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Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences are prhttps://tsa-api02-16/libretto2/performance/261542#details-paneivy 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 Mendelssohn.
Under the artistic direction of maestro Charlie Young, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra’s season-opening concert salutes military jazz bands and the role they have long played in inspiring American troops, fostering patriotic support, and promoting national interests at home and abroad. The program includes music by W.C. Handy, E.H. Meacham, and other composers.
Ages 5-10. This signature Discovery Theater show celebrates the history and customs of Diwali (Devali), Chanukah, Las Posadas, Ramadan, Sankta Lucia Day, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and the First Nations’ tradition of the Winter Solstice.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, rock music found a surprising home on mainstream television, including on programs hosted by Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and Ed Sullivan. Elvis, for example, appeared on all three shows. But it was the appearance of the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964 that changed the face of pop culture, leading to an explosion of televised rock, from prime-time variety shows like “Shindig” to the sitcom antics of “The Monkees.” Media historian Brian Rose presents a lively survey of how rock and television grew up together.
The Civil War had as profound and lasting an impact on American art as it did on American culture. Eleanor Jones Harvey, author of The Civil War and American Art and senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, explores the “metaphorical war” in which landscape painters conveyed the mood of the nation in their work and genre painters addressed slavery and questioned the kind of nation that would emerge from the conflict. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Few of Shakespeare’s tragedies are as admired today as his theatrical masterpiece Othello from around 1603. Joseph Luzzi, professor of literature at Bard College, guides participants through an in-depth discussion of the play’s key elements, including its representations of race, inquiry into human emotions (especially jealousy), and extraordinarily powerful poetic language.
Craftsmen, dramatists, perfectionists, melodists, and unlikely partners, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II not only changed the American musical, they changed us too. Filmmaker and cultural historian Sara Lukinson offers an abundant sampling of musical clips from their shows in a joyful evening that celebrates the enduring magic they created.
