attended Peabody in the 1970s. He has written this anonymously because he does not wish to have widespread attention brought to his finances.
1950
Recent live performances of music by
Vivian Adelberg Rudow
(TC ’57, BM ’60, piano; MM ’79, Composition) include The Head Remembers! Victims of 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry for saxophone and tape, at the Boston Workers Alliance Roxbury, Mass., and Devy’s Song, at the Women Composers Class, Odyssey of JHU, and later at The Women’s Club of Roland Park Baltimore. Numerous radio performances of her music have been heard this spring including airings in Amsterdam, South Africa, England, and Wales.1960
Howard Gruber
(BM ’68, Vocal Performance) performed with New Jersey’s Pro Arte Chorale in the rarely performed Epithelemion by Ralph Vaughan Williams. He performed in Bizet’s Carmen at the performing arts center in Engelwood, N.J., and in performances of Carmina Burana with the Westfield Symphony Orchestra.1970
Faculty artist
Manuel Barrueco
’s (BM ’75, Guitar) discography was reviewed in Fanfare Magazine in September. Barrueco’s playing was described as exquisite, and all three of these CDs are recom- mended for guitar playing of the highest caliber.Jerry Dubins, the author of the article offers, “If [Barrueco]’s not the greatest living guitarist on the world stage today, I don’t know who is.”
1980
Jose Lezcano
(BM ’81, Guitar), professor of music at Keene State College, appeared as soloist with the Portsmouth Symphony, in Joaquin Rodrigo’s guitar concerto Concierto de Aranjuez on November 9, in Portsmouth, N.H.Master Gunnery Sgt.
Charles Casey
(BM’86, Trombone) performed on the Late Show at Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City on April 30 as a member of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. Casey, assistant principal trombone player in the U.S. Marine Band, performed with the band during the show’s taping with the First Lady of the United States in the Late Show’s guest chair.
Joe Terwilliger
(BM ’87, Tuba) was part of the documentary Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang. In a review in Variety Magazine, Terwilliger was called the comedic relief.1990
Mark Lanz Weiser
(BM ’ 91, Piano; MM ’93, Composition) has been named recipient of the 35th annual ASCAP Foundation Rudolf Nissim Prize.The prize was awarded for Symphony No. 2 (Sinfonia Magalhães). Where Angels Fear to Tread, an opera composed by Weiser which premiered at Peabody in 1999, opened at Opera San Jose in February.
Paul Jan Zdunek
(BM ’91, Composition) was hired as the chief capital development officer for Singpoli Capital Corporation — a company within the Singpoli Group dedicated to commercial real estate investing. His 12-year career as a turn-around specialist and consultant included working with orga- nizations like the Pasadena Symphony Association and the Modesto Symphony Association.Hilda Goodwin
(class of 1954 and 1967) photographed at Homecoming
Leela Breithaupt
(BM ’93, MM ’96, Flute) was featured on the cover the October issue of Flute Talk magazine where the first of her series of articles on“Historically Informed Performance for Modern Flutists” was published. She has taught “Go Baroque” master classes on this topic at the Rice University Shepard School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy. Her recent performances include solo engagements in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany;
Baroque trio concerts at the Twin Cities Early Music Festival with her Baroque trio Les Ordinaires; and solo performances of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor with Bourbon Baroque.
Bin Huang
(BM ’93, Violin) has been named an associate professor of violin at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester.Violinist Carolyn Huebl and
Mark Wait
(DMA’76, Piano) premiered
Michael Hersch
’s (BM’95, MM ’97, Composition) Zwischen Leben und Tod (Between Life and Death): Twenty-two Pieces After Images by Peter Weiss in February in Nashville, Tenn. The piece was commissioned by Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music and dedicated to Huebl and Wait.
