News and Events

Concert Series

Blodgett Chamber Music Series

The Blodgett Chamber Music Series produces several concerts each year featuring the Department’s artists-in-residence. These concerts are free and open to the public, and take place in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall. The Parker Quartet currently perform the series. Formed in 2002, the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet have been hailed by the New York Times as “something extraordinary,” and the Boston Globe acclaims their “pinpoint precision and spectacular sense of urgency.” The quartet began touring on the international circuit after winning the Concert Artists Guild Competition as well as the Grand Prix and Mozart Prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition in France. Chamber Music America awarded the quartet the prestigious biennial Cleveland Quartet Award for the 2009- 2011 seasons.

The Fromm Players at Harvard

The Fromm Players at Harvard present a major concert or concert series each year dedicated to new music such as that of Cage, Martino, Kampela, Gompper, Davidovsky, Berio, Fedele, Ung, Sierra, Leon and many other composers working in the 20th and 21st centuries. The Fromm Players concerts seek to program works not normally heard in Boston. In 2010, for example, the concerts (curated by Joel Sachs and featuring New York’s internationally renowned ensemble CONTINUUM), explored the music of international composers working where cultures collide and fuse. Each year’s curator is different, and each year the concerts focus on a new area of work. In 2012 Harvard’s Hans Tutschku created a program of electroacoustic work performed by Boston Modern Orchestra Project; in 2016 Vijay Iyer curated a series of four concerts featuring Creative Music; and in 2019 Claire Chase curated a performance of Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine, a reworking of the music of Josephine Baker by Tyshawn Sorey. The concerts are sponsored by the Music Department and the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard. They are free and open to the public.

Portrait Concerts and Special Events

The Music Department also produces a number of concerts each year that showcase the work of a specific composer, performer, or theme. Most recently, in 2021, Claire Chase and the Harvard New Music Ensemble produced a portrait concert of composer George Lewis. For upcoming special concerts, please see our Events Calendar.

Concerts Around Campus

Music Department concerts represent only part of the concert schedule at Harvard. Student groups produce concerts, as do other academic departments, the Harvard museums, libraries, churches, student societies, and the Office for the Arts. There are musical events taking place on campus nearly every day during the academic year.

To learn more about music events on campus, go to the Harvard Box Office.
To see a listing of daily events at Harvard, go to the Harvard Gazette Calendar.
To see a listing of all arts events on campus, go to the Harvard Arts portal.