Alexandria’s Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center will be among the landing places for the National Symphony Orchestra amid the Kennedy Center’s planned shutdown for renovations.
Forced from the Kennedy Center following approval of a reconstruction project by allies of President Donald Trump, the NSO will split its 2026-27 season among six venues in Washington, D.C., and the capital’s suburbs.
Faced with an uncertain future due to a potential two-year closure, the NSO made its delayed 2026-27 season announcement Tuesday, 5 1/2 weeks before its opening concert on Sept. 26 and five months later than the release of its 2025-26 schedule.
Next season will include:
- 24 concerts at George Washington’s Lisner Auditorium in D.C. (1,350 available seats)
- 13 at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, (1,925)
- nine at Northern Virginia Community College’s Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center in Alexandria (900)
- eight at George Mason’s Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Virginia, (1,850)
- two each at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park (1,050) and D.C.’s Lincoln Theatre (1,150)
Capacity of the venues will be below that of the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, which had up to 2,465 available seats.
Tickets go on sale Aug. 28, leaving little time to start rebuilding an audience.
NOVA’s Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center regularly hosts a range of events, from concerts to conferences. The Alexandria Symphony Orchestra hosts some of its concerts at the center.
The Kennedy Center, named by Congress after President John F. Kennedy, was taken over in 2025 by a board of Trump loyalists who added his name to the complex, only to be ordered to remove it by a federal judge. The board said last week it intends to close the complex for a two-year renovation and add Trump’s name to the building’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”
NSO ticket sales declined from 72% of capacity in 2024 to 58% in 2025 to 41% last season, The Washington Post reported. The NSO did not confirm the figures.
The Post’s report indicated the NSO’s sales and fundraising struggles appear to reflect audience and artist opposition to Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center. However, the ensemble’s summer residency at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts this year exceeded sales projections and have drawn “packed houses.”
“For us to perform and to be somehow disconnected with the Kennedy Center probably will convince some of the audience who stayed away from the center to come back to our concerts, and not only that, even to increase the number of the audience,” music director Gianandrea Noseda said in an interview with The Associated Press. “At least this is my hope.”
Noseda was the only NSO official who commented on the record about the season announcement. Trump’s name was included twice in the joint statement by the NSO and the Kennedy Center, which cited his “strategic direction” as Kennedy Center chair and “vision for a revitalized institution.”
The orchestra still intends to rehearse at the Kennedy Center during the reconstruction and keep its office and music library there.