Serap Bastepe-Gray
(BM ’96, MM ’99, Guitar) received a visiting scientist grant from TUBITAK, the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council. In April, she continued her fMRI study in kinesthetic imagery in musicians in collaboration with Niyazi Acer of the Erciyes University and Charles Limb in Turkey. The study explores the neural bases for visualization (mental practice) in instrumental musicians with potential impli- cations on efficient sensorimotor learning and performance reliability.Pianist
Sarah Chan
(MM ’96, Piano) performed at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall’s Kammermusiksaal, giving her solo debut recital on April 27. She was interviewed by Fueilletonscout, an online arts and culture interest website based in Berlin. Ms. Chan will spend her summer in residency in China, performing and giving master classes at Beifang University for Nationalities.Jennifer Blades
(MM ’97, GPD ’98, Voice), with pianist John Nauman, presented a concert, “Seasons of Love,” on February 14 at the Cabaret at Germano’s in Baltimore created around the emotion of love.Class Notes
So-Yoon Yim
(Piano, MM ’99, GPD ’00) performed a concert at Old Town Hall in Fairfax, Vir., on December 12 withJun Kim
(BM ’97, Violin) and his wife You-Seong Kim (Soprano). The program consisted of music by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. This concert was part of the Bonita Lestina Performance Series sponsored by the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts. Yim is currently on piano faculty at the Levine School of Music and Kim serves as the director of orchestral activities at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.2000
Dan Trahey
(BM ’00, Tuba, Music Education) was recognized as being the first American to win the Austrian Brass Band Championship, as tubist with the RET Brass Band of Innsbruck, Austria.The prize came with a trip to the World Brass Band Championship in Frieburg, Germany, in May.
The premiere of Rise, a meditation on civil rights in America, by composer
Judah Adashi
(MM’02, DMA ’11, Composition) took place on April 19 at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. The work was performed by Howard University’s renowned jazz a cappella group AfroBlue and Cantate Chamber Singers, who com- missioned the piece in celebration of its 30th anni- versary, and is set to poetry by Tameka Cage Conley.
Adashi and
Lavena Johanson
(MM ’13, Cello) presented at the inaugural New Music Gathering in San Francisco, in January. Johanson performed Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas for unaccompanied cello and Adashi’s my heart comes undone for cello and loop pedal; Adashi spoke about presenting new music.Erik Meyer
(BM ’02, MM ’04, Organ) won the JHU Song Contest with Truth Guide Our University—The Spirit of JHU, a reworking The Johns Hopkins Ode.Mezzo-soprano
Jessica Renfro
(MM ’03, Voice;GPD ’05 Opera) made her European debut at the prestigious Opera di Firenze’s Maggio Musicale singing the role of Paquette in Bernstein’s Candide from May 23 to June 3.
Peabody alumni at Wolf Trap Opera for Mozart’s The Magic Flute:
(pictured left to right)
Jenni Bank (BM ’06, Voice) as Marcellina, Filene Young Artist; David Garcia
(MM ’08, Oboe) in the orchestra;Fatma Daglar (MM ’95, GPD ’97, Oboe) in the orchestra; Mike Janney (BM ’05,
Voice; BM ’05, Music Education), stagemanager, and Wolf Trap production manager; Alex Rosen (BM ’14, Voice) as
Antonio, Studio Artist
Jessica Satava
(MM ’04, Voice) performed Anton Bruckner’s Te Deum with the Annapolis Chorale and Chamber Orchestra on April 10 and 11. On April 24 and 25, she appeared as the soprano soloist for Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the American University Symphony Orchestra.Also on April 25, she competed in the semifinals of the Annapolis Opera Competition. On May 3, she appeared with the Bach Concert Series in Baltimore performing the soprano solos for Johannes Brahms’
Ein Deutches Requiem.
CD Releases from Peabody Alumni
Time Goes Dancing, a new CD of 12 songs by Chesley Kahmann (’58, Composition), was published by Orbiting Clef Productions, Inc.
in October. The CD is Vol. 10 of The Kahmann Touch series, sung by her long-time singing group, The Interludes.
Elam Ray Sprenkle (BM ’70, MM ’71, DMA
’79, Composition) has two compositions on the Annapolis Brass Quintet’s new CD Forever—is Composed of Nows. Sprenkle’s Three Fanfares opens the CD, and Six Songs, his setting of six poems of Emily Dickinson for mezzo-soprano and brass quintet, closes the CD.
Marc Regnier (BM ’79, Guitar) released a CD, Tempo Do Brasil, on June 9, on the Reference Recording label.
