January Updates
Catching up on the last five months & looking ahead to 2025!
Dear reader,
Happy 2025! I hope you have had a restful holiday season and a prosperous first week of your year. It finally snowed in Baltimore this week, and the cold weather has been keeping me on my toes as I settle back into a routine here and begin to prepare for the spring semester at Peabody.
The last time I wrote, I was about halfway into my summer in Aspen. At the time, I was grappling with a lot of personal challenges and growth; a lot has changed since then, and I have lots to catch you up on! I also have quite a few exciting opportunities and projects to look forward to in 2025, and can’t wait to share them with you.
This year, I am making a commitment to myself to maintain this newsletter on a monthly basis. For now, this means transitioning to a more traditional newsletter format, which will give me a chance to stay connected to my community and share parts of my life and career without biting off more than I can chew. I am still passionate about expanding this project to continue engaging in conversations with my peers about their lives and work as early career professionals, but I am very aware of my limited capacity for additional work while in my graduate studies, and want to stay realistic with myself and you.
Catching Up
The biggest transition of the last five months took place in August, when I finished up my time in Aspen (for now!) and moved to Baltimore to start grad school at the Peabody Conservatory. Working at the Aspen Music Festival and School was quite a monumental experience, and allowed me countless opportunities for both personal and professional growth. The connections I made with peers and mentors created an incredibly supportive environment, one where I was given the space and grace to make mistakes and the encouragement to keep growing past them. I got to see behind the curtain into the planning and production of a large-scale music organization, and had the chance to manage independent projects in support of it that cultivated my interest in arts administration in a new way. This helped me to point my passions in a new direction when thinking about my goals for grad school and beyond, and has led to a really exciting new opportunity for next summer :)
Following the conclusion of the festival, I had about five days to drive back to the east coast and move into a new apartment before classes began. While this was a quick transition, it added to the excitement around the beginning of this new chapter. I felt like I was jumping into the deep end of a number of new professional and academic pursuits, but I was ready to start swimming.
The coursework of my first semester was fun and interesting: my classes included Movement for Singers, Mozart and Bel Canto Opera, Audience Development and Marketing for the Arts, Vocal Pedagogy, and Choral Literature with Scott Metcalf. While I had a lot of credits on my plate, I am proud of how I ended the semester and the work I did in these courses. I did have a few eye-opening moments, however, through which I realized I was having trouble maintaining my attention span and focus on my work. This had shown up a little in other situations, but became frustrating when I was managing deadlines and grades for the first time in over a year. This has become a personal goal for this semester; I am attempting to rehabilitate my ability to stay on task and removing some distractions in the form of some social media (*cough* TikTok *cough*).
As I dove into this new environment, I also started in a few new professional capacities. On the administrative side of things, I have three jobs:
I work for the Student Disability Services office at Peabody, preparing scores and course materials for use by a blind student at the school. This position included some challenges along the way, but continues to be fulfilling in many ways. The primary tasks of the position have included spending a lot of time working with music notation software in new ways, which has allowed me to develop a unique skill set, one which has already proven helpful in other situations as well.
I am the Community Engagement Intern for Peabody’s LAUNCHPad office, the center for career development, coaching, and external opportunities. In this position, I get to work directly with several performance programs that feature Peabody students in the community, and am getting hands-on experience with contracting, scheduling, and concert logistics. This has aligned really well with the skills I have wanted to develop in the field of arts administration, and has allowed me to connect with a number of peers and mentors with similar passions and paths.
Finally, I am the Marketing and Production Intern for the music series at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, working primarily on their social media presence and some day-of logistics at over 30 concerts. This position has expanded my abilities in another side of the administration field, and allowed me to build my skills in video and photo editing for social media. It has also allowed me to connect with a wonderful network of musicians in the Baltimore area, and to be close to high-level music making in a new way.
I am also singing a lot! I am a soprano soloist at Roland Park Presbyterian, which has a choir of welcoming and supportive musicians and friends. I also sing in an octet for the Choral Conducting Seminar, which has been a fun way to learn a lot of repertoire and connect with new friends in the Peabody community. This position has also given me the opportunity to continue my love for seeing the way conductors learn and work, which I believe strengthens my ability to collaborate well in an ensemble setting.
Beyond these opportunities for work, my time at Peabody has already been quite transformative for me as a musician. Over the summer, I was struggling in a couple of ways with my voice and my identity as a musician. This was for a few reasons, including my honestly inconsistent practice routine, and a lack of concrete projects to work towards. As a result, I started the semester with a lot of questions for myself and my teacher about the direction I was heading, and some concerns about the consistency of my singing. Fortunately, a lot of these concerns cleared up pretty quickly, as she was able to help me quickly get back on track with my technique and routine, and I had a rapidly expanding performance schedule to look forward to. At this point, I’m feeling much more solid in my voice and musicianship; I still have plenty of goals and things to work on, but am approaching them with much more direction and dedication.
