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IBIS was founded in Florida by Joseph Scheer and Susan Robinson. Now residents of Arlington, Virginia, Joe is the concertmaster of the Boston POPS Esplanade Orchestra, and Susan is the principal harpist of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra and the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. Joe and Susan will be joined this season by colleagues from the Kennedy Center Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra on flute, violin, viola and cello.
Our mission is to present great chamber music concerts, that feature a refreshing variety of music and a friendly approach to music-making. Our programming ranges from the familiar to the unconventional and encompasses a dazzling spectrum of sonorities. We are as interested in the audience member who protests that he 'knows nothing about music' as the more experienced concert-goer. Our concerts are attended by neighborhood folks, music lovers from all around D.C., and even a healthy number of kids. An IBIS concert is always informal, informative and fun!
Best of all, our performances are low cost or free, and are ALWAYS free to kids under 18.
Here are some of the things IBIS has been up to recently:
- Recent concerts have enjoyed capacity houses of between 200-250 audience members. Partnerships with established concert series at area churches were "win-win's", bringing record crowds to those concert series, and new audience members to IBIS.
- IBIS teamed up with singer/songwriter Dar Williams, who has been praised as "the best female songwriter in America today" by Stereo-Type. The concert we gave together on Cape Cod in 2009 raised nearly $9000 for Wellfleet MA's Preservation Hall, and included a mix of classical chamber music, traditional folk music, and original arrangements of Dar's songs by our violinist Joe Scheer. We've added more new Dar arrangements to the mix and performed this show to a sell-out crowd in Boston last August, and will perform it again in Arlington VA on January 30. That show will be recorded for a live cd!
- Joe's original arrangement of John Williams' music from the film Harry Potter, for quintet plus percussion, was performed in 5 concerts. Our 2 children's concerts reached over 800 kids and parents.
- Washington Post reviewer Cecilia Porter praised last spring's program devoted to William Alwyn and William Grant Still as "splendid."
The intimacy and immediacy of chamber music can be a most rewarding experience for concertgoer and performer alike. Come see why the St. Petersburg Times called an IBIS concert "a refreshing mix of music, well-played and fetchingly presented," and the Washington Post called our series "compelling."
IBIS is supported in part by Arlington County through the Cultural Affairs Division of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources and the Arlington Commission for the Arts.
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