Everyone needs a vacation, even musicians, and the summer is quite naturally a time that the classical music world slows down. So this is it for your Classical Music Agenda, until August. This week’s installment will be a little longer than normal, because there are several interesting things happening over the next couple months. If you want to hear some music this summer, you can, and here’s where. HEADLINES: >> The most important classical music…

One of Washington’s musical treasures is the Washington Bach Consort, a group of singers and instrumentalists directed by J. Reilly Lewis. The group began, in 1977, with local musicians who were devoted to the performance of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. After three European concert tours, beginning in the 1980s, and countless critically praised concerts culminating in a landmark appearance at the Library of Congress last April, the WBC has become an institution,…

We are moving the Classical Music Agenda so that it appears on Sundays instead of Mondays, when it was giving you all information overload by appearing too close to the more popular Weekly Music Agenda. This makes much more sense in planning your classical week, so we have moved the more complete Classical Week in Washington feature at Ionarts to Sundays, too. The change makes little difference in the month of July, when the Washington…

D.C.’s best arts and arts organizations were honored Monday night at the 20th annual Mayor’s Arts Awards. The gala ceremony, which took place at the Kennedy Center, was presented by the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities and hosted by Mayor Anthony Williams and WRC anchor Jim Vance. Leonard Slatkin (shown at left), music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his imaginative musical programming and…