Last semester, I had the opportunity to be a part of several ensemble performances that were at times both exciting and challenging. Some highlights of the semester were chamber collaborations on David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion with the NEXT Ensemble, Steve Reich’s Drumming with the Peabody Percussion Group and Sandbox Percussion, and Missy Mazzoli’s Vespers for a New Dark Age with Mind on Fire. I also joined the New Choir of Mount Vernon for their concert, i dwell in possibility, which was a wonderful opportunity to connect with more musicians in the Baltimore community.
I also worked to push myself as a solo performer, including frequent studio class performances, competing in Peabody’s Art Song Competition, singing on a Voice Departmental Recital, and participating in a masterclass with Alice Teyssier. These were by no means entirely perfect experiences, but worked to get me out of my shell and more comfortable in my vulnerability as a performer. At the beginning of the semester, I felt quite intimidated by the idea of singing in front of people, with a pretty strong fear that I would reveal a glimpse of my recent musical challenges. Ultimately, though, I was able to at least attempt to embrace that as part of the process, and to understand that the only way I would become more comfortable performing again would be by performing.
Looking Forward
The spring semester starts in a little under two weeks, and I am honestly really excited to jump back into everything. I am really looking forward to my coursework, especially some repertory classes: Advanced German Lieder and Oratorio. I am continuing in the jobs mentioned above, plus one other opportunity to work as a TA. I am also really looking forward to continuing to work with the conducting students, both through their Seminar course and by being a part of a few conducting recitals!
In the coming months, I am excited to be singing with the NEXT Ensemble on a program of Luigi Dallapiccola’s Canti di prigionia and the premiere of Elijah Daniel Smith’s The Thought to Which I Lay, which will be performed both at the George Peabody Library and the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in DC. Both of these pieces center on texts by incarcerated individuals, and offer raw perspectives on humanity and imprisonment. After that, I am excited to be joining a special project in collaboration with the Lorelei ensemble to perform Tim Brady’s Symphony No. 11: This One is Broken in Pieces.
My biggest focus at the moment, however, is on my upcoming recital and premiere with Steven Naylor: weathering. Steven and I met about a year and a half ago at the Collaborative Piano Institute, and I was immediately drawn to his music and generally open, kind energy. I knew at the time that I would love to collaborate with him, and am incredibly grateful that I have had the opportunity to do so on this project. weathering is a song cycle that sets five poems and journal entries that I wrote over several months in 2023. Each text uses clouds, rain, or weather to investigate a part of my mental health, including feelings of disassociation, numbness, and release. I am deeply grateful for the sensitive and generous way that Steven has treated these texts, and have loved the process of learning his music as it aligns so closely with my intentions for the piece.
About a week ago, I travelled to Bowling Green, Ohio to rehearse with Steven, and had a truly wonderful few hours putting everything together with him. It was very inspiring to collaborate in an open, creative space, and our musical excitement was palpable. I am very grateful to have received a Project Grant through Peabody LAUNCHPad which is making it possible for Steven to travel to Baltimore to perform with me for the premiere, and to create a studio recording of the piece to be shared at a later date. I am also looking forward to the rest of the program of the recital, which includes pieces by Arvo Pärt, David Lang, Kion Heidari, Piers Connor Kennedy, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, and collaborations with some wonderful friends and musicians in Baltimore. This project has been growing behind the scenes for over a year, and it is so exciting to finally be able to bring it to an audience!
Here are the dates and other information for these exciting upcoming performances; I hope you are able to join, either in-person or online!
weathering with Steven Naylor — February 9th at 6pm, Leith Symington Griswold Hall, Peabody Institute
NEXT Ensemble: Dallapiccola & Elijah Daniel Smith — February 13th at 7:30pm, George Peabody Library
NEXT Ensemble: Dallapiccola & Elijah Daniel Smith — February 14th at 12:30pm, Hopkins Bloomberg Center
Lorelei Ensemble: Tim Brady’s Symphony No. 11: This One is Broken in Pieces — March 6th at 7:30pm, Emmanuel Episcopal Church
Thank you so much for staying connected, and for reading. I am going to keep sharing these monthly updates, and hopefully won’t have quite as much to update you on next time :) You can also stay in touch on my website or Instagram, and subscribe to have these updates come straight to your inbox!
See you next month!
Caitlin
PS. As a “thank you” for reading this far, here’s a little audio sneak peek of weathering from my recent rehearsal with Steven. I hope you enjoy listening!