About us

Dear Friends,

For 33 years Dumbarton Concerts has been considered a jewel in the cultural landscape of the Washington area since its founding in 1978 and has been described by The Washington Post as “among the loveliest and most intimate places in Washington to hear a concert.“  Still considered a well-kept secret by many devoted music lovers, our candlelit hall in the historic Dumbarton Church located in the heart of Georgetown, is the perfect setting to enjoy chamber music the way it was meant to be heard.

Like many of us graduating from college in the late 60’s, I headed to Washington to get involved in politics and change the world.  While pursuing that change, and after living here for several years, what I found I longed for most was an intimate place to hear music.  A lover of music since childhood, I missed the kind of music that I had first heard night after night coming from my mother’s big-as-a-refrigerator record player and later, at the magnificent Academy of Music in Philadelphia where I first fell in love with music performed live.  Fast forward to Washington of the 70’s,  where there were precious few venues for chamber music - an occasional Sunday afternoon concert at the Philips Collection and even fewer performances at the Library of Congress.  I had found my calling.

As fortune would have it, just blocks from where I and my great friend and series co-founder, Leah Johnson lived, we chanced upon the acoustically marvelous Dumbarton Church where Abraham Lincoln worshipped and Walt Whitman was inspired to write poetry.  This beautiful, 150 year old church seemed like the perfect setting to launch a concert series and to escape from the everyday cares of hectic city life.  With high hopes, we launched our inaugural season and now season after season, world-class musicians return to perform unique thematic programs of chamber music in this lovely space.

 Our 34thseason, promising to be compelling, opens with one of the most striking and sought after string quartets of its generation – the Vienna-based Hugo Wolf Quartett.  Other highlights of the season will be the Washington debut of Amerigo, the most recent major string trio to emerge in the world of chamber music formed by New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, and the brilliant, boundary-defying string quartet, Brooklyn Rider.  Our season comes to a beautiful close with the elegant, Boston-based Walden Chamber Players performing a program of some of the most gorgeous chamber music ever written, including Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E Flat Major, Op.47.

As we usher in yet another season of great and inspiring music, it is only fitting that this season be dedicated to a beautiful life - my mother’s – Marion C. Steitz, 1917-2011 – who planted those early seeds for what would become the Dumbarton Concerts series.  I hope you will join us.

Connie Zimmer
Co-founder and Executive Director