June 1, 2006

Dear Faculty, Students, and Staff:

I am pleased to announce that the Board of Trustees has today approved my recommendation that Jeffrey Sharkey be appointed director of the Peabody Institute, effective October 1.

An accomplished pianist, composer, and chamber musician, Jeff Sharkey has been an innovative leader in music education for 15 years, most recently as dean of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Before assuming that position in 2001, he served for five years as director of music at the Purcell School in London, where he helped oversee the purchase and renovation of new facilities, created new departments, and worked to strengthen the school’s partnerships with European and American institutions. He introduced courses in composition, jazz, and music technology, and served on national advisory boards developing new music curricula for young musicians in England and Wales.

Mr. Sharkey's commitment to innovation has been equally evident at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he has increased applications, recruited distinguished faculty members, developed new structures for student affairs and advising, and created exchange programs with the London’s Royal Academy of Music and the Paris Conservatoire. He also has strengthened CIM's relationship with Case Western Reserve University, with which it shares a campus and offers a joint music program. He looks forward to working with all of us to further enhance Peabody's relationships with other Johns Hopkins divisions and with the greater Baltimore arts community.

Jeff was educated at the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, and Cambridge University. His teachers included pianists John Browning, Boris Berman and Peter Frankl and composers Aaron Copland and John Corigliano. He was a founding member of the Pirasti Piano Trio with which he toured, recorded and broadcast throughout Europe. His compositions have been performed by the St. Louis Symphony under the direction of Leonard Slatkin and by chamber musicians in the United States and Britain.

Jeff Sharkey will bring to Peabody the energy and vision that will enable it to build on its achievements under former Director Robert Sirota and rise even further in the ranks of the nation’s leading schools of music.

More information on this appointment is available in a news release at http://www.jhu.edu/~news_info/news/univ06/may06/sharkey.html and in a story to be published in the June 12 issue of the Gazette.

I know that you join me in welcoming Jeff Sharkey to Johns Hopkins, as well as in continuing appreciation for the wonderful job Peter Landgren has done as interim director over the past year. Peabody and the university are very much in his debt.

I send you best wishes for the summer; I look forward to seeing you again at the start of the new academic year in September.

Best regards,

William R. Brody