Chamber music on Primitive’s third floor, among Dogon masks, Japanese woodblock prints, Tibetan armor and Chinese lacquered furniture. Each Saturday Salon pairs a concert with a talk on works from Primitive’s collection chosen for the program.
The series, presented by the Juliani Ensemble in partnership with Primitive, sets classical music within a wider history of art and culture: art exhibition, lecture and performance in a single afternoon.
The Ensemble
Founded in 1999, the Juliani Ensemble is a national touring chamber ensemble based in Chicago. It was a performing partner of the Chicago Cultural Center for nearly twenty years, has appeared on Concerts from the Library of Congress, and has been featured on 98.7 WFMT.
Emily Graef, flute, founded the ensemble; she studied at the University of Michigan, the University of Maryland and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and was principal flute of the Rome Festival Orchestra. Julian Graef, violin and viola, is executive and creative director and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. Anita Graef, cello and artistic director, has performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and the Library of Congress.
Concerts
All Saturday Salons take place on Saturdays at 1pm on the third floor of Primitive, 130 North Jefferson Street. Each begins with a pre-concert discussion of artworks from the collection.
Distortions: Through the Looking Glass
Saturday, November 21, 2026, 1pm
The familiar made strange. Andrew Norman’s Light Screens, which turns the fractured geometry of Frank Lloyd Wright’s stained glass into sound; Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, grown from a Haydn minuet; Beethoven’s Quartet No. 9, Op. 59, No. 3, with a slow introduction early listeners found bewildering.
Homage
Saturday, January 16, 2027, 1pm
Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Pergolesi reworked at the start of his neoclassical period; Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, written after the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld drew him out of retirement: some of the most autumnal music Brahms wrote.
Landscapes: From the Garden to the Wild
Saturday, March 20, 2027, 1pm
From the cultivated to the untamed: Ross Edwards’s Ecstatic Dance, drawn from the sounds of the Australian bush; Praetorius, Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming; Gabriella Smith, Carrot Revolution; Mozart, the “Spring” Quartet.
Magic & Mystery
Saturday, May 15, 2027, 1pm
Fairy-tale sprites, folk ritual and transformation: Mendelssohn, Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Jessie Montgomery, Voodoo Dolls; Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht.
Tickets
To mark five years of the Saturday Salons, tickets are $5, with a pay-what-you-like option. Tickets are sold through Ticket Tailor.
The ensemble also runs the Tallgrass Chamber Music Festival in southwestern Wisconsin and an outreach program offering lessons and instruments on Chicago’s South Side.