Wendel Patrick’s first memory is actually a dream. It was a recurring dream that he had for years, well into adulthood. It started when he was about 2, maybe even younger. The dream had no people in it. No light. But there was a steady sound—a beat. Something about that beat made Patrick realize he wasn’t alone.

“And then at some point, the rhythm—the thing that was repeating—became more intense and rapid, and then it stopped,” Patrick says. “And there was nobody else. I knew I was by myself.”

When he could find the words, maybe he was 3 or 4 by then, he asked his mother about the dream. She burst into tears.

Years later he would find out that he had a twin who died in childbirth. The twin’s name was…Wendel Patrick Gift.

This all becomes a little less confusing when you learn that Wendel Patrick was born Kevin Gift. For the first part of his life, everyone knew him as Kevin. He studied classical piano and earned a master’s degree in piano performance from Northwestern University School of Music. But he also started experimenting with electronic music, improvisation, and hip-hop. He bought mics and drum kits and samplers.

When he released his first hip-hop album, folks who knew him only from classical music were confused. He felt a need to distinguish the two sides of his musical life. So for the hip-hop persona, he would go by Wendel Patrick, after his brother, whose presence he always intuitively felt. His classical music persona would stay Kevin Gift.

At the time, he didn’t realize how blurred those two identities might become. That he would become a famous hip-hop producer and musician. That he would bridge the two worlds by bringing hip-hop into the hallowed halls of Peabody Institute. And that it would be a very long time before he would play classical piano again.

Another one of his earliest memories involves the piano. He and his family were living in Venezuela. His father was a diplomat, so they moved around a lot. His mother wanted his older sister, Deena, to start taking piano lessons. She brought Deena and Wendel to the studio of a well-known teacher. Young Wendel, then just 4, also played for the teacher, banging on the keyboard with glee.

“I’ll teach the girl but only if I can teach the boy as well,” the teacher said.

And so his musical journey began.

Patrick, now 51, showed an enormous aptitude for classical piano and it was one of the things that grounded him as his family moved from D.C. to Venezuela to Jamaica. Whenever they would stay at a hotel, his mother would make arrangements for her two children to practice the piano in the lobby or the lounge, if they had one. It was a source of continuity and comfort in his life.

But when he was 14, he stopped playing. He was a teenager—he had other interests: sports, girls, popular music, especially hip-hop. He loved Public Enemy and Eric B. & Rakim. A friend turned him onto the reggae-tinged hip-hop of Boogie Down Productions, which he couldn’t get enough of.

“I still loved classical music,” he explains. “But I just didn’t listen to it that much.”

He went to college, undergrad at Emory University. He majored in political science, figuring he’d be a diplomat like his dad, or maybe a lawyer. One day, a girlfriend asked him to play piano. He demurred at first but finally agreed. She was impressed with his talent, but he was stunned. He sounded terrible, at least based on his own high standards. He had assumed the facility would always be there, but he now understood he needed to use it or lose it. It bothered him, more than he expected.

He began studying piano at Emory and realized that music was his true love. He went on to get that master’s in piano performance at Northwestern. But his love for hip-hop was still percolating. It was the ’90s, so you couldn’t record things on a computer. You needed physical equipment. Mics. Recorders. Turntables.

He began experimenting with different electronic and hip-hop sounds, all while studying to become a concert pianist. In 1997, he moved to Baltimore, where his mother was living (she and his father had divorced by then). He got a small, grubby apartment in Mt. Vernon—by far his biggest and most expensive piece of furniture was his Steinway piano.

Then, in 2005, he had just come home from playing a Mozart piano concerto in Bolivia when he realized that his index finger on his left hand felt strange. He figured he just needed rest. He took two weeks off from playing. When he tried again, the finger felt worse—weak, almost like he had no control over it. He went to a clinic that specialized in hand injuries. The doctors asked him to play. Afterwards, the room got very quiet.

“You’re making me nervous,” he said.

The doctors told him he had a nerve condition called focal dystonia. It was the same condition that Peabody’s most famous professor, the pianist Leon Fleisher, had suffered from. It effectively ended Fleisher’s career as a concert pianist.

This was obviously very depressing news—existentially depressing, in some ways. But Wendel Patrick (who was then still only known as Kevin Gift) has the kind of restless creative spirit that can’t be extinguished. He got more involved in photography, a pastime he had picked up while on tour with a band. He started experimenting more with electronic music. He made that first hip-hop album. And Wendel Patrick was born.

“I DON’T THINK HIP-HOP NEEDS ANY VALIDATION OF ANY KIND. THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT FOR ME AT ALL.”

If you live in Baltimore, you might know Patrick in any number of ways. Maybe you took piano lessons from him at Music & Arts in Timonium or Ellicott City back in the day. Maybe you’ve attended one of his Boom Bap Society concerts—a series of lively, improvised hip-hop jam sessions that he started with his friend, the composer and DJ Erik Spangler, 14 years ago. Maybe you’ve watched the Maryland Public Television series he hosts, Artworks, where he interviews fascinating members of the local arts community. Maybe you’ve listened to his albums or his collaborations with the likes of spoken word artist Ursula Rucker or Baltimore’s own Eze Jackson.

Quite possibly, you know him through Out of the Blocks, the podcast he co-produced with Aaron Henkin. Patrick wrote the ineffably cool, jazzy scores that accompanied the podcast, which produced intimate audio profiles of city blocks and their people.

When Henkin approached Patrick about collaborating on Out of the Blocks, he was simply hoping to use some of Patrick’s pre-existing music. He had been a fan of the musician since he interviewed him for a WYPR show called “The Signal.” But Patrick had another idea: What if he wrote customized soundtracks for each episode, incorporating the natural soundscape—the sizzle of the deep fryer, the whir of a dry-clean machine—into the music? Henkin was blown away.

“It was like asking to borrow someone’s used pickup truck, and then them saying, actually, let me build you a brand new Maserati from scratch,” he says with a chuckle.

Patrick became a co-producer of the show. He also got in the habit of taking striking black-and-white photos of the subjects featured on the pod. He and Henkin would hand deliver a print of the photograph to the interviewee, a way of saying thanks and staying connected.

Henkin says the photos also served as an icebreaker. “Like, everyone understands what a photo portrait is, but maybe not so much an audio portrait,” he explains. “It was almost like the pictures were easier for people to wrap their mind around than the audio.”

Henkin describes his partnership with Patrick as the most “productive, satisfying collaboration” of his life.

And now, Patrick is about to embark on one of his biggest challenges yet: heading up Peabody Institute’s new hip-hop program. Peabody will become the first conservatory in the world to offer a hip-hop degree.

It’s an overcast day in November and Patrick is sitting in his two-floor apartment in the Bromo Arts District, reflecting on his career and life. Downstairs is a rather elaborate studio with all manner of microphones, video equipment, turntables, mixers, as well as that beautiful grand piano. His bedroom is upstairs. (He moved into this larger space in 2012.)

Patrick is dressed simply, in a dark gray thermal top, black jeans, and bare feet. He has an elegant way about him—a calm voice, a thoughtful stillness.

He says he’s excited about the prospect of building this hip-hop department from scratch—in what can only be described as a coup, Grammy Award-winning rapper and producer Lupe Fiasco will be joining the faculty—but he wants to make something very clear.

“I don’t think hip-hop needs any validation of any kind,” he says. “That’s not what this is about for me at all. I think Peabody and institutions of higher learning are going to learn a tremendous amount by having hip-hop. But entering into this space is not somehow a badge of honor.”

Fred Bronstein, Peabody’s dean, agrees. “Hip-hop was the logical next step for us,” he says.

He notes that Patrick had been an adjunct and then assistant professor at the conservatory since 2016—teaching hip-hop ensemble and Hip-Hop Music Production: History and Practice. And in general, the school has expanded its technology programs to prepare its students for an increasingly digitized world.

Today’s Peabody students are learning about film and video game scoring, computer music, sound design, musical engineering, and more, along with studying the established classical masters. They’ve had a jazz major since 2001. Bronstein feels that Patrick was uniquely positioned to teach at the school.

“One of the great things about Wendel is that he was trained as a classical pianist at a high level,” he says. “And he found his way into these other disciplines, most obviously hip-hop. I think he brings a breadth of knowledge and an understanding of how hip-hop fits into a wider musical context and relates to other disciplines.”

Bronstein also wants to dispel the stereotype of a Peabody student who is monomaniacally focused on classical music. They are young people who love music. And like most music-loving young people, they love hip-hop. “Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize,” he points out.

So if Peabody is ready for hip-hop, the question remains, is hip-hop ready for Peabody? Eze Jackson, the local rap artist and impresario who has collaborated with Patrick on a variety of projects, welcomes this development.

“I think it’s exciting for hip-hop,” he says. “It’s exciting for Baltimore.”

He says he wishes that, back when he was a young man, a degree like this had been an option for him. “When I got out of high school, I was an emcee, but there was no place to study hip-hop. So I went in the Navy, pretty much to try to find myself,” he says. “I studied hip-hop on my own, as a student of the culture and the craft. But if I could have stayed home and gone to Peabody instead of going to the Navy, hell yeah!”

And Jackson thinks that anyone who sees this as somehow a sell-out of hip-hop culture is being painfully shortsighted.

“Hip-hop is such a limitless art form that I don’t think it gets credit for, so I think it’s dope that Peabody is taking this jump to be the first conservatory to offer it. It shows respect for a craft that we’ve always respected.”

What’s more, Jackson says Patrick is the perfect man to bring the subject to academia. “His knowledge of hip-hop is unmatched,” he says.

“IF I COULD’VE GONE TO PEABODY INSTEAD OF THE NAVY, HELL YEAH!” JACKSON SAYS.

Patrick is already receiving applications and he’s excited about the caliber of students who are applying to the major, which will officially launch in September. He envisions the program starting out small—maybe six to eight students in the first cohort—and growing from there.

“Peabody is an institution that is filled with very skilled students,” he says. “And that’s exactly what I want for this program. I want top level turntablists, MCs, beat boxers, and producers to come. And I’m excited to see what this first group of students is—it’s gonna be exciting for all of them, as well as for the new faculty.”

Meanwhile, there’s been another positive development in Patrick’s musical life. About 15 years ago, after accepting the fact that he may never play piano again, he started attending these “Out of Your Head” jazz improv sessions at the Windup Space. (Those sessions would ultimately become the inspiration for the Boom Bap Society.) He would play the electronic keyboard. And much to his surprise, he found that he could play. His index finger was still hard to control, but less so.

“That was pretty mind-altering for me,” he says. Apparently, the intuitive motion of improvisation—as opposed to the highly formal movement of classical performance—rewired his brain a bit. “And that’s when I started to approach [my focal dystonia] as more of a curiosity and a problem to be solved,” he says. “As opposed to, ‘I hope this thing just goes away.’”

Since then, it’s gotten better. Not perfect. But he’s making progress.

It’s not a coincidence that it was improv that brought on this revelation. It was the world of improv, of hip-hop, of electronica that saved him in a way, when he lost his ability to play Mozart and Chopin. He was able to thoroughly immerse himself in that music, reinvent himself—it brought him friends, fans, collaborators, incredible musical experiences across the world, all culminating in this new program at Peabody.

And now, in a perfect merging of Kevin Gift and Wendel Patrick, it had brought him back to the piano, his first love.

Judah Adashi says his interest in social justice was sparked when he was a student at Gilman, of all places. He took a class on Black history, with a particular focus on civil rights, and the injustice of it all stuck with him. He went to Yale for undergrad, then Peabody for his doctoral degree in music. He was composing and studying, but also volunteering for Barack Obama’s campaign. The idea of being a “community organizer” called out to him, and he briefly flirted with quitting music altogether to become a full-time activist. Then he realized that he could do both—you could be an artist and an activist—and that the two were inextricably linked.

He’s gone on to found Rise BMore, an annual performance that commemorates the death of Freddie Gray, and serves as an ambassador for the Baltimore Peace Movement. Now, he’s bringing his passion full circle, with a new class at Peabody titled “Art and Activism in Baltimore,” which started this fall.

Your class is not called “Art and Activism,” but very specifically “Art and Activism in Baltimore.” Why?
When I look at the Baltimore arts scene, arts and activism are pretty deeply intertwined. Our Black artists are the heartbeat of the city. And that’s what I draw sustenance and inspiration from. And I want my students to know that, because I don’t think it’s immediately apparent when you go to a conservatory located in just one block of Mount Vernon. I mean, it happens to everyone in college—you could easily miss the city around you.

It does seem like Peabody is becoming more connected to Baltimore.
There has been a culture shift. I think Peabody is just a little more in the world than it used to be. I mean, Peabody as a physical space—you might as well be in, like, Leipzig in 1728. Not only do you have the college bubble, but it’s like a bubble within that bubble…So I think being someone from here, who loves Baltimore as much as I do, any time I can make space for Baltimore in that building, I really jump at the opportunity.

Most of your students aren’t from Baltimore. And many will leave after college. Is that a challenge?
I think about this a lot: What does it mean to be an artist in a city when you’re in college? Do you just live here? How much should you invest in the city? It’s hard. But Baltimore is one of those cities where, if you embrace it, it will embrace you back.

A composer can write music with themes of injustice. But for a musician who doesn’t compose, being an arts activist is a little trickier.
You can pursue these things independently. You can be an oboe player who also does volunteering or is part of an [activist] community. Of course, we could have a whole other conversation about the power of music just to bring joy to people. One of my students works with the Helping Up Mission to bring music [to unhoused people]. And that’s 100-percent activism in my book.

One of the things I’ve asked my students to do is what I call a “peace audit”—which is to write down some of the peaceful experiences they’ve had in Baltimore. Most of what goes on around us in Baltimore is beautiful and joyful. To me, simply uplifting and celebrating Baltimore is a form of activism.

Amit Peled, a cello professor at the Peabody Institute, believes two things: That concerts should be free. And that musicians should be well paid for their work.

“Those don’t always go together,” he admits with a wry laugh.

Indeed, the lack of funds to pay musicians locally is one of the reasons why Baltimore often can’t retain its talented Peabody players. “We get them to a certain level in college, and they’re really outstanding,” says Peled. “And then they leave.”

So in 2018, he created the Mount Vernon Virtuosi chamber orchestra with the hope of keeping Peabody students in town after graduation. Through donations, he was able to pay young graduates to perform around town and also offer the community free concerts in nontraditional spaces, like churches, hospitals, and the Enoch Pratt Free Library, with the playing being of the highest caliber—both small ensembles and a larger chamber orchestra—and Peled, pictured above alongside three Virtuosi musicians, serving as conductor, mentor, and performer.

And then the pandemic hit, changing everything. As a highly sought-after concertizing musician, Peled was used to going on tour after the Peabody semester ended. So much of what he knew of Baltimore stopped and started at the conservatory.

“I got stuck here for the first time in my life,” he says. “I really started to feel this is my city…I want to do more than just present concerts for free. I want to actually make a change through classical music.”

In short order, the Mount Vernon Virtuosi evolved from an ensemble that gave concerts into one that was determined to make a real difference. Through their “Every Child Deserves a Voice” program, they started giving lessons for free twice a week at the KIPP Harmony Academy magnet school in Southwest Baltimore. They began doing story hour at the Pratt, where players would read a children’s book and perform related music.

“I want to actually make a change through classical music.”

But his most radical idea was the Music House, which he envisions as a place where young musicians (mostly but not exclusively Peabody graduates) could live for free, rehearse, and fully integrate themselves into the community.

Peled approached Charlie Duff, of the nonprofit development firm Jubilee Baltimore, and asked for help. Duff in turn showed Peled some potential spaces—two in Reservoir Hill, one in Bolton Hill. Then he mentioned an old warehouse in East Baltimore Midway.

“You won’t like it,” said Duff. But it was, in fact, exactly what Peled was hoping for: an underserved neighborhood where the musicians could embed themselves. He envisions people walking by, hearing the music, maybe coming inside to listen for a bit.

“This is an area where most people have never seen a violin, let alone a violinist walking from their home to get coffee,” says Peled.

Duff, whose Jubilee Baltimore is invested in improving local neighborhoods, was thrilled.

“We have found that artists are quite good for neighborhood revitalization,” he says. “It’s known as the Soho Effect.”

Peled credits growing up in Israel on a kibbutz with fueling his passion for public service. He said his family was pretty poor and never could’ve afforded cello lessons without the support from his community. To that end, there is also a food pantry across the street from the Music House where Peled already volunteers once a week.

Peled is also an extremely good salesman and passionate about his project—so much so that Pierce Flanigan, a contractor who is investing in the same neighborhood, made a 10-year commitment to let him use the warehouse for free. There’s still a lot of money to be raised before the players can move in—Peled estimates that the Music House will be fully operational in five years—but between the teaching, the volunteer work, and the concertizing, the Mount Vernon Virtuosi is already fulfilling a lot of its mission.

“So far it’s been amazing for me and for my musicians,” says Peled. “And I’m not stopping. This is my calling.”