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Smithsonian at Little Washington Concert Series Sunday, December 4, 2016, at 3 p.m. Reserved Seating $25 - Adults $10 - Under 18 The Smithsonian Consort of Viols--Kenneth Slowik, Rebekah Ahrendt, Catherine Slowik, and Arnie Tanimoto--presents a program of English chamber music from the time of Elizabeth I. Kenneth Slowik, the architect of the Smithsonian at Little Washington series and an outstanding cellist, viol player, pianist and conductor, has played every concert in this series since its inception. He is Curator of the Musical Instrument Collection at the National Museum of American History and Artistic Director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. A greatly appreciated feature of all the concerts in the Smithsonian at Little Washington series is the commentary which Kenneth Slowik provides throughout the program. His remarks shed light on the superb music and the life and times of the featured composers. In 2001, Mr. Slowik received the Smithsonian Secretary’s Distinguished Research Lecture Award, which recognized a scholar’s sustained achievement in research and ability to communicate research to non-specialist audiences. Over the past two decades, Mr. Slowik has presented more than 300 pre-concert lectures. Ken's email to the Theatre: "The program is devoted to a wide range of 17th- and 18th-century music featuring three differently-sized members of the viola da gamba family: treble viol (roughly corresponding in range to the violin); tenor viol (slightly lower than the viola); and bass viol (sized like a cello). The viola da gamba family was invented about a half-century before the violin family, in the second half of the 15th century, and flourished, in various guises, until about the middle of the 18th century, when the louder violin- family eventually supplanted it."" Our program begins with a suite for tenor viola and three bass viols by the late-17th-century Bohemian composer David Funck. Two works for three bass viols by the English composer John Hingston, who is mentioned in Samuel Pepys's famous Diary, follow, and the first half of the concert concludes with the first of Johann Sebastian Bach's three sonatas for bass viola da gamba and harpsichord, BWV 1027." "After intermission, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's "oncert pour 4 Parties de Violes introduces the French taste of the court of Louis XIV to the program, and Joseph Bodin de Boimortier's Sonata for two bass viols, Op. 10, No. 2, gives a glimpse of the accomplished world of Parisian amateur viol playing during the time of Louis XVI. The afternoon's music concludes with two works for three bass viols and harpsichord by Marin Marais, whose life and music were made famous in the 1991 film Tous les matins du monde, in which Gerard Depardieu played the role of Marais."