Blending live performance with fresh scholarly perspective, this performance explored how race, gender, sexuality, and class have shaped African American art songs and their reception. Through brief contextual insights, vocal students led by Associate Professor Carl Dupont connected each piece to its historical moment, revealing how these songs respond to political realities while expanding and challenging the art song tradition.
In the Stacks welcomed Opera Baltimore back to the George Peabody Library for an evening of thrilling music inspired by Puccini’s Tosca, featuring arias and songs exploring themes of power and passion. For the first time, rare letters by Puccini to Baltimore art patron and collector Alice Warder Garrett were on display.
This performance explored how generations of immigrants have shaped and enriched American music, literature, and art. Local artists from Chamber Encounters joined us for a program spanning the classical masterpieces of John Philip Sousa and Aaron Copland, to popular songs by Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, to performance art by Yoko Ono. Rare books and archives on display included promotional posters for Bahamian-American actor Sidney Poitier and a rare cookbook by Chinese chef Nellie C. Wong.
This one-of-a-kind performance featured award-winning drag queen Tara Hoot and District5, a local wind quintet with a decade-long commitment to championing new works.
Drawing inspiration from the library’s collections of rare sheet music—on display for one night only—The Queen-tet Project: A Symphonic Drag Story Hour is centered around a new work, “Gorgeously, You.” by Maryland-based composer Christen Taylor Holmes. A whimsical depiction of 21st-century life advice from a drag queen’s perspective, the new work was performed alongside Carrie Jacobs-Bond’s rarely heard “Half Minute Songs.”
The Sheridan Libraries in collaboration with the American Prison Writing Archive and the Peabody Institute presented two In the Stacks concerts on consecutive days—in Baltimore and in Washington, D.C.—featuring choral music and a panel discussion that honors the individual minds, hearts, and voices of incarcerated writers from today and centuries past.
At the center of the program was the premiere of Neither Persons nor Property, a commissioned work by composer and Peabody alumnus Elijah Daniel Smith set to texts by Brian D. Fuller, a writer incarcerated in Texas. Smith’s new work was paired with Luigi Dallapiccola’s Canti di Prigionia (Songs of Imprisonment, 1938–41), a musical protest against rising fascism set to texts by imprisoned writers from different ages.
The works were performed by the Peabody-based icarus Quartet and NEXT Ensemble, and conducted by Peabody artist-in-residence Juliano Aniceto.
This special collaboration between In the Stacks and Hopkins Votes celebrated the power of music in democracy. Peabody Institute student jazz ensembles explored themes of voting, civic engagement, social responsibility, and collective action. Alongside the musical performances, attendees had the opportunity to explore archival and special collections highlighting both jazz and democracy.
Featuring Denis Savelyev (flute), Radoslawa Jasik (piano), and Larisa Pastuchiv (bandura), this performance highlighted the resilience of Ukrainian musicians and performers throughout history. In partnership with the Baltimore-Odesa Sister City Committee, the performance explored 20th and 21st century music and literature while showcasing the bandura, a traditional Ukrainian stringed instrument dating back to the 15th century.
Soprano Mandy Brown and pianist Tatiana Loisha opened the 2024/25 series with a captivating performance exploring the history of witchcraft and persecution of women labeled as witches. Drawing inspiration from the library’s rare books about witchcraft and herbalism, this performance traced the evolution of witch stereotypes and reconciled these inaccuracies with true stories of women who were often healers and sages.
For this immersive performance, lyric soprano Natanya Sheva Washer and Peabody faculty guitarist Sean Brennan explored music inspired by nature, including works by Florence Price, Kaija Saariaho, William Grant Still, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Pauline Viardot. These pastoral and meditative songs were paired with rare, vividly illustrated books from the George Peabody Library collection.
In the Stacks and The Evolution Contemporary Music Series joined forces to present pianist Vicky Chow in a performance of music by Baltimore-born-and-raised composer Philip Glass. Hailed as “one of our era’s most brilliant pianists” (Pitchfork), Chow performed selections from Glass’s Piano Etudes, interspersed with readings from the composer’s memoir, Words Without Music, performed by Rahzé Cheatham.
