Newport Classical continues its fourth full-season Chamber Series, featuring 12 concerts held on select Fridays, at 7:30 p.m. at the organization’s home venue the, Newport Classical Recital Hall (42 Dearborn St.), with a recital by oboist James Austin Smith and pianist Michael Stephen Brown on Friday, March 21. Their compelling program features music by William Grant Still, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, Frédéric Chopin, Benjamin Britten, and more.

Praised for his “virtuosic,” “dazzling,” and “brilliant” performances (The New York Times) and his “bold, keen sound” (The New Yorker), James Austin Smith is a soloist, chamber musician, and artistic director. He appears regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at Carnegie Hall, on tour as Co-Principal Oboe of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and as an artist of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Smith is also Artistic and Executive Director of Tertulia Chamber Music, which creates intimate evenings of food, drink, and music in singular cultural experiences in New York, San Francisco and Serenbe, Georgia, as well as an annual weekend festival of food and music in a variety of global destinations.

Smith’s previous projects include Hearing Memory, an evening of performance, story-telling and archival film footage documenting politically engaged musicians in the former East Germany. Smith holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Music and bachelor’s degrees in political science and music from Northwestern University. He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany.

Tickets and information are available here.