Leon Fleisher was born July 23, 1928 in San Francisco, California and began studying piano at the age of four. A noted child prodigy, Fleisher became a student of Artur Schnabel at the age of nine, after which Fleisher's career in piano began in earnest. In 1964, he began to suffer from focal dystonia, a condition that cost him the use of his right hand until corrected in the mid-1990s. Fleisher is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recepient of the Kennedy Center Honors Award (2007), and the Andrew W. Mellon Chair at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins. In this oral history, Fleisher describes his early career and mentors, his experiences with the Peabody Institute and Baltimore, and the history of the Peabody Institute, including its formal association with Johns Hopkins in 1978. This oral history is part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

Elizabeth Schaaf came to the Peabody Institute in 1965 as both a student, studying voice, and a staff member. She began working as a secretary in the Director's Office in 1982. Noticing a lack of proper documentation at the institute, she worked to secure grants and complete research in order to establish archives for the institute's records. In addition to documenting Peabody's history, Schaaf also created an archive for the history of music in Baltimore at Peabody. In this history, Schaaf recounts her time as both a staff member and a student as well as the development of the Peabody Collection. This oral history is part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.