Baltimore Symphony Orchestra begins partnership with University of Maryland in ‘new era for the arts’

Stephanie Shonekan vividly remembers the moment she unwittingly violated an unspoken social norm of the art form she loved. It was 1996, and Shonekan, who grew up in Nigeria, had just attended her first classical music concert at Indiana University, where she was a graduate student. “The first piece was so amazing that I stood up and started clapping,” Shonekan told an audience last month at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, where she is dean of the College of Arts & Humanities.