Music of Maryland - Venues and Festivals

Venues and Festivals

The largest music venue in Maryland is the Merriweather Post Pavilion, opened in 1967 and designed by architect Frank Gehry to avoid disturbing as much as possible the surrounding Symphony Woods; it is an outdoor performance area, home to most of the largest concerts that come through the area. In the 1990s and early 2000s, HFStival, held by the WHFS radio station, established itself as an extremely popular annual festival, and became a major draw across the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Since 2006, Virgin Festival has established itself as a hugely popular festival annually held at Pimlico Race Course, drawing in a variety of popular acts. The Takoma Park Folk Festival is also well-known among folk music aficionados, and has been held annually since 1978 in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Baltimore is home to several important concert spaces, including the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Concordia Hall and the Lyric Opera House. The Meyerhoff is home to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Concordia Hall is a long-standing venue, founded in 1867 by German musical societies, which were then a large portion of Baltimore's population. The Lyric Opera House, founded in 1894, is another important Baltimore music venue; it has hosted many of the most famous performers and public speakers to come to Baltimore. Smaller Hardcore and Punk acts play at the Charm City Art Space.

The city of Frederick is home to the Weinberg Centre for the Arts, which shows various kinds of theatrical and musical productions. The Weinberg was originally a large movie theater called the Tivoli, opened in 1926; the Tivoli was destroyed in a flood in 1976, and was reopened as the Weinberg Center two years later. North Bethesda's Strathmore opened in 1976, and is now a home for numerous programs, including the largest of its music venues, the Music Center at Strathmore; the Strathmore has hosted well-known musicians and composers like the cellist Steven Honigberg, pianist Christopher Taylor, jazz singers Nnenna Freelon and Luciana Souza and composers Virgil Thomson and Gunther Schuller, as well as DC-area cult acts like the founder of Go-go, Chuck Brown, and the reunited punk band The Slickee Boys.