Elizabeth Anderson (MM ’86, Composition) released a monographic cd of electroacoustic works, L’envol, produced by the label empreintes DIGITALes.
Rosemary Tuck (MM ’86, Piano) and the English Chamber Orchestra are featured on Carl Czerny:
Bel Canto Concertante, inspired by the most famous and attractive themes from the Bel Canto operas. The CD was a Naxos Highlight for March and entered the UK Specialist Classical Music Charts top 20.
Gershwin: Music for Violin and Piano, the newest release by Opus Two – Andrew Cooperstock (DMA ’88, Piano) and William Terwilliger, violin, with Ashley Brown, soprano – features transcriptions by Jascha Heifetz and Eric Stern.
The CD, under Azica record label, was included in the American Record Guide in the November/
December issue.
Patrick Hawkins (BM ’92, Organ) recently released a CD under Navona Records, Haydn and the English Lady. The record includes works by Franz Joseph Haydn and Maria Hester Park, illustrating the diversity and refinement of classical repertoire.
Last Autumn, the recording of the two-hour work for horn and cello by faculty member Michael Hersch (BM ’95, MM ’97, Composition), was released on Innova Records. The work was per- formed by Jamie Hersch and Daniel Gaisford.
Flauta Boricua/Puerto Rican Flute – This new CD by María Hernández-Candelas (MM ’97, Flute) features contemporary classical Puerto Rican composers and traditional Puerto Rican Danzas.
It was named one of the best 20 CD productions of 2014 by the Fundación Nacional para la Cultura Popular in Puerto Rico. Ms. Hernández-Candelas is currently the piccolo soloist of the Puerto Rico Symphony on leave as she pursues a doctoral degree from the University of Kansas.
Rachel Choe (MM ’02, GPD ’03, DMA ’09, Flute) released a debut album Après Un Rêve in October, through Fieldstone House. This album explores her new musical language by breaking the barrier between classical and jazz, enriching and mag- nifying each genre’s beauty. Not only are many jazz standards relived in this album but it also includes folk tunes and film music.
Einav Yarden (GPD ’03, MM ’05, Piano) released Oscillations CD on Challenge Classics in 2013. It presents a juxtaposition between off-the-beaten- path piano works by Beethoven and Stravinsky.
The CD received much international acclaim and was selected as ‘CD of the Month’ on the German magazine, Piano News.
Devin Gray (BM ’06, Jazz Percussion) released a new jazz CD, RelativE ResonancE, in June. A CD release party was held in Baltimore at An die Musik Live.
Conundrum - The debut instrumental jazz album by Ian Sims (BS ’08 Electrical Engineering; BM ’08, AD ’10, Jazz Saxophone; MA ’10, Audio Science) highlights Alex Norris (BM ’90 Music Ed; PC ’90, Trumpet), and faculty artist Paul Bollenback, guitar;
with Ed Howard, bass, and EJ Strickland, drums.
The album mix is a really full-sounding balance of warm, articulated upright bass; crispy, crunchy, and fizzy drums; singing horns; and guitar.
Duo Bohème, the San Francisco-based flute/
guitar pair of Lyle Sheffler (BM ’10, Guitar) and flutist Courtney Wise, put together an eclectic new album, Senza Misura, featuring works by Ravel, Faure, Giuliani, Shankar, Tedesco, Ibert, and Borne/Bizet.
Three Ravens, a new CD of ancient ballads from the British Isles, was released by Brian Kay (BM ’13, MM ’15, Early Music). This album explores the range of interpretational possibilities span- ning from historical practice to a very modern approach. Mr. Kay just returned from a five-con- cert tour with Apollo’s Fire (a baroque orchestra from Cleveland) and has also been interviewed in the spring 2015 issue of Early Music America.
Julien Xuereb (MM ’15, Guitar) released Introspection, the first solo album recorded by Xuereb and features his original compositions for classical guitar. Some pieces, such as Méditation, are among Xuereb’s earliest works; they were influenced by Middle-Eastern lute music using mostly modality and improvisation. Gradually, Mr. Xuereb incorporated elements from Western Classical music and Jazz to create his unique musical style. In addition, each piece of this album outlines aspects of the human experience, including time, love, death, remembrance and humanity’s place in the universe.
