The eleventh season of Musimelange—an ongoing series of themed, stage-less concerts pairing chamber music with gastronomy and wine tastings—kicks off Monday, January 27, 2025, at the iconic National Hotel on South Beach with a voyage through the heart of the Romantic era. (More information and tickets available here.)
What follows is the story of how acclaimed French violinist and Miami transplant Anne Chicheportiche turned her vision of music’s transcendent power into a groundbreaking experience. Her belief in forging genuine community connections through music has shaped Musimelange into one of Miami’s most extraordinary cultural events—one that not only redefines classical music performances but profoundly impacts the lives of those who experience it.
I.
1986.
Antibes, France.
A mother hears her youngest daughter crying in the living room and rushes to her.
“What’s the matter?” she asks, finding the child teary-eyed and enraptured before the television set.
“It’s just…so beautiful,” five-year-old Anne Chicheportiche replies.
Forgive the mother a bit of momentary confusion. The child is, after all, watching a commercial for Taureau Ailé instant rice—a cuisine better known for convenience than pathos.
Remember, however, that destiny, though insistent, is often coy: Soon the mother realizes what has evoked such emotion in her daughter is not fluffed clouds of blanc grains but the rendition of “Queen of the Night” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute accompanying it.
Okay.
There had been signs of young Anne’s musicality. A couple years prior she would accompany her older sister to piano lessons at the home of an old woman who was very kind, mostly blind and, as is the way in French music instruction, placed an early emphasis on ear training. During her sister’s instruction, young Anne from the corner would offer corrections, “No, that’s an A…That’s a F…That’s a C.” Yet, while the pitch was perfect, the interest was middling—and the teacher had to sweeten the instructional pot for Anne with homemade clothes for her Barbies.
Certainly, there had been nothing like these tears.
Anne’s mother and her father, a family doctor, convened to discuss. Though the family genealogical tree wasn’t exactly festooned with professional musicians, they agreed it was time to see where this passion might lead.
“What instrument would you like to try?” her mother asked.
“How about the harp?”
“A harp is not going to fit in the apartment, Anne,” she said, quickly making an executive decision on the violin.
“And that was it,” Chicheportiche says. “I fell in love. It never left me.”
Forty years and five thousand miles away, the reverberations of that decision continue to be felt—in the best, most positive way possible.
II.
2025
Miami, Florida
The first performance of Musimelange’s eleventh season is approaching. And though the works of Liszt, Fauré, and Mendelssohn are never far from founder and performer Anne Chicheportiche’s mind, putting together yet another elegant, consciousness-expanding three-act multi-sensory event that pairs chamber music and community building with gastronomy and wine tasting is no small feat.
The most incredible thing, perhaps, is that we mere mortals would have been in awe of Chicheportiche if she stayed in her quote/unquote lane: As a violinist no less than the Washington Post has praised the “fierce assurance” of her playing; the Miami Herald cited her “tonal sweetness, alert dynamic detailing, and commanding musicality.” You may have seen her backing up Andre Bocelli. She’s played Bach for the French ambassador to the United States. She’s performed with the Orchestre de Cannes (France), Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, Verbier Chamber Orchestra (Switzerland), New Millennium Orchestra (Chicago), Nice Academy Festival Orchestra (France) and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (New York) and made appearances at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Chicago’s Symphony Center Orchestra Hall, Geneva’s Victoria Hall and Mexico’s Auditorio National. She has performed and/or recorded with a literally insane array of pop artists from Smokey Robinson and Barry White to The Temptations and Dionne Warwick.
She’s also a devoted mother of two—as she discusses all this, she’s watching one of her two sons tear up and down the soccer field—a jewelry designer, a professor at Miami Dade College, and her DIY home renovations have been featured in Apartment Therapy.
Yet, she has chosen to add to her plate the project of reinventing the belle époque—or “beautiful era” in French.
Here is how the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California describes that fecund interwar era stretching between 1871 and 1914, “when Paris was at the forefront of urban development and cultural innovation.”
During this time, Parisians witnessed the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the ascendancy of the Montmartre district as an epicenter for art and entertainment and the brightening of their metropolis under the glow of electric light. From the nostalgic perspective of the 20th century, this four-decade period of progress and prosperity was a golden age of spectacle and joie de vivre.
Even by the standards of an epic talent, restless spirit, and autodidact such as Chicheportiche, it is a colossal task.
Why?
On one hand, Chicheportiche truly believes in the Musimelange mission, which has at this point enriched the cultural and social lives of countless attendees. Not for nothing does the Plato quote, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything” grace the Musimelange Instagram page.
Dig a little deeper, however, and you will find it’s about something else as well: Keeping faith with her younger nomadic self’s quest for a sense of belonging and community—and her desire to build a more beautiful and inclusive world.

III.
1994.
Paris, France.
