December means entertainment awards-season pushes and year-end best-of lists, with Peabody faculty and alumni popping up in various publications’ annual round ups. The New York Times included faculty composer Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto featuring flutist Clair Chase and bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding (see NYT review), the performance by Sandbox Percussion— featuring Jonathan Allen and Peabody alumni Victor Caccese (BM ’11, Percussion), Terry Sweeney (BM ’13, Percussion), and Ian Rosenbaum (BM ’08, Percussion)—of composer Andy Akiho’s Seven Pillars (see NYT feature), and the Tao of Glass opera collaboration between performer/director Phelim McDermott and composer and Preparatory alum Philip Glass (see NYT review) in its Best Classical Music Performances of 2023.
The Washington Post included Washington National Opera’s production of composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson’s Blue, which was conducted by Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles Joseph Young (AD ’09, Conducting) and Jonathan Taylor Rush (MM ’19, Orchestral Conducting) during its Kennedy Center run, in classical music critic Michael Andor Brodeur’s “The Best Classical Music of 2023.”
NPR’s 50 Best Albums of 2023 recognitions include Awadagin Pratt’s (PC ’89, Piano; PC ’89, Violin; GPD ’92, Conducting), Stillpoint (New Amsterdam), which includes a work by Paola Prestini (’95, Composition), and jazz faculty artist Allison Miller’s River in Our Veins (Royal Potato Family).
The January 2024 issue of DownBeat includes its Best Albums of 2023 run down, a year-end collection of its 4, 4.5, and 5-star reviews, and it also includes jazz faculty artist Miller’s River in Our Veins, as well as In Real Time (Blue Note), the second album from the quintet Artemis that Miller anchors, as well as faculty artist Warren Wolf’s independently released Chano Pozo: Origins.
Also appearing on DownBeat’s list: Oúat’s The Strange Adventures of Jesper Klint on Umlaut Records, the Paris-based label founded and run by composer, bassist, and producer Joel Grip (GPD ’05, Jazz Bass), which he founded while at Peabody, and George’s Letters to George and Tomas Fujiwara’s Pith, both on the Brooklyn-based Out of Your Head Records founded and run by bassist Adam Hopkins (GPD ’08, Jazz Double Bass).
Finally, DownBeat’s staff also makes a year’s end Editor’s Picks of albums, 38 recordings that includes Wolf’s independent solo release Chano Pozo: Origins and José James’ On & On (Verve), the jazz treatment of the Erykah Badu songbook that includes undergraduate also saxophonist Ebban Dorsey.