On March 28, Loadbang will perform the world premiere of the second volume of A Baby Bigger Grows Than Up Was, by chair of Peabody’s Music Theory department David Smooke (MM ’95, Composition). The piece, a setting of an alphabetical story by Michael Kimball writing as Andy Devine, will be presented at the DiMenna Center in Manhattan.
Also on March 28, Karl Larson will perform Smooke’s “Transgenic Fields, dusk” at Minot State University in North Dakota.
On Friday, April 11, Smooke will begin his stint as a resident composer with the Lunar Ensemble with a concert including “Some Details of Hell,” a microtonal setting of a Lucie Brock-Broido poem, which Smooke notes is “one of the most challenging works I’ve ever composed.” The concert, which he helped to curate, will include works by Jason Eckardt, Emily Koh, Kevin Puts, Frederick Rzewski, and Jukka Tiensuu. This concert will be at Old Saint Paul’s Church in Baltimore at 8 pm.
On April 23 at 7:30 pm in Peabody’s Miriam Friedberg Concert Hall, the Peabody Wind Ensemble will present a new version of Smooke’s toy piano concerto “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” conducted by Harlan Parker, featuring the composer as soloist. The concert will also feature faculty artist Marina Piccinini performing “Shadows of Sirius”, by Music Theory faculty member, Joel Puckett.