Betrayal! Lust! Fate! This performance featuring Opera Baltimore explored themes of romance and heartbreak. Arias from Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin and classics from Broadway were paired with a one-night only display of pulpy treasures from the Sheridan Libraries collection of vintage romance comic books.
For our first post-pandemic performance, early music ensemble Musica Spira explored the fascinating variety of venues that 17th-century Italian women composed in, including courts, convents, and private academies. The performance was paired with a one-night only display of women-authored rare books from the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries Special Collections.
Submersive Productions, a local immersive theater company, presented “See Also,” for this series of 9 performances. Following threads (both figurative and literal) around the George Peabody Library in a choose-your-own-adventure style, participants encountered visual art, soundscapes, and performers portraying character composites based on historical women and non-binary individuals from the collections of the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries and University Museums. The performance culminated in the world premiere of a work by contemporary composer Briay Conditt.
Merging drag, queer silent film, and music by living transgender composers, this performance explored how gender conformity has been subverted since the earliest forms of music and film.
This immersive performance by Mind on Fire brought planets, stars, and celestial orbits into the George Peabody Library to explore how light and sound move through space. Featuring the captivating music of composer Cat Lamb, the program was paired with an original light installation by Kevin Blackistone that projected celestial objects moving throughout the room.
Treasures from the library’s collection were on display for one night only, including works by Copernicus and Galileo.
Throughout history, the arts have developed as a constant reaction to the times in which they were created. Drama, one of the world’s oldest art forms, has traditionally been divided into two contrasting categories: comedies and tragedies. This performance traced the evolution of the tragedy as a genre, and explore the emotional catharsis and hope that often accompanies it. Featuring Taylor Hillary Boykins, mezzo-soprano, and Tyrone Page, saxophone.
Using the George Peabody Library’s architecture as inspiration, Baltimore’s Ann Street Trio explored the connections between architecture, music, and visual art. Artifacts from the planning and engineering of the Library were displayed for the first time, and architectural elements not visible since 1980 were (literally) uncovered. Composers included Germaine Tailleferre, Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
This performance featured one of the most remarkable stories in the history of music– Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time”—a piece composed and premiered in a WWII German prisoner of war camp. Excerpts from this extraordinary work were presented alongside works by other composers who overcame adversity to spread their art, including LGBTQ+ composers, women composers, and African American composers
Featuring Melissa Lander, Clarinet; Ismar Gomes, Cello; Lauren Rausch, Violin; Wan-Chi Su, Piano.
The performance also included a one-night only display of books by authors including Frederick Douglass, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde.
This performance, featuring Balance Campaign, explored the history of the Pierrot, a pantomime character originating in the 17th century. Works of art depicting the Pierrot were paired with movements from Arnold Schonberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, punctuated with short films by Charlie Chaplin set to ragtime music.
This performance took its inspiration from the George Peabody Library’s collection of ‘fore-edge paintings’–books with secret works of art hidden in the pages. Baltimore’s own Bergamot Quartet revealed hidden musical messages and explored the meaning behind them, and the audience was given the opportunity to write down a secret of their own.
This program brought the energetic Trio Jinx to the Library to explore map-making as musical inspiration. Featuring Ledah Finck, Louna Dekker-Vargas, and Yoshi Horiguchi.
This collaborative performance dove into Baltimore’s music history through the extensive archives of the George Peabody Library & Arthur Friedheim Library, revealing many rarely or never before heard works. Featured composers: Ronald Roxbury, Jean Eichelberger Ivey, Vivian Adelberg Rudow, W Spencer Huffman. Performers: Yesse Kim, piano; Teresa Ferrara, soprano; Andrea Copland, oboe; Sam Bessen, horn.
This performance explored the connection between music and text, featuring a program entirely inspired by specific works of poetry and literature. Including 15 world premieres of works for solo horn through the Fifteen Minutes of Fame commissioning project, and the premiere of Joshua Armenta’s “Typewritten symbols,” for horn & piano. Performers: Caleb Bradley, oboe; Sam Bessen, horn; Yesse Kim, piano.
This collaborative recital took a chronological journey through the industrial revolution to explore how advancements in technology not only built the Library, but also built new and improved musical instruments. Performers: Teresa Ferrara, Soprano; Min Joo Yi, piano; Sam Bessen, horn.
