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Welcome to the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society 2024-2025 Season!

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society 2024-2025 Season

The 48th season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the late-16th to the early 21st centuries, played on some of the world's most highly prized musical instruments.

Kenneth Slowik, SCMS artistic director and recipient of the Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar Award, again curates a series of pre-concert talks one hour prior to many of the programs, shedding light on the glorious music and the lives and times of the featured composers.

Concerts take place in the National Museum of American History's intimate Nicholas and Eugenia Taubman Hall of Music and St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill, with a repertoire that ranges from acclaimed masterpieces to undeservedly obscure gems by all-but-forgotten composers.

Concert Series

Select a concert series to learn more:

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences have the unparalleled experience of hearing two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicolò Amati—in this popular four-concert series. In the first three programs, which explore the viola quintet repertoire, the quartet is joined by a guest violist. The quartet's violist, James Dunham, who will retire at the end of this season after 17 years, has chosen the final quartet-only program to include some of the works he's most enjoyed playing over his long and distinguished career.

This four-concert series is available on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the 2024–2025 season.

Season-opening concerts:

  • Saturday, October 5 at 7:30 p.m.
  • Sunday, October 6 at 6:30 p.m.

This chronologically wide-ranging series begins in early November with the first of two appearances by the Smithsonian Consort of Viols, playing works by Elizabethan composers Orlando Gibbons and William Byrd. In mid-November, the Smithsonian Chamber Players offer a feast of sumptuous late-17th-century Austrian music by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Johann Schmelzer, followed by a December program of Johann Sebastian Bach's sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord. The Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra concert in March, featuring baritone Mischa Bouvier, explores 20th- and 21st-century works ranging from the elegiac (Busoni, Mahler, and Richard Strauss) to the transcendently hopeful (Golijov). The four-hands fortepiano team of Naoko Takao and SCMS director Kenneth Slowik presents a Schubertiade later the same month. To cap the series, the Smithsonian Consort of Viols returns with a selection of Jacobean chamber music by John Jenkins and William Lawes.

This six-concert series is available mostly on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the 2024–2025 season.

Season-opening concerts:

  • Saturday, November 2 at 7:30 p.m.
  • Sunday, November 3 at 3:30 p.m.

All upcoming Concerts

Programs 1 to 5 of 19
Masterworks of Five Centuries (Saturday series)
Saturday, ​November 23, 2024 - ​3:30 p.m. ​to 5:30 p.m. ET​
In-Person Performance
Register

The 48th season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the late-16th to the early 21st century, played on some of the world’s most highly prized musical instruments in a 6-concert series held mostly on Saturdays. This concert features Austrian music from the time of Leopold I with the Smithsonian Chamber Players.

Masterworks of Five Centuries (Sunday series)
Sunday, ​November 24, 2024 - ​3:30 p.m. ​to 5:30 p.m. ET​
In-Person Performance
Register

The 48th season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the late-16th to the early 21st century, played on some of the world’s most highly prized musical instruments in a 6-concert series held on Sundays. This concert features Austrian music from the time of Leopold I with the Smithsonian Chamber Players.

Masterworks of Five Centuries (Saturday series)
Saturday, ​December 7, 2024 - ​3:30 p.m. ​to 5:30 p.m. ET​
In-Person Performance
Register

The 48th season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the late-16th to the early 21st century, played on some of the world’s most highly prized musical instruments in a 6-concert series held mostly on Saturdays. This concert features music of Johann Sebastian Bach with the violinist Catherine Manson and Kenneth Slowik on harpsichord.

Masterworks of Five Centuries (Sunday series)
Sunday, ​December 8, 2024 - ​3:30 p.m. ​to 5:30 p.m. ET​
In-Person Performance
Register

The 48th season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the late-16th to the early 21st century, played on some of the world’s most highly prized musical instruments in a 6-concert series held on Sundays. This concert features music of Johann Sebastian Bach with the violinist Catherine Manson and Kenneth Slowik on harpsichord.

The Axelrod String Quartet: Stradivarius and Amati (Saturday series)
Saturday, ​December 14, 2024 - ​3:30 p.m. ​to 5:30 p.m. ET​
In-Person Performance
Register

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 Mendelssohn.