Anne scales the stairs to the sixth-floor apartment her grandmother helped her rent only to discover there is no furniture, electricity, or phone. Her roommate hasn’t arrived yet. She goes back down to a phone booth and dials her parents’ number. They explain to her that she’ll need to call the phone and electric company to get the services turned on—not a typical concern of her fifteen-year-old peers. It is cold and Chicheportiche teeters between intimidation and fear. She sleeps on the freezing floor.
How did she get here?
At her first violin lesson, she recites the notes of the strings to her teacher. “Well, nice try,” he said, “but…no.” When he goes to tune her instrument, however, he realizes she has identified the strings of the out of tune violin. “It’s going to really be a shame if you don’t make this instrument your life,” the teacher says.
He needn’t worry.
Almost immediately Chicheportiche is practicing hours a day with the support of her parents. “If you’re going to do this or anything else, you do it well,” her mother says, but otherwise there is no pressure, only love. Her first big performance is at age eleven. By fifteen she is studying at a school thirty minutes away in the city of her birth, Nice. A step up, but still inadequate to her talent, her potential.
So, Paris.
Paris can be imposing for adults, never mind a teenager. And a subway worker strike makes it that much more difficult to navigate. Years later, especially once she has her own children, Chicheportiche will wonder how she did it. In the moment, she perseveres, walking to her classes, growing up double quick. There is a great aunt nearby, but they only meet a few times. At conservatory she continues to excel, approaching violin performance like a professional athlete—indeed, it is a sport of dexterity and nuance requiring constant practice.
Intuitively, though, Chicheportiche has a longing for more notes, larger scales, compositions that play on beyond the realm of music.
IV.
Miami, Florida
2025
Musimelange is divided into three acts.
The first, Prelude, is where incoming guests enjoy “hors d’oeuvres meticulously crafted to complement the concert's musical themes and sip on curated wines that set the perfect tone for the night ahead.”
The second, Concert, is…well, self-explanatory. The programs are also the dictionary definition of eclectic. You might hear a selection of French baroque composition or Dvorak or the theme to Schindler’s List or chamber interpretations of the rock band Queen or Norah Jones or… “It's very rare that I ask an artist to do something they already did,” Chicheportiche explains—and that newness only adds to the crackling atmosphere. The January 27 show is focused on the Romantic Era with Chicheportiche performing alongside pianist Kemal Gekic and cellist Ashley Garritson.
Think Mendelssohn does South Beach.
The third and final act is another mingling accentuated by “fine cheeses, delicate macarons, and Dolci Peccati Gelato…and effervescent bubbly.”
In recent years, Musimelange has been held at the M Building in Wynwood where events regularly sold out. For the 2025 season, it’s moving to the bigger National Hotel—an art deco landmark on the National Register of Historic Places with the longest infinity pool in a town full of infinity pools (205 feet) and an even longer history of integrating multi-media art. For example, an intricate, detailed ceiling mosaic in the hotel’s Tamara Bistro recreates a 1927 painting by Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka, “Young Lady in Green.”
The original work hangs in the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France, the same city where Chicheportiche honed the skills that will be on display.
V.
Washington, D.C.
2008
“I don't like classical music,” a friend of a friend says.
We’ll see about that.
After studying in Geneva, Switzerland at the Haute école de musique de Genève and earning her master’s at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, Chicheportiche arrives at the University of Maryland to pursue her doctorate.
So far, Chicheportiche’s United States sojourns have been a transitional, evolutionary period. For the first time, she is not surrounded solely by other musicians. Her supportive parents never made her feel like being a musician was something out of the ordinary, but she quickly learns that most people do not understand the rigors and routines of her life—and vice versa.
In D.C. she finds herself living in a big house. There is someone in finance, another in marketing. Graduate students rub elbows with nurses, a filmmaker. Anne revels in the eclectic nature of it all, but as an émigré from both France and, in a sense, the somewhat insular land of conservatory musicianship there is also a deep, abiding desire for a larger sense of interconnectedness and community. Chicheportiche befriends a mid-fifties divorcée who works in the makeup department at Bloomingdale’s and the two begin sharing weekly meals and drinks, trading favorite dishes and dishing about their respective lives. The dinners expand to other residents and some of them attend her classical performances.
And, thus, when Chicheportiche needed to rehearse for an upcoming concert and wanted to do so in front of a crowd to help calm her nerves, this organic motley crew seemed a good fit. So, she sent out the informal invite, made the food, and played for the crowd—and they all loved it. Even the aforementioned skeptic. There was something about using food, wine, and conviviality to break down the invisible walls between performer and audience that made the performance unique and powerfully affecting.
Maybe there is something to this…
Chicheportiche recalled how an old boyfriend had once pointed out to her that the detailed way she spoke to him about music was not so different from how he spoke about wine—and she realized that the way a mélange of grapes could make a certain kind of nectar of the gods, perhaps could