The Venue

Inner Circle is a private home — a contemporary house of light, art, and stone in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where each window frames the garden and the walls are lined with works gathered over a lifetime.

For a handful of evenings each year, we open our house to a small circle of listeners. Each programme brings a carefully curated artist — drawn from among the finest practitioners of their tradition, from across the world — performing the way this music was always meant to be heard: a few feet away, without a stage, without distance.

And then there are the people. They come for the same music and, more often than not, find they have more than that in common. Most arrive not knowing anyone. Few leave that way.