Hunt Country’s Grace Church Concert Season Opens Oct. 16
By • September 18, 2026 0 307
By Leland Schwartz, Hunt Country Network
One of Virginia Hunt Country’s signature music events, the Grace Church Concert Series kicks off its five-performance season on Friday, Oct. 16, with Grammy-nominated British vocal ensemble Voces8, the world’s top-streaming classical vocal group.
Performed at 7 p.m., Voces8’s “Give Me Your Stars” program will explore the “profound and diverse beauty of music inspired by the heavens, human connection and the places we call home.”
Endowed 25 years ago by Jacquie Mars and chaired by former Washington Performing Arts board chair Lena Scott, the concerts are held at Grace Episcopal Church on Main Street in The Plains, two minutes from Exit 31 on Interstate 66, 35 minutes west of the Beltway.
Charm City Junction, a Baltimore-based acoustic quartet that plays music at the crossroads of the Irish, old-time folk and bluegrass traditions, will perform on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 5 p.m. The concert is dedicated to the memory of Malcolm Matheson, a longtime Angel patron who helped sustain the series for many years.
“His love of bluegrass music made Charm City Junction a natural choice for this tribute, and we are honored to celebrate his life through an afternoon of the music he so deeply enjoyed,” Scott told The Georgetowner. Matheson, a resident of The Plains who died in February, was a legend in Hunt Country, particularly in his role as Master of the Orange County Hunt.
Charm City Junction’s latest album, Salt Box, released in 2024, debuted at number one on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts, “further establishing the band as a compelling force carrying tradition forward while continuing to push it into new territory.”
On Sunday, March 14, at 5 p.m., baritone Thomas Dreeze and pianist Matthew Umphreys will take attendees on what reviewers have called “a musical odyssey,” featuring songs from the Golden Age of Broadway and other ports of call, such as the American Songbook and operetta. Dreeze and Umphreys were a smash hit at the series’ Archangel Dinner this past spring — the reason they were asked to join the 2026-27 lineup.
The Katarina String Quartet — grand prize winner of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and winner of the Concert Artists Guild’s Louis and Susan Meisel Prize, both in 2025 — will perform on Sunday, April 11, at 5 p.m. The tightly knit ensemble currently serves as the Juilliard School’s graduate resident string quartet, exploring the complete chamber music repertoire. Known for its personable concert presentations and community leadership, the quartet plays regularly at community centers around New York City as recipients of Juilliard’s Gluck Fellowship.
Finally, on Sunday, May 16, musicians with the Washington National Opera Orchestra — the nation’s only orchestra dedicated solely to the performance of three musical genres: opera, ballet and musical theater — will travel to the Virginia countryside to give the season’s closing performance at 5 p.m. In an afternoon of chamber music, also featuring a singer from the WNO’s Cafritz Young Artists Program, the musicians will “explore delightful and unusual combinations of instrumental timbres.” The full orchestra’s 63 full-time musicians, selected through rigorous international auditions, hail from 11 different countries and 22 U.S. states.
Scott said the organizers of the series “are thrilled to invite everyone to our 27th anniversary season,” adding that “for more than a quarter century, we have been honored to bring exceptional artists from around the world to our community, creating unforgettable musical experiences in the beautiful setting of Grace Church.”
Tickets, including a post-concert reception with food and wine, are available by visiting gracetheplains.org/music/concert-series.
The Grace Church Angels program is an opportunity to further support the Grace Church Concert Series. Angel contributions enable the series to offer discounted tickets to students and free admission to those under 18.
Those readers interested in being added to the mailing list for the series should email the Concert Committee at [email protected].
Author’s note: This piece is part of an experiment in local journalism, to see if we can build a new Hunt Country Network and hard-wire it to Georgetown. Get more of us in there and more Georgetowners out here.
