Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) traces the final moments of a life: memories surface, struggles fade, and a soul wins its final release. Under the baton of Simone Young, the NSO displays the full scope of Strauss’ vision and the promise of beyond. Winner of the prestigious International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition Sergey Khachatryan brings fire to Sibelius’ Violin Concerto.

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Death and Transfiguration Khachatryan plays Sibelius

Kennedy Center

NSO Principal Trumpet William Gerlach takes center stage in one of the most celebrated pieces of his instrument’s repertoire—Haydn’s sparkling Trumpet Concerto. Gianandrea Noseda completes the evening with Bruckner’s grand Symphony No. 7, a drama of majestic horns and hushed violins building to a victorious return home.

Bruckner’s Seventh Gerlach plays Haydn

Thunder and lightning alongside the smiling, radiant face of a father: it’s Jupiter, the king of all gods! Experience the heavenly drama of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter,” in the hands of Gianandrea Noseda, who opens the concert with Bach’s large-scale Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 and Jacques Loussier’s jazz-infused, neo-Bach Concerto for Violin and Tabla.

Mozart’s “Jupiter” & Bach’s Brandenburg No. 1

Superstar pianist Khatia Buniatishvili plays expressively and boldly, with immediate command of the stage. Influenced by Georgian folk music, she calls the piano a “symbol of musical solitude.” Buniatishvili signed to the Sony Classical label in her early twenties, after receiving several competition prizes and establishing a top-level international career.

NSO Presents: Khatia Buniatishvili

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFe6mW6x9pc

The Artelize Podcast: 'Amplifying What Makes Us Human'. A conversation with Zuly E. Inirio

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Step into a world of passion, tragedy, and deception with Puccini’s Il trittico, a trio of one-act operas led by world-renowned opera conductor Gianandrea Noseda. Il tabarro unveils a shadowy tale of love and betrayal along the Seine. Suor Angelica plunges into the depths of sacrifice behind convent walls. Gianni Schicchi turns deception into delight in a sharp-witted comedy of intrigue. Three stories, three distinct worlds—one unforgettable evening of Opera in Concert.

Opera in Concert: Puccini’s Il trittico

It’s time to make some Good Trouble! This new hip-hop and soul musical honors the legendary “Conscience of Congress”: the late Congressman John Lewis. Written by Helen Hayes Award-Winning Playwright Psalmayene 24 (Mosaic’s Playwright in Residence) and acclaimed composer Eugene H. Russell IV, Young John Lewis is both a galvanizing call to action and an inspiring reminder that we can all make a difference, no matter our age.

Mosaic Theater Company: Young John Lewis

Atlas Performing Arts Center

Join the acclaimed Pacifica Quartet and legendary film actor Sigourney Weaver for a moving evening of music and storytelling that celebrates the enduring spirit of American resilience and transformation.

Pacifica Quartet with narrator Sigourney Weaver

Sixth & I

Composers Marianna Martines and Maria Antonia Walpurgis defied 18th-century convention by putting women front and center. GRAMMY-nominated soprano Lauren Snouffer takes the stage in this daring solo performance reawakening Talestri, Queen of the Amazons, and Berenice, Princess of Egypt. Lauren also shines in bravura arias by Gluck and J.C. Bach, written for the era’s fiercest rival to the soprano: the castrato, a castrated male singer.  The storied Opera Lafayette Orchestra completes this program with Haydn’s Symphony 63, “Roxelana,” an instrumental work celebrating the Sultana of the Ottoman Empire.

New Woman

Kaufman Music Center

Cheer on Levine student Davanee Li as she presents her Advanced Student Recital.

Advanced Student Recital: Davanee Li

DC Campus: NW

JazzFest

Finalists compete in the 2026 Misbin Family Memorial Chamber Music Competition. Cheer on the competitors and join us for a day full of exceptional student performances.

Misbin Family Memorial Chamber Music Competition

Celebrate 50 years of Levine Music with an evening of outstanding music and friendship.

50th Anniversary Gala

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater

Finalists compete in the 2026 Marlin-Engel Solo Competition. Cheer on the competitors and join us for a day full of exceptional student performances.

Marlin-Engel Solo Competition

Based on the real-life Scopes “Monkey” Trial, this electrifying courtroom drama pits two towering legal minds against each other in a small-town battle over science, religion, and the right to think freely. As the town becomes a stage for national attention, personal conviction clashes with public opinion in a trial that transcends its time. Inherit the Wind, the American classic by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is a searing, deeply human portrait of a country still wrestling with the cost—and courage—of progress.

Inherit the Wind

Mead Center for American Theater

Drama Desk Award-winning actor Lameece Issaq teams up with two-time Obie-winning director Lee Sunday Evans on her wildly candid new play, which centers on the chaotic life of a 40-something dental lab tech who gets fired and moves into a woman's rooming house run by nuns. While there, she must come to terms with her unfulfilled path to motherhood and the untimely death of her younger sister, all while fending off her unpredictable and sometimes deranged cohabitants. A Good Day to Me Not to You is a deeply human and comedic one-woman show that “opts for all-out vulnerability, dissecting the psyche as if the stage were an operating table” (The New York Times).

A Good Day to Me Not to You

The State Folk Song and Dance Ensemble “Mazowsze” is one of the largest artistic ensembles in the world. Founded in 1948 by the composer, symphonist, conductor, and educator Tadeusz Sygietynski, and later led by his wife, Mira Ziminska-Sygietynska, it has for nearly 80 years cultivated and fulfilled its mission of promoting Polish culture on stages around the world.

To date, the “Mazowsze” ensemble has performed over 12,000 concerts in 53 countries on all continents. The ensemble’s repertoire includes traditional songs and dances from 42 regions of Poland, Christmas carols and pastoral songs, patriotic songs, works by the most outstanding composers of world musical literature, as well as educational performances and staged spectacles.

Due to the immense richness of its repertoire and its activities dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage, “Mazowsze” is recognized as a national ensemble, while also fulfilling the honorary role of Ambassador of Polish Culture.

Events in Washington, DC

Death and Transfiguration...

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National Symphony Orchestra

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Atlas Performing Arts Center

Pacifica Quartet with nar...

Washington Performing Arts

New Woman

Opera Lafayette

Advanced Student Recital:...

Levine Music

JazzFest

Levine Music

Misbin Family Memorial Ch...

Levine Music

50th Anniversary Gala

Levine Music

Marlin-Engel Solo Competi...

Levine Music

Inherit the Wind

Arena Stage

A Good Day to Me Not to Y...

Arena Stage

The Magnificent Mazowsze

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Perfo...