Hilary Vrooman
(class of 1990) photographed at Homecoming
Mezzo-soprano
Jenni Bank
(BM ’06, Voice) per- formed the role of the Duchess in Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.Ms. Bank also won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Buffalo/Toronto District and the Great Lakes Regional Competition. She sang in the semi- final auditions on the stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in March. She will spend her summer at Wolf Trap.
Tucker Fuller
(MM ’06, Composition) was recently awarded a 2014 Tribute to the Classical Arts Award by Gambit Magazine in New Orleans.The award honored the world-premiere of Fuller’s Salve Regina for Best New Classical Music Presentation. The piece was performed by New Resonance Orchestra and conducted by
Francis Scully
(MM ’05, Orchestral Conducting). Scully’s ensemble also won the 2013 award for Best Choral Arts Presentation for their presentation of the 1610 Vespers of Monteverdi.Charles Halka
’s (BM Piano ’06, MM ’08 Composition and Music Theory Pedagogy) Impact (2013) was chosen by Marin Alsop, for the Cabrillo Festival in Santa Cruz, Calif. Alsop will conduct the piece on the final concert of the festival on August 16. Additionally, Halka’s latest chamber opera, And Jill Came Tumbling After (2013), was chosen for Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers program, with a performance set for May 7.Benjamin Kramer
(BM ’07 Jazz Bass, BM ’07 Recording Arts and Sciences) recently accepted a position as the director of the Los Angeles Film School’s Music Production degree program.Baritone
Kevin Wetzel
(MM ’06, GPD ’08, Voice) received the Cheryl and Richard Hack Study Award and mezzo-sopranoYun Kyong Lee
(BM ’09, MM ’10, GPD ’12) received the Adrienne Goldberg Memorial Study Award in the 2015 Annapolis Opera Competition.DMA student
Faye Chiao
(MM ’07, Composition) composed the music for a production of Charles Mee’s Utopia Parkway by Baltimore’s Single Carrot Theatre.Britt Olsen-Ecker
(BM ’09, Voice) was the music director for this production that centers around the story of a widow saved from a robbery, and the young girl forced to marry the boy in exchange for his heroism, despite her very war- ranted objections.Michael Compitello
(BM ’07, Percussion) has been appointed a professor at the University of Kansas to start in the fall of 2015.Ji Hye Jung
(BM ’07, Percussion) was named associate professor of percussion at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. She previously served as associate professor of percussion at the University of Kansas for six years.Nominated for a Grammy!
Paul Avgerinos
’s (BM ’81, Double Bass) recording on Round Sky Music, Bhakti, was nominated for Best New Age Album.
Jory Vinikour
(’83, Piano) was nominated
for his recording of contemporary American
harpsichord music, Toccatas (on Sono
Luminus), in the category of Best Classical
Instrumental Solo. This is Mr. Vinikour’s
second Grammy Award nomination.
poems by Federico García Lorca that were originally featured in George Crumb’s Federico’s Little Songs for Children, for harp, flute and voice. Ms. Hogan will invite seven different composers to collabo- rate in this project, one for each of the original Lorca poems. One of the composers will be
David Smooke
(MM ’95, Composition), who studied with Crumb. Ms. Hogan is currently an Artist Diploma candidate at Peabody.An all-Chopin recital by DMA candidate
Sungpil Kim
(BM ’11, MM ’12, Piano), a student of Brian Ganz, aired on WWFM Radio’s “Celebrating Our Musical Future” program on May 11.Hyejin Kwon
(BM ’09, Piano; MM ’11, Vocal Accompanying) was featured in Broadway World’s article: Canadian Opera Company to Welcome Three New Rising Starts. She has been invited to join Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio for 2015/16 season.Gemma New
(MM ’11, Conducting) has been appointed music director of Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Ontario, Canada. For the 2014-15 season, she was the recipient of the prestigious Dudamel Fellowship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted eight education concerts in Los Angeles.Bijan Olia
(BM ’11, MM ’12, Computer Music) was an associate producer for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Score! concert on May 21, the first-ever live performance of television themes by a 67-piece orchestra and the 40-voice L.A. Chorus, at UCLA’s Royce Hall.Darren Otero
(MM ’92, Computer Music) served as supervising copyist;Lynn Kowal
(MM ’91, Computer Music) was the music consultant; andJulienne Gede
(BM ’12, Voice) also served as assistant to the production team for the concert.Bryan Young
(class of 1996) photographed at Homecoming
Nola Richardson
(MM ’11, Voice) made her professional debut with American Bach Soloists in January in the San Francisco Bay area as Galatea in ABS’ production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea. This summer she will appear as a young artist and cover the title role in the Boston Early Music Festival’s pro- duction of Handel’s Almira and return for a second season with the American Bach Soloists Academy.Jake Runestad
(MM ’11, Composition) was com- missioned by Washington National Opera for his latest composition, Daughters of the Bloody Duke, which had its world premiere at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in November. Daughters of the Bloody Duke is a dark, comedic one-act opera, in which Margot, the young daughter of the Bloody Duke of Ravenswood, must choose between love and the demands of her revenge-crazed family. Mr.Runestad also led a session at the American Choral Director’s Association in February in Salt Lake City.
