School Notes: School of Music
January/February 2020

Alumni return for all-class reunion

More than 100 graduates of the School of Music returned to campus in October to help the YSM community celebrate the school’s 125th anniversary. Alumni were welcomed by Yale University president Peter Salovey and YSM dean Robert Blocker. The reunion featured an alumni concert, panel discussions, shared-interest-group conversations, studio visits, open rehearsals, a Yale Philharmonia concert, YSM campus tours, and social events during which graduates reconnected with one another, with faculty, and with staff. The all-class reunion was the first such event to be organized since 2006. 

Tour will celebrate school’s 125th anniversary

In March, the Yale Philharmonia will join the Yale Schola Cantorum and The Bach Choir, London for a five-city East Coast tour performing a program titled English Musical Splendor. David Hill, principal conductor of the Schola Cantorum and musical director of The Bach Choir, London, will lead the ensembles in performances of William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast and works by Charles Villiers Stanford, Arnold Bax, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with baritone and School of Music alumnus David Pershall ’10MM, ’11AD, and faculty pianist Robert Blocker. The tour, which celebrates the school’s 125th anniversary, will begin in New Haven on March 8 and visit Boston on March 9, New York City on March 11, Philadelphia on March 12, and Washington, DC, on March 14.

Yale Opera to stage Florencia en el Amazonas

In February, Yale Opera will present Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas in three performances at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre. The opera’s libretto, by Marcela Fuentes-Berain, offers a nod to the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, and Catán’s score connects operatic tradition to the sounds of the South American jungle. Christopher Franklin will conduct the Yale Philharmonia and Candace Evans will direct the Yale Opera cast in a production whose creative team features several Yale School of Drama alumni, including set designer Izmir Ickbal ’16MFA, projection designer Brittany Bland ’19MFA, lighting designer Carolina Ortiz Herrera ’17MFA, and costume designer Rebecca Welles ’12MFA.