Courses
Exploring Arts Careers, the first course in the Breakthrough Curriculum sequence, is a required one-credit course for all second-year undergraduate students. Students examine various career paths, discovering and connecting personal strengths, interests, and goals to relevant skills and experiences. Mentorship and networking teach the value of communication and community in shaping academic and professional trajectories. The course incorporates audio and video editing to help students to express personal and artistic voices through multimedia. Students gain a broadened view of artistic careers and resources to advance their creative interests and discover future opportunities.
Building a Brand and Portfolio is a required two-credit course for all third-year undergraduate and first-year master's students. This course equips students with career development skills essential for sustaining a dynamic artistic practice. This course guides students in developing a professional digital portfolio, including a website, supporting media, an artist bio, and a resume. Through hands-on projects and industry-aligned resources, students refine their professional materials and explore strategies for positioning their work within today’s evolving creative landscape.
Prerequisite(s): PY.123.101[C] OR PY.123.111[C]
Pitching Your Creative Idea, the final course in the Breakthrough Curriculum sequence is a required two-credit course for all third-year undergraduate and first-year master's students. In this project-based course, students develop and practice essential skills for the 21st century performing artist. Through determining and designing an artistic project for a setting external to Peabody, they learn skills in audience research, programming, collaboration, and professionalism, while also building experience advocating publicly for their artistry both verbally and in writing. As the capstone for this class, students create a written grant application and juried proposal, with the option to enter a juried competition for project funding.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Building a Brand and Portfolio needed, PY.123.311[C].
How does a creative artist make a living — and a life? In this foundational survey course, students will study aspects of law that shape a career in and beyond the arts. Topics include how to get or grant permission to use copyrighted works, how to read a contract, and how to start or join a business. Advanced topics may include negotiation, the analysis of popular music in copyright infringement cases, and current developments in intellectual property law. By learning how copyright law can protect creative works, how contracts can generate income, and how business structures can influence the impact of the artist in society, students will empower themselves to create their future.
Distribution Area: P, Y
How do musical compositions make it out into the world? In this practicum, students will get hands-on experience administering the recently discovered archive of a former Peabody composer whose centennial will be in 2021. Participants will help run a not-for-profit corporation, prepare critical and/or performing editions of works, and conclude the term with a recital of these rediscovered compositions. Due to the size of the archive (60+ works), this practicum could repeat each semester and culminate in a centennial concert or festival in 2021.
Learn through discussion, case studies and hands on practice key aspects of leading and managing an arts organization today including strategic planning, programming, marketing, public relations, fundraising, staffing, budgeting, and community engagement.
Prerequisite(s): Students must have completed Core I and Core II
Distribution Area: P, Y
How does a creative artist make a living — and a life? In this foundational survey course, students will study aspects of law that shape a career in and beyond the arts. Topics include how to get or grant permission to use copyrighted works, how to read a contract, and how to start or join a business. Advanced topics may include negotiation, the analysis of popular music in copyright infringement cases, and current developments in intellectual property law. By learning how copyright law can protect creative works, how contracts can generate income, and how business structures can influence the impact of the artist in society, students will empower themselves to create their future.
Required for students minoring in the Business of Music.
This course will introduce students to Baltimore's rich and varied artistic landscape, with an emphasis on artists across disciplines who are committed to serving, uplifting, and celebrating our city. The class will guide students as they conceive and embark on their own endeavors as community-focused artists in Baltimore and beyond.
This course explores the connections between listening in day-to-day life and listening as a musician, with an emphasis on the ways in which listening to the people and sounds of Baltimore can make us more engaged and responsive as composers and performers. This class is supported in part by the JHU Center for Social Concern’s Engaged Scholar Faculty and Community Partner Fellows Program, and will be co-taught by Dr. Judah Adashi and Erricka Bridgeford, Executive Director of the Baltimore Community Mediation Center and Co-Organizer of the Baltimore Peace Movement.
Distribution Area: P, Y
Building a Brand and Portfolio is a two-credit course which focuses on career development training. Students will develop a digital portfolio, and conduct and produce an interview with a potential mentor. Digital portfolio will include website, supporting media, artist bio, and resume. Course also covers key professional skills including networking, negotiating, applying for jobs, and financial management.
Pitching Your Creative Idea, the final course in the Breakthrough Curriculum sequence is a required two-credit course for all third-year undergraduate and first-year master's students. In this project-based course, students develop and practice essential skills for the 21st century performing artist. Through determining and designing an artistic project for a setting external to Peabody, they learn skills in audience research, programming, collaboration, and professionalism, while also building experience advocating publicly for their artistry both verbally and in writing. As the capstone for this class, students create a written grant application and juried proposal, with the option to enter a juried competition for project funding.
Prerequisite(s): Completion of Building a Brand and Portfolio needed, PY.123.611[C].
This course provides the theories, principles, and trends of audience development and marketing for the arts as well as practical application of those principals for performing artists. Case studies help you review strategies and practices currently used in the cultural sector. Guest professionals from the field add real world perspectives. Students develop their own marketing plans for an arts organization.
What is classical music’s position in the world today? Its audience has grown older and smaller, and its relevance to current culture has faded. Why did this happen? And — when, for most people, other music provides both art and entertainment — what could be done to bring classical music back?
How can we describe music, so that other people — our musician colleagues, our families and friends, and our audience — know what we’re hearing? We’ll read some good music critics, to see how this can be done, and in class we’ll listen to music, and practice describing it. We’ll practice giving presentations to our audience, and practice writing program notes, along with other writing useful in our careers, like our artist bios.
Writing About Music is a proseminar to coach structured writing projects in several genres.
Distribution Area: P, Y
This class will ask each student to look deeply into themselves to answer important personal questions:?Why did I decide to become a musician?? What does music mean to me?? What is the purpose of music in my life and in the world? Crucially, the answers to these questions will lead to more questions:?How do my feelings about music affect how I play??How do they affect how I practice, rehearse and perform??How do they impact stage fright? ? Students in this class will be asked to think, write and speak about their relationship to music.? Each student will be asked to play for the others in the class.? Classes will include listening to, playing and talking about music and the processes of music-making.
Prerequisite(s): For Senior and Graduate Pianists and String Players
Distribution Area: P, Y