His session “New American Voices: Developing the Choral Art” was presented with famed choral con- ductor Dale Warland.
Matthew Viator
(BM ’09, composition) and his studio
in the D.C. Pride Parade
Geoff Knorr
(BM ’07, MM ’08, Composition;BM ’08 Recording Arts and Sciences) was the lead composer, orchestrator, and mixing engineer for the video game soundtrack to Sid Meier’s Civilization:
Beyond Earth which won the 2014 International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) Award for Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media and was nominated for a 2015 ASCAP Composer’s Choice Award.
On April 22,
Ken Lam
(MM ’07, Conducting) led the Montclair State University Symphony Orchestra in Johannes Brahms’ Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102 withNetanel Draiblate
(MM ’07, GPD ’09, Violin) andYotam Baruch
(MM ’07, Cello) in the Alexander Kasser Theater in New Jersey. Mr. Lam is music director of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and associate conductor for education of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Netanel Draiblate is concertmaster of the Annapolis and Lancaster Symphony Orchestras, and Yotam Baruch is the former associate principal cello of the Jerusalem Symphony in Israel.Pamela Stein
(MM ’07, Voice) performed a recital of David Wolfson’s song cycle The Particle Songs with Helix! New Music Ensemble at Le Poisson Rouge in New York on April 12. She also spoke on a panel at The New Music Gathering at San Francisco Conservatory of Music and introduced her latest project, Your Music Bus, with new music composers Lisa Bielawa and Aaron Jay Kernis. Your Music Bus is a service-oriented ensemble of flexible size and instrumentation that comes through your town on a dedicated student readings tour. Motivated by the desire to give students of composition at American universities the best possible chance to hear their own music and to have quality recordings of their works to use in the advancement of their careers, a team of professional composer mentors and musicians will visit American universities to provide coachings, readings, and recording sessions.Andrew Arceci
(BM ’08, Double Bass) was offered a teaching position at the Narnia Arts Festival in Narni, Italy, in the Umbria region for the summer. Mr. Arceci andAmy Domingues
(MM ’12, Viola da Gamba) performed in J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 with the National Philharmonic Orchestra in January at Strathmore Hall in Bethesda. He was also featured on the soundtrack of BBC’s drama series, Silent Witness.Mi Yeon Han
(Vocal Accompanying, ’08) has joined the graduate collaborative piano faculty at Sejong University in Seoul, Korea. She was featured in a collaborative recital at the Youngsan Art Hall in Seoul on December 6.The Beijing Guitar Duo, made up of
Yameng Wang
(MM ’08, GPD ’11, Guitar) andMeng Su
(PC ’09, GPD ’11, Guitar), gave their third concert appearance for San Francisco Performances (SFP) in November. They have been SFP Guitarists-in- Residence since 2012.Samuel Brannon
(BM ’09, MM ’10, Composition), presently a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was recently awarded an Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowship from the American Musicological Society. This award supports the completion of his dissertation, “Writing about Music in Early-Modern Print Culture: Authors, Printers, and Readers,” which examines the impact of printing technology of Renaissance music theory.His research has also been supported by a fellow- ship from the Newberry Library in Chicago, which he was awarded last summer.
