AD LIBITUM Concert Series

Previously Coffee Break Concert Series
* Ad libitum literally means "at one's pleasure" in Latin. In music, it means musical freedom that a performer can take during a piece, oftentimes with a composer's directions.

Since its beginning in 2011, Ad Libitum Concert Series (previously Coffee Break Concert Series), which runs from fall through spring, has offered inspiring and refreshing midday concerts to people in the Ann Arbor community. Each concert is a place where people can enjoy beautiful music performed by gifted musicians from near and far. It is also a place where people can share their love of music and fellowship with others from the community. All concerts are free and open to the public. Come and join us in celebrating music!

Concert Series Director
Dr. Shin-Ae Chun

The season of 2023-2024 opens with an exciting program for organ on September 29. Organist Józef Kotowicz has been teaching organ and improvisation at the Fryderyk Chopin Music University in Białystok, Poland. Kotowicz will introduce to you organ music from Poland, Czech, Norway, Denmark and Sweden which is not heard often in the US. The harpsichord concert by Edward Parmentier on October 27 will take you back to the 16th – 18th centuries through beautiful music. Parmentier is professor emeritus at the University of Michigan. It is time to celebrate winter and Christmas on December 1. The Music and Poetry concert will offer you a chance to feel fully of this beautiful season of dormancy. The violin concert on March 15 will be performed by two sisters, Maria Bessmentseva on the violin and Ekaterina Bessmeltseva on the piano. Maria is returning to the series to help you explore more pieces written for violin. This time pieces composed by Schnittke and Lekeu. Lyric soprano Sonja Srinivasan will perform arias and songs on April 12. This will be a nice opportunity for the opera fans to hear excerpts from operas. The season of 2023-2024 will conclude with the Well-Tempered Clavier concert on May 17. Continuing a project that started in 2018 with the preludes from Book 1, this time 15 fugues from the same book will be performed on three keyboard instruments; harpsichord, piano and organ.

Please share this season schedule with your friends and neighbors. 

Download the Season Schedule

Other Events

For more information about the concerts and other events, visit our events page below.

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Concert Instruments

Robert Noehren Organ (1966/2007, III/56)

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Steinway Medium Grand Piano, 5’7’’

(1928, refurbished in 2006)