Chestnut Hill’s Woodmere Art Museum will host two classical concerts over the next two weekends. First on the roster is “Sacred and Profane,” featuring Variant 6, Saturday, April 22, at 5 p.m. The following Saturday, April 29, again at 5 p.m., will be “Curtis@Woodmere.”

Variant 6 is a vocal ensemble comprised of Jessica Beebe, Rebecca Myers, Elisa Sutherland, Michael Jones, Steven Bradshaw, and Daniel Schwartz. For its Woodmere Art Museum program, the ensemble will perform a broad spectrum of vocal music, ranging from Renaissance madrigals to works by modern masters such as Benjamin Britten and Paul Hindemith. Along the way, often-overlooked parts of the repertoire will receive surprising interpretations by some of the finest singers in the nation.

“Curtis@Woodmere” will highlight the artistry of violinist Tianyou Ma and pianists Zhu Wang and Avery Gagliano. They will be performing works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, Nathan Milstein, Gabriel Faure, and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. Ma will be accompanied by both pianists Wang and Gagliano.

Established in 1924 through the boundless generosity of Mary Louise Curtis Bok, who was inspired by the Philadelphia Orchestra music director Leopold Stokowski, the Curtis Institute of Music has remained one of the leading music conservatories in the world. Located on the southwest corner of 18th and Locust Streets on Rittenhouse Square in Center City, it has remained a full-scholarship school from its very beginning.

Mary Louise Curtis Bok was the daughter of Cyrus H.K. Curtis, who founded the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia in 1891. Its most famous and highly regarded publication was the Saturday Evening Post, which rivaled both Life and Look magazines in the field of picture magazines that enthralled American readers throughout much of the 20th century.

Bok helped fund the construction of Settlement Music School’s Mary Louise Curtis Building in the Queen Village section of Philadelphia in 1917. Settlement was founded in 1908. Stokowski pointed out to Bok that Philadelphia was losing its best and brightest young classical musicians to New York City’s Juilliard School, Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory and Boston New England School. She responded by creating the Curtis Institute of Music through a gift of $25 million as its initial endowment. Even today, that’s a large amount of money. In 1924, it was astronomical.

For ticket information visit woodmereartmuseum.org. For music reviews, visit chestnuthilllocal.com