The Peabody Consort is a select group of alumni from the Historical Performance Department of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. It was founded by its current director, Mark Cudek, in 1996 for concerts in Rome, Italy.

In May and June of 2010, the Peabody Consort performed in several venues in Taiwan, including a command performance for Taiwan’s First Lady at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. On that same tour the ensemble performed at the Chimay Museum in Tainan and in Tokyo, Japan.

In 2016, the ensemble was invited to perform at the Conciertos de la Villa de Santo Domingo Festival in the Dominican Republic and was invited back in 2019. The Festival’s Artistic Director, John Thomas Dodson wrote of their performance: “There are no words to thank you for what you brought. The artistic part was just so high, but then the rest – the humanity of this effort – was what truly shined….”

The Peabody Consort has also performed in several U.S. venues, including the Kennedy Center and Baltimore’s Artscape Festival (“The degree of polish and attention to musical nuance offered by the Peabody Consort does enormous justice to these works that only encourage curiosity for both the instruments and compositions of this period.” –Ionarts Artscape Blog) The Consort has also performed at the Bloomington (2019) and Boston (2014) Early Music Festivals (the Peabody Consort’s program…was simply stunning” –Early Music America Magazine) and has appeared three times at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival (“The program showed careful preparation, delighting from start to finish.” –Nuvo)

The instrumentation of the ensemble is varied to match the demands of a variety of repertories and includes recorder and/or flute, viola da gamba, plucked strings (lute, gittern, guitar, harp, oud, theorbo), early violins, percussion, and solo voice or voices. Alumni of the Peabody Consort have won Grammy and Beebe awards and have performed with the American Bach Soloists, Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland Baroque Orchestra), ARTEK, the Baltimore Consort, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Catacoustic Consort, Chatham Baroque, the Folger Consort, Hesperus, Montreal Baroque, Musica Pacifica, New York Collegium, New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Quicksilver, Tempesta di Mare (Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra), the Waverly Consort, et al.

When I unconsciously straightened in my chair...I had a feeling I was in solid musical hands: the Peabody Consort’s program “In the Circle of Henry VIII” was simply stunning. The blend of Julie Bosworth’s soprano and Daniel Moody’s countertenor was sublime, with printed lyrics completely unnecessary; even if English was not your first language.... The final set of Sephardic tunes, reconstructed from oral tradition, gave the instrumentalists the freedom to improvise, though they had been having much fun already. There was the phenomenal Brian Kay on lute and oud, the expressive Aik Shin Tan on recorders and flute, and director Mark Cudek presiding over all, cittern in hand.
— Jacob Street, Early Music America Magazine, Fall 2013
The opening selections from the Spanish Renaissance . . . received stylish, atmospheric performances. Mark Cudek, founding director of the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble, has clearly imparted to his instrumentalists and singers not just a respect for historical detail, but a keen sense of the expressive possibilities in this repertoire. ere was an admirable sense of spontaneity from the players.
— Tim Smith, Baltimore Sun
Shakespeare often alluded to this authority (music’s power), and Friday night the Peabody Consort exemplified it....The most outstanding aspect of the concert was the participation of a superbly matched vocal duo, soprano Julie Bosworth and countertenor Daniel Moody....The staging was apt and never threatened to dominate the polished vocal display....The balance of instrumental and vocal numbers was expertly sustained. The panache of the main featured instrumentalists — lutenist Brian Kay, recorder player Justin Godoy, and viol players Jeffrey Grabelle and Niccolo Seligmann — was continually in evidence. This was idiomatic playing that veered into an almost offhand virtuosity from time to time. Director Cudek, in addition to precise cittern strumming, contributed crucial percussion often, evincing a graceful command of the tambourine in particular.
— Jay Harvey (retired chief critic, Indianapolis Star), Upstage