As the 24th season of the Smithsonian at Little Washington concert series comes to a close, Kenneth Slowik will perform compositions by the great Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach on Sunday, May 1, at 3 p.m. Slowik will be playing on cello and harpsichord.

Kenneth Slowik is an American cellist, viol player, and conductor, Curator of Musical Instrument Collection at the National Museum of American History and Artistic Director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. He will be playing a German-styled harpsichord made by Thomas and Barbara Wolf, of The Plains, and modeled after an instrument made in Hanover in 1738 by Christian Vater. Slowik says, “It’s a beautiful instrument, sonorous, yet with wonderfully clear articulation—just about perfect, chronologically and sonically, for Bach.”

A highly valued feature of all the concerts in the Smithsonian at Little Washington series is the commentary which Kenneth Slowik provides throughout the program.  His remarks shed light on the glorious music and the life and times of the featured composers.  Slowik was the recipient in 2011 of the Smithsonian Secretary’s Distinguished Research Lecture Award, and the remarks during the concerts at the Theatre at Washington, Virginia, are generally a shortened version of the talk which precedes each of the concerts heard in Washington D.C.