News Release

Dr. Sirota will arrive at Peabody in September, taking charge of a cultural institution comprising one of the nation's leading conservatories of music and a community music school known as the Peabody Preparatory. The institute -- founded by philanthropist George Peabody in 1857, nearly two decades before Johns Hopkins was established -- has operated as a division of Johns Hopkins since 1977.

"Peabody is one of the great conservatories and arts institutions of this country," Dr. Sirota said. He said Robert O. Pierce, who is retiring after 13 years as director and 37 years on the faculty, has done "a great service to music and the arts in this country" by restoring the once nearly-bankrupt Peabody to financial health and artistic prominence.

"What Bob Pierce did was to save it from financial collapse, with the help of Johns Hopkins and the state of Maryland," Dr. Sirota said. "I feel I'm building on a secure foundation in terms of who is in place in the faculty and in terms of the current condition of Peabody."

Dr. Sirota, an active composer, conductor and teacher as well as administrator, has been at New York University as department chair since 1992. From 1980 to 1991, he was at Boston University, where he was a member of the music faculty, associate dean of the School for the Arts and then director of the School of Music. He is a 1971 graduate of the conservatory at Oberlin College and earned his graduate degrees in composition from Harvard University: a master's degree in 1975, and a Ph.D. in 1979.

Provost Joseph Cooper, who led the search that resulted in Dr. Sirota's appointment by President William C. Richardson, said the new director is the person to take advantage of the opportunities that Pierce created for Peabody.

"He is a person of energy and dynamism," Dr. Cooper said. "He has excellent artistic judgment and taste as well as great human sensitivity. I'm confident that he will enjoy the respect and confidence of the excellent faculty we have at Peabody."

Dr. Sirota said conservatories are shifting away from a nearly 200-year-old model in which their almost exclusive role was to train young musicians in performance skills, producing great virtuosos and magnificent soloists.

"I would hope Peabody could be a place where we could explore possible new models for artistic training," he said, "so that the 19th century model of the conservatory -- which we all have been in love with -- will give way to some new generation of conservatories."

The new model, he said, will recognize "the need to train artists as teachers, as creative leaders." Conservatories will "look more proactively out into the community, to tell people we welcome their participation and their active involvement in the arts, that we don't do it simply for ourselves; we do it because it's important and humanizing for society."

In fact, Dr. Sirota said, Peabody is already becoming such a place. The conservatory's faculty, he said, is exploring innovative new ways of encouraging creativity; the Peabody Preparatory is deeply involved in Baltimore and the region; the university administration promotes new links with other Hopkins schools that expand the conservatory's capabilities for educating artists beyond their performance training.

"This is a wonderful place for really pursuing that relationship between great artistry and humanity," Dr. Sirota said. "All of the pieces are in place for something extraordinary to happen in advancing the arts in society through Peabody."

Dr. Sirota will bring a family of musicians with him to Baltimore. His wife, Victoria Ressmeyer Sirota, is a Yale professor and an accomplished organist and choir director who recently was ordained an Episcopal priest. She will be looking for a church position in the Baltimore area that allows her to combine her priestly vocation with her music training. Their son, Jonah, 18, is a viola major at Rice University and their daughter, Nadia, 12, is a violinist and composer.

Dr. Sirota's own compositions include more than 50 works for piano, organ, orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, opera and musical theater. Recently he has concentrated on liturgical works, including a choral mass, and on theatrical music, including a full-length musical and chamber operas.

"I am more and more fascinated with the heightened reality of both church music and theater," he said. "Both represent a focusing on specific aspects of human experience, wiping away everything else. You sit in the dark and the light, both literally and figuratively, focuses on the issue at hand."