8-31-2026 10:43pm

Don't Sleep on This: A New Season at Strathmore with Raul Midón, Allison Miller, and 18 More Shows.

Eme Awa Editor

Raul Midón performs on stage at Strathmore. Photo courtesy of Strathmore.

The Mansion at Strathmore is a 100-seat music room with candlelit chandeliers, and enough acoustic warmth to make a whisper sound like a symphony. Now imagine one of the most singular voices in contemporary music filling that space — not with a full band, not with a backing track, but with just his voice, his guitar, and a lifetime of hard-won mastery.

That's the promise of Strathmore's 2026–2027 Music in the Mansion season.

The Season Opens with "smooth folk" and Raul Midón

On October 11, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and guitarist Raul Midón opens the season with two shows (4 PM & 7 PM) at the Mansion at Strathmore. It's the kind of booking that makes you wonder why more venues don't think this way. Midón, a two-time Grammy nominee, is a one-man orchestra — blind since birth, he "sees with sound," turning his guitar into a swirling ecosystem of rhythm, melody, and harmony that The New York Times once described as "a three-way fusion of Stevie Wonder, Bobby McFerrin, and José Feliciano." His 14th album, Lost & Found (out September 27 via ReKondite Records), is a collection he calls "smooth folk" — a genre-bending cocktail of alt-pop, jazz, and folk with harmonic surprises that celebrate redemption.

The Season's Depth

Here's the thing about the Mansion series: it's been quietly building a reputation as one of the DMV's best-kept secrets. Twenty performances across a season that stretches from October to June, each one tucked into that intimate 100-seat room where you can see the sweat on a performer's brow and hear every breath between notes. It's the opposite of the arena experience — and that's precisely the point.

The season's lineup is a masterclass in curatorial ambition. Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn fuse Chinese guzheng with Appalachian banjo (Oct. 18). Maryna Krut brings contemporary Ukrainian folk with bandura and jazz (Nov. 1). The Tapestry Vocal Ensemble champions women's voices through history (Nov. 5). Germán López's timple-led jazz trio channels Canary Island folk and West African rhythms (Nov. 22). CelloGayageum melds Korean and Western traditions (Feb. 7). Fabiana Cozza delivers Afro-Brazilian samba (April 11). And amazingly, that's just scratching the surface.

Three Performances That Demand Your Attention

Let's zero in on three performances that deserve a spot on your calendar.

Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom (Feb. 21) — Miller is a DMV native, a drummer-composer who's been called "charismatic and rhythmically propulsive." Her band Boom Tic Boom has released five critically acclaimed albums, most recently Glitter Wolf, which Downbeat described as "undeniably accessible, gloriously melodic and funky as hell." She's been named in Downbeat's Top 20 jazz drummers and recently won Chamber Music America's Interdisciplinary Collaboration of the Year Award. The title Glitter Wolf? It came from her son, who played with his sister's fairy wings and ended up covered in glitter. That's the kind of artist Miller is — one who finds profound beauty in the mess of everyday life.

Jason Vieaux & Eunice Kim (March 25) — Vieaux is a Grammy winner, described by NPR as "perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation." Kim is "just superb" according to The New York Times. Together, they deliver dazzling artistry and lyrical precision that makes you forget the guitar and violin are just wood and strings.

inti figgis-vizueta's Music for Transitions (Dec. 10) — This is the one that'll haunt you. An award-winning Indigenous composer, figgis-vizueta has been called an "ever-intriguing, rising new music star" by the Los Angeles Times. Joined by Grammy-winning cellist Andrew Yee and the Germany-based Rothko String Quartet, she'll perform her 2026 debut record, which explores Indigenous heritage and trans identity through ecstatic, improvisational soundscapes. The work premiered in 2020, multitracked entirely by Yee on four cellos. Now it comes to life in the Mansion's intimate confines.

Grab Your Tickets

Tickets are available now at Strathmore.org. With only 20 performances and a 100-seat room, these shows won't last. Don't be the one who reads about it later and says, "I wish I'd been there."

Why This Season Matters

These are performances and shared moments between artist and audience that can only happen in a room this warm and alive. You get to watch Raul Midón turn his guitar into an orchestra. You get to feel Allison Miller's drums in your chest. You get to hear Jason Vieaux's fingers dance across strings with precision that borders on the supernatural. You get to witness inti figgis-vizueta's music — music that braids together a childhood in D.C.'s immigrant communities with Andean and Irish heritage — unfold in real time.

This is what the Mansion series does. It takes extraordinary artists, places them in an extraordinary space, and invites you to sit close enough to see the real magic happen. The sweat. The breath. The split-second decisions that turn notes into something transcendent. All of it awaits you at Strathmore.

#MusicInTheMansion #Strathmore #RaulMidón #AllisonMiller #JasonVieaux #DMVArts #CulturalDMV