Friday, October 10, 2025
7:30 PM

Join us for a concert-lecture by pianist Daniel Beliavsky while he explores and performs well-known works by Chopin, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich. Through performance and discussion, Dr. Beliavsky will demonstrate how these artists, each inhabiting unique musical, philosophical, and political trajectories from periphery to mainstream, contributed enormously to the pillars of Western modernism.

Monday, June 30, 2025
6:30 PM

Alice Barnett’s most mature and substantial work is her song cycle In a Gondola, published by G. Schirmer. This lecture explores the artistic and historical contexts that shaped the composition, examining both its poetic inspiration and its musical innovations. Drawing on contemporary sources, including letters, newspaper reviews, and journal accounts, the lecture also traces the early reception of and critical response to her song cycle. The program concludes with a complete performance of In a Gondola, offering audiences the opportunity to experience Barnett’s distinctive compositional voice in its fullest expression.

Monday, June 23, 2025
6:30 PM

When Alice Barnett returned from Europe and settled in early-20th-century San Diego, the city was a modestly sized but rapidly growing community of approximately 40,000 residents. Amid this evolving cultural landscape, she quickly emerged as a prominent composer, performer, and advocate for the arts. During this time, she divorced and became a single mother and sustained herself and her family through her musical endeavors before remarrying. Her influence was far-reaching: in addition to co-founding the San Diego Symphony Association, she taught at San Diego High School, delivered public lectures, authored program notes, and actively collaborated with fellow musicians and civic leaders. This lecture features performances of Alice Barnett’s compositions from this chapter of her life (some published by G. Schirmer, others preserved only in manuscript), offering a glimpse into the musical and professional world she helped to shape.

Monday, June 16, 2025
6:30 PM

Born in 1886 in Illinois, Alice Barnett pursued advanced musical training in both Chicago and Berlin. Her diaries, correspondence, and surviving manuscripts from this formative period reveal a spirited and determined young musician whose talent was evident from an early stage. This lecture explores Barnett’s educational experiences, her travels throughout Europe, and the broader musical and cultural contexts that shaped her development. Selected performances of her early compositions—many unpublished and indicative of her evolving voice as a composer—offer insight into the foundations of her later, more mature work.

Thursday, August 17, 2023
7 PM

Sam Lopez has a passion for noise music. He is the founder and curator of Stay Strange, San Diego's exclusive noise and experimental music collective.  

Wednesday, June 21, 2023
7:00 PM

San Diego/Tijuana has a history of fostering the talents of artists who have had an international impact on the art form of jazz. This talk will explore the contributions of these sometimes-forgotten figures as well as the unique perspective that our binational region brings to global jazz.

Monday, April 10, 2023
5:30 PM

Getting in the spirit of The Talk of the Town, the Athenaeum is pleased to present Jonathan A. Gómez, who will lecture on Jazz in the 1920s. Gómez will give a context of jazz during this period, highlighting the importance of the era's innovative jazz artists. In addition to his discussion, he will play some key recordings after which he will hold a question-and-answer period.

Thursday, April 28, 2022
7:30 PM

The Broadway musical is America’s proud gift to musical culture—it rings of the high energy and optimism that is America. From its early beginnings in vaudeville right up to the present, the Broadway musical—affectionately called Broadway, has held its audiences the world over in love with its sparkling magic, its glitter, and its glorious music. Join Jacquelyne Silver in a fresh look at the magnificent sounds and stories of Broadway, with showstoppers such as Hamilton, The Music Man, Wicked, My Fair Lady, Chicago, Come From Away, West Side Story, and many more. Fill your hearts with the brilliance that is Broadway; it is irresistible!

Thursday, April 21, 2022
7:30 PM

The Broadway musical is America’s proud gift to musical culture—it rings of the high energy and optimism that is America. From its early beginnings in vaudeville right up to the present, the Broadway musical—affectionately called Broadway, has held its audiences the world over in love with its sparkling magic, its glitter, and its glorious music. Join Jacquelyne Silver in a fresh look at the magnificent sounds and stories of Broadway, with showstoppers such as Hamilton, The Music Man, Wicked, My Fair Lady, Chicago, Come From Away, West Side Story, and many more. Fill your hearts with the brilliance that is Broadway; it is irresistible!

Thursday, April 14, 2022
7:30 PM

The Broadway musical is America’s proud gift to musical culture—it rings of the high energy and optimism that is America. From its early beginnings in vaudeville right up to the present, the Broadway musical—affectionately called Broadway, has held its audiences the world over in love with its sparkling magic, its glitter, and its glorious music. Join Jacquelyne Silver in a fresh look at the magnificent sounds and stories of Broadway, with showstoppers such as Hamilton, The Music Man, Wicked, My Fair Lady, Chicago, Come From Away, West Side Story, and many more. Fill your hearts with the brilliance that is Broadway; it is irresistible!

Thursday, April 7, 2022
7:30 PM

The Broadway musical is America’s proud gift to musical culture—it rings of the high energy and optimism that is America. From its early beginnings in vaudeville right up to the present, the Broadway musical—affectionately called Broadway, has held its audiences the world over in love with its sparkling magic, its glitter, and its glorious music. Join Jacquelyne Silver in a fresh look at the magnificent sounds and stories of Broadway, with showstoppers such as Hamilton, The Music Man, Wicked, My Fair Lady, Chicago, Come From Away, West Side Story, and many more. Fill your hearts with the brilliance that is Broadway; it is irresistible!

Wednesday, November 17, 2021
7:30 PM

Pianist and raconteur Bruno Leone returns to the Athenaeum on November 18 with an exciting and explorative adventure into “The World of Music & Movies.” Beginning with Hollywood’s earliest attempts at combining music and drama on the silver screen and moving on to the Golden Age of music and cinema, he will play, sing and chat his way through many of cinemas most memorable musical moments.

Thursday, May 6, 2021
6:30 PM

Andrew Lloyd Webber came to Broadway—and never left. Cats created a sensation and Phantom of the Opera an even greater one. The Lion King was a phenomenon under the ingenious direction of Julie Taymor, and Mel Brooks’ The Producers was sold out as the must-see musical! Wicked made an immediate sensation with all ages, and Hamilton came in with a bang so loud we can still hear it!

Thursday, April 29, 2021

6:30 PM

Gypsy! The team of Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim created the colorful life of Gypsy Rose Lee, with Ethel Merman as Mama Rose. Rogers and Hammerstein’s giant anthem to freedom, The Sound of Music, was a huge success, and when Fiddler on the Roof came to Broadway, nothing was ever the same. Translated into 45 languages, Fiddler is one of the major success stories. Sondheim’s glorious A Little Night Music filled us with a sensual beauty, and John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Cabaret gave us a message never to forget.

Thursday, April 22, 2021

6:30 PM

Broadway’s lights were burning brightly—Irving Berlin with Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam (both with Ethel Merman), a new team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe with their immediate hit, My Fair Lady, Rodgers and Hammerstein with South Pacific, Leonard Bernstein with West Side Story, and Meredith Willson with The Music Man.

Thursday, April 15, 2021

ONLINE

The depression heavily hovered over us—however that was the time that song and dance was needed even more. In came Cole Porter’s inimitable mastery with Gay Divorcee, the Gershwins with their groundbreaking Porgy and Bess, and the sensational team of Rodgers and Hart with Pal Joey; then came Rodgers and Hammerstein’s irresistible shows Oklahoma! and Carousel! This is a hard act to follow!

ONLINE JACQUELYNE SILVER MUSIC LECTURE

The first staged musical was in 1866 with The Black Crook, which was a dance spectacle with music and a bevy of scantily clad dancing girls in “short skirts, with exceedingly indelicate attitudes.” Meanwhile, in 1904, the young George M. Cohan showed his brilliance onstage in his show Little Johnny Jones. Kurt Weill produced his bewitching Three Penny Opera, there was Sigmund Romberg’s opulent Student Prince, and Franz Lehar’s stunning Merry Widow; then Jerome Kern topped it all off with his remarkable Show Boat that changed the direction of the Broadway Musical.

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ONLINE BRUNO LEONE MUSIC LECTURE

George and Ira Gershwin rank high among the greatest composer/lyricist teams in America. From Broadway to Hollywood and until George’s untimely death at age 38, the Gershwin brothers were dominant figures in the world of popular music. George was renowned for his melodies. In fact, Leonard Bernstein, in his Joy of Music, wrote that “not since Tchaikovsky has there been a more inspired melodist than George Gershwin.” For his part, Ira was the master of the prosaic. Inspired by his brother’s music, he skillfully developed a compositional philosophy which premised that “a good lyric should be rhymed conversation.” Pianist and historian Bruno Leone will chat, play and sing his way through many of the Gershwin’s most memorable melodies. Join Mr. Leone as he weaves the melodic excellence of George and the lyrical beauty of Ira into a tapestry of songs and stories taken from a truly golden era in American music.

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ONLINE

Pianist, humorist, and raconteur Bruno Leone will play, sing, and chat his way through the music, lyrics, and life of Cole Porter. Mr. Leone’s performance will focus on the great American icon’s singular contribution to musical comedy and illustrate how and why Porter’s music was simply an extension of the composer’s unique and flamboyant lifestyle.

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