Megan Ihnen
, (MM ’09, Voice), has published an article on NMBx. In it, she discusses the role of per- formance versus perception in new music. She is an enthusiastic supporter of new music and a blogger with an appreciable reach.Simeone Tartaglione
(GPD ’09, Conducting) conducted the 50th anniversary gala concert for Catholic University on April 12 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The program consisted of Orff’s Carmina Burana, Copland’s Rodeo, and excerpts from West Side Story. The concert included a 200-member choir and almost 100 orchestra players.Joseph Young
(AD ’09, Conducting), who in 2007 was the first recipient of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra-Peabody Institute Conducting Fellowship and is currently assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony and music director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, is one of the nine conductors who are receiving this year’s Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards.Roger Zare
(MM ’09, Composition) was com- missioned to compose a piece by the 30th Annual Chesapeake Chamber Music (CCM) Festival, which will be held in Easton, Md., from June 7 through June 21, 2015. In honor of the 30th Festival, Artistic Directors J. Lawrie Bloom and Marcie Rosen have commissioned 30-year old award-winning Mr. Zare to write a piece for piano, oboe, clarinet and cello which will be featured at the Avalon Theatre concert on June 19. His works have been performed on five continents and The New York Times praised his“enviable grasp of orchestration.”
2010
Tung-Chieh Chuang
(’10, Conducting) won the 2015 Malko Conducting Competition, one of the most prestigious competitions internationally. The break- through for Mr. Chuang, 32, from Taiwan came in 2013 when he won the Mahler Competition. Since winning second prize and audience prize at the most recent Solti competition (first prize not awarded), he has attracted numerous worldwide engagements.He has worked with Die 12 Cellisten der Berliner Philharmoniker, Bamberger Symphoniker, National Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan), Taipei Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Tenor
William Davenport
(BM ’11, Voice), a student of Stanley Cornett, was a first place win- ner in the 2015 Gerde Lissner International Vocal Competition and was awarded $10,000. He was featured in the Winner’s Concert on April 12, at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Recital Hall in New York. Mr.Davenport was also a 2015 regional winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and competed in the national semi-finals.
Antoinette Gan
(BM ’11, cello), student of Amit Peled and Alison Wells, and recent graduate from the Shepherd School of Music (MM ’15, cello), has won a section cello position with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra.Jasmine Hogan
(BM ’11 Harp, MM ’14, Harp/Pedagogy) won the Presser Award for 2015. Ms.
Hogan will use the $10,000 that comes with the award to realize her vision of commissioning a set of new compositions based on the children’s
Mezzo-soprano
Zoe Band
(BM ’12, MM ’14, Voice) was one of seven finalists for the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio Competition and performed on November 25 in Toronto. Ms. Band, who recently placed second in the 2015 Russell C.Wonderlic Competition in Voice, will appear along- side Dawn Upshaw this summer at the Tanglewood Music Center. She is also a finalist in the Young Artists competition for Vocal Arts DC, along with musicology faculty member Richard Giarusso and
Carrie Quarquesso
(BM ’15, Voice).Sopranos
Danielle Buonaiuto
(MM ’12, Voice) andKristina Gaschel
(MM ’14, Voice) performed in the Bronx Opera’s production of Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten. They sang the roles of Miss Wordsworth and Cis, respectively, on January 11 at Lehman College and January 17 at Hunter College.Mezzo-soprano
Diana Cantrelle
(MM ’12, Voice) presented a concert in April with Park Slope Opera in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her repertoire for the concert included scenes from Tales of Hoffman by Offenbach, the famous duet from Delibes’ Lakmé Duet, Bellini’s Mira Norma, and Mozart’s Act II finale from Le Nozze di Figaro.Jungwon Kim
(Vocal Accompanying, ’12) won the opera accompanying award in the 25th annual Journal of Music Competition for accompanists.Georgi Videnov
(BM ’12, Percussion) has been appointed assistant timpanist and percussionist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for the 2015–2016 season.The Baltimore Choral Arts Society’s sold-out Christmas Concert on December 2 featured solo- ists
David Artz
(MM ’13, Voice) andKerry Holahan
(MM ’14, Early Music Voice) as well as compositions by DMA candidateMichael Rickelton
(MM ’10, Composition) andDouglas Buchanan
(MM ’08, Composition, Music Theory Pedagogy; DMA ’13, Composition). The concert was aired on WMAR TV (ABC-2) on WBJC 91.5 FM Radio.Celeste Johnson
(MM ’14, Vocal Accompanying) joined Opera Coeur d’Alene’s company as coach/accompanist for Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West. She is employed as a pianist/accompanist for the choral and vocal departments of Gonzaga University and Whitworth University. In January, Ms. Johnson joined artists from the Curtis Institute for an
“Opera in the Afternoon” recital in Saint Paul, Minn.
Scott Lee
(MM ’ 13, Composition) is a recipient of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Foundation’s 2015 Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his piece Bottom Heavy. Mr. Lee is currently a James B. Duke Fellow at Duke University where he is pursuing a PhD in composition.Update
from
Gerald Klickstein
Director, Music Entrepreneurship and Career Center
Since our launch in 2012, MECC has grown into a major resource for Peabody students and alumni.
We log an average of about 1,400 career advising encounters annually, and approximately one-third of advisees are alumni. Our seminar series also brings a range of industry leaders to our campus to counsel students.
We’ve increased the number of companies recruiting Peabody students by more than tenfold, from 13 before we opened to almost 150 this past year. We also seek out and post opportunity notices – this year we’ve published more than 1,500 on our website and Facebook page. In tandem, we provide on our site extensive tools for musicians to discover opportunities.
We’ve created other powerful online resources:
we’ve published 16 MECC-curated documents for vocalists, a list of orchestra academies world- wide, six curated resources for composers, and more.
Our off-campus work-study initiative has grown substantially – more than a dozen Peabody students with work-study awards earned their grants this year by working as teaching assistants at the Baltimore School for the Arts or the Baltimore Symphony OrchKids program; other students assisted the BSO’s Youth Orchestra and Education Department. Such work often leads to post-gradua- tion employment.
We’ve grown our Musician Referral Service, too, and now refer students and alumni for around 600 paying performances each year. MECC also ran concert series in Baltimore and Washington that featured Peabody performers. Visit our website to learn more about MECC and to take advantage of our industry-leading resources.
Visit the MECC website for more information:
peabody.jhu.edu/mecc
Mark Meadows
(GPD ’13, Jazz Piano; JHU BA ’11,Psychology) was named D.C. Jazz Artist of the Year and Best Composer for 2014 by Washington’s City Paper.
In October,
Young-Ah Tak
(DMA ’13, Piano Performance) performed two piano concerts with piano faculty artist Yong Hi Moon in Busan, Korea, at the Eulsukdo Cultural Center. She also performed Brahm’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Seongnam Philharmonic Orchestra in Seongnam, Korea.Mary Trotter
(MM ’13, Vocal Accompanying) teaches theory, class piano, applied piano, and is the accompanist coordinator for the Voice Department at Whitworth University. She plays and coaches all voice recitals at Whitworth, oversees piano proficiency exams, and accompanies the voice faculty in recital. This past summer, Ms. Trotter was a full scholarship participant at SongFest, and the accompanist for Opera Coeur d’Alene’s On the Lake production of Pirates of Penzance.Pianist and composer
Jennifer Nicole Campbell
(BM ’14, MM ’15, Piano) won first prize in the 2014 Newark Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition on November 9. The prize includes a cash award and a performance with the Newark Symphony Orchestra in their Symphony Series on May 10.Janna Critz
(GPD ’14, Voice) has been accepted into the Carmel Bach Festival this summer as one of the Virginia Best Adams Fellows. Four participants are chosen each year and receive a $2,100 stipend plus airfare and housing. This is the only program in North America that pays singers to study and perform baroque music within a fully professional performing environment.Kristina Gaschel
(MM ’14, Voice) was among only nine rising musicians chosen from a national search to take part in the 2015 Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar.Now in its fourth season, the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar featured Ms. Gaschel in master classes and concerts in May at The Crane School of Music at The State University of New York of Potsdam.
Rachel Blaustein
(MM ’15, Voice) was accepted and cast in the opera apprenticeship summer pro- gram in Des Moines, Iowa.Devon Borowski
(MM ’15, Voice, Musicology) was awarded the inaugural Sara Berry Award for Excellence in Comparative Study for his presenta- tion “[She] Loves You, Porgy”: Color Boundaries in Nina Simone’s Porgy and Bess,” in the Fourth Annual Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship Graduate Student Conference at Johns Hopkins.Min Young Park, piano, winner of the Harrison L. Winter Piano Competition with conductor Leon Fleisher
Current student Ruiqianxi (Cissy) Li, (MA, Audio Sciences) (pictured bottom) designed a pilot project for alumni to help current international students practice their conversational English. The result was a dinner held at Szechuan House in Lutherville, Md. Pictured below are Jiaojiao Chang (MM, Music Education), Phyllis Harris-Stewart (BM ’67, Music Education), and Chenchen Wang (Senior, Piano).
The other participants in the evening were Carol Cannon (BM ’67, Voice), Matthew Rupcich (BM ’90, Music Education), Londa Lee (EDU, MS ’77; BUS, MA
’83) and Debbie Kennison, director of constituent engagement for Peabody.
8
IN THIS ISSUE:
Peabody Alumni
Homecoming/Reunion
NON -P ROFI T
U.S . PO STA GE
PAID PER MIT NO.1 181
BAL TIMO RE
, MD s, dea ts, i men s, com ew our n end y ase s Ple
sugg esti ons, and ques tion s t o:
Peabod yA lum ni Offi ce
1 E ast Mou nt V ernon Place
Bal tim ore, M aryl and 212 02
410-234-4673; f ax: 410-783-8576
Peabod yA lum ni@j hu.e du.
All P eab ody a lum ni a re a lso a lum ni
of the Joh ns H opk ins Univ ersit y.
Be su re t o t ake ad vant age of th is
affi lia tio n by v isi tin g alum ni.jh u.edu .
JHUTSA Presents Taiwanese Night Market
by Grace Tsai
On Saturday, April 11, 2015, the Johns Hopkins University’s Taiwanese Student Association (JHUTSA) and the Taiwanese American Students Association (TASA) at Johns Hopkins University held a Taiwanese Night Market on Homewood campus.
On the Brody Lawn, more than 400 students and visitors enjoyed Taiwanese gourmet food, played traditional games, and gained valuable information about Taiwan.
JHUTSA divided the booths into three sections.
The food section served QQ eggs, stir-fried rice- noodles, marble eggs, popcorn chicken, Taiwanese BBQ, and gourd tea. The game section invited local people to play games like goldfish scooping, ring- toss, and pitching grid, entertaining them with the experience of Taiwanese children’s fun. The cultural section combined traditional apparel and tourism, providing visitors with costumes and back grounds of Taiwan’s landmarks for photographs. They also involved fortune telling in the cultural section to introduce Taiwan’s vernacular culture and folk reli- gions. Moreover, on the front stage, 7th Grade Band, Lion Dance Group, and Electric-Techno Neon Gods were performing to add more Taiwanese flavors to the fair. The performance reached its climax as Electric-Techno Neon Gods, the three huge effigies with big heads seen in Taiwanese religious parades,
tapped, danced, and wiggled to the beat and tempo of western electronic pop music.
The fair was preluded with Din-Tao – Leader of the Parade, a film featuring Taiwanese folk religion and youth subculture, in Hodson Hall at the Homewood campus on April 9. Over the years, JHUTSA strived to help Taiwanese students as well as to advocate for Taiwanese culture. Not only did students of JHUTSA want to tease everyone’s palates with a series of fun events; more importantly, they wanted to articulate that T-A-I-W-A-N are not just six abstract letters but represent Taiwan’s beautiful tradition and their love of Taiwan.
The event was sponsored by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, the Office of International Affairs of National Taiwan University, the Taiwan International Graduate Program, and the Teach for Taiwan Program of Academia Sinica.
Grace Tsai (above right) has been Peabody’s representative for the JHUTSA since 2013. Ms.
Tsai is pursuing her 5-year BM/MM degree in flute performance. In addition to improving both her academic and artistic performance, she also commits herself to developing the relationship between Taiwanese students and the community.
