WoCo Fest 2026: Transcend
CO-PRESENTED BY STRATHMORE
WoCo Fest 2026: Transcend invites audiences to rise above boundaries in a two-day celebration of music by women and gender-marginalized composers. Returning to The Mansion at Strathmore, this year’s festival centers connection, resilience, and renewal through sound. Across concerts, workshops, and conversations, Boulanger Initiative continues its mission to uplift and empower the voices defining the future of music.
Tickets on Sale March 26!
Friday, April 24 – Opening Concert
The festival opens with a free evening concert featuring musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra and the newly renamed Washington National Opera Orchestra. These extraordinary artists gather at WoCo Fest as a sanctuary—providing these Kennedy Center musicians a place to make music freely and joyfully together. The program spans from the works of Hildegard von Bingen to Rhiannon Giddens’ profound work At the Purchaser’s Option. The evening concludes with Luminous Being, a transcendent project by New York Philharmonic violinist Audrey Wright, paired with responsive, wearable light sculpture by visual artist and technologist Geoff Robertson, embodying the renewal and spirit at the heart of Transcend.
Saturday, April 25 – All Day at the Mansion
Saturday unfolds into a day of creative exploration, featuring composer workshops, pre-concert talks, and performances that challenge and expand the modern canon. Experience “the most important flutist of our time” (NY Times) Claire Chase, genre-defying Scottish Celtic lever harpist-composer Maeve Gilchrist, and the acclaimed Argus Quartet, whose evening concert celebrates music’s power to move beyond limitation and move from early and late Romantic composers Fanny Mendelssohn and Germaine Tailleferre to Grammy-nominated composer Shelley Washington.
Boulanger Initiative and WoCo Fest 2026: Transcend is co-presented by Strathmore and supported in part by funding from the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, the Maryland State Arts Council, The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, LSWG, George Wenchel, and The Carl and Beryl Tretter Charitable Fund.
