All upcoming Music & Theater programs

In September 1929, William Faulkner published The Sound and the Fury and the singer-songwriter Charley Patton released a record with the eerily parallel title “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues.” Tim A. Ryan, a professor and author of Yoknapatawpha Blues: Faulkner’s Fiction and Southern Roots Music, examines how working in different media Faulkner and Patton mobilized similar imagery, language, themes, and experimental forms to depict their shared Mississippi world.

Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev: Russia has provided us with some of the most exciting and original music in the repertoire today. Vibrant colors, explosive energy, and passionate emotional drive characterize the works of these composers. As she explores their riches, concert pianist Rachel Franklin combines lecture and piano demonstrations to survey the growth of this tradition and the turbulent historical movements that acted both as backdrop and engine for it its expansion.

For more than a century, Hollywood has relied on star power as the most reliable way to draw an audience. Media historian Brian Rose traces the history of movie stardom, from the days when film actors weren’t even identified by name to how Mary Pickford became the first real film star and eventually how actors like Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Denzel Washington ushered in a new definition of stardom during the last few decades.

This advanced course builds on Introduction to Music Theory and is intended for individuals who read music and can visually and aurally identify the basic elements of pitch, rhythm, and form. Using audio and score examples from many musical genres, content includes an analysis of melody and harmony in greater depth and detail and also includes weekly assignments in ear-training, sight-reading, improvisation, and composition, as well as instructor-led musical dictation.

Immerse yourself in Manhattan’s cultural splendors during a winter weekend getaway filled with a blend of the city’s finest music and art—plus a Saturday night on the town to enjoy as you’d like. The weekend includes a performance by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center and tours of exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Art historian Ursula Rehn Wolfman leads the visit.

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicoló Amati—in this popular four-concert series on Saturdays. The concert features music composed by Schubert, Mozart, and Bruckner.

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicoló Amati—in this popular four-concert series on Sundays. The concert features music composed by Schubert, Mozart, and Bruckner.

Chamber music, perhaps the most subtle and intimate form of musical expression, has inspired many great composers to create some of their most sublime compositions. In a five-session series, classical music expert Saul Lilienstein explores and analyzes some of the chamber repertoire’s masterworks by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Shostakovich, and others.

For 46 years, director John Huston masterfully navigated the Hollywood system, offsetting conventional commercial assignments with deeply uncompromising personal projects. His films are stories of triumph and suffering, of anti-heroes and sociopaths, alcoholics, adventurers, and lusty rebels. Film historian Max Alvarez celebrates these achievements in a tribute filled with film selections and archival images drawn from the works of one of cinema’s greatest directing artisans.

From the moment movies learned to talk, they learned to sing. Audiences in 1927 were electrified when they heard Al Jolson belting out top tunes of the day in The Jazz Singer, and since then some of the greatest vocalists have been star attractions in Hollywood musicals. Media historian Brian Rose looks at the ways Hollywood has captured singers such as Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Lena Horne, and Frank Sinatra and provided audiences with an invaluable record of indelible performances.