When Edward Polochick joined the Peabody faculty in 1979, the music conservatory was beginning to explore what would become its permanent relationship with Johns Hopkins University.
Already acclaimed as a pianist and conductor — Polochick had graduate degrees in both from Peabody — the 27-year-old musician became a faculty member just after the departure of its opera conductor Fiora Contino. “I was so lucky,” he recalls. “Because it was at a transition time, I ended up conducting chamber opera, grand opera, chamber orchestra, large orchestra, chamber chorus, full chorus, chorus, and orchestra. I had it all, and I had to work my butt off.”
Over the next four decades, in addition to his work at Peabody, Polochick served as artistic director of Concert Artists of Baltimore, the professional chorus and orchestra he founded and led for 31 years, directed the Baltimore Symphony Chorus, and worked as music director of a symphony orchestra in Lincoln, Nebraska.
After he retires from Peabody this spring, Polochick will continue to travel back and forth to Nebraska where he has built appreciation for Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra since 1998. During his tenure, the organization has added innovative classical music programs, family concerts, and pops concerts and initiated community outreach programs such as chamber ensemble performances in health care facilities.
The many facets of this rich musical career continue to inspire Polochick’s former student assistants.
“I really can’t imagine another conductor out there who has his intensity on the podium. His extreme knowledge of the score is surpassed only by his love for the people he’s working with,” says Ryan Tani (MM ’17, Conducting), a graduate student in conducting at Yale University who studied and worked with Polochick for four years.
Polochick says the greatest thrill of working at Peabody is being present to witness young artists recognize and grasp their own potential.
“The reward is being able to help shape, form, and guide them, help give them a platform for their own artistic souls to spring from,” he says. “The most important thing has to do with that moment in your heart, in your soul and in your intellect, when the connections are made. The light bulb goes off — and you begin to soar.”
Such impassioned expressiveness makes him a memorable teacher and mentor, Tani says. There’s also his exuberance: Those spontaneous hugs and the singular Polochick laugh that former assistant Erin Freeman (MM ’06, Conducting) describes as “unbridled joy.”
“Ed brought a fierce loyalty to Peabody, and a determination to always present a higher level of performance to the students than they themselves thought was possible,” says Freeman, who directs the Richmond Symphony Chorus as well as choral activities at Virginia Commonwealth University. “He never settled, never settled. With him, there was always another level of excellence that the students could reach, and he did whatever it took to get them there.”
Adds Ken Lam (MM ’07, Conducting), music director of the Charleston Symphony and Illinois Symphony orchestras, “Once you’ve done it the Ed way, you can’t look back.”
Similarly, Tani says he tries “to embrace a little bit of Ed-ness” whenever he conducts. “On the podium, there is a tension between the leader and the people of the orchestra who are trying to do the best that they can do,” he notes. “But when you step off, being a leader also means having a genuine openness and kindness, an empathy for all the musicians — especially if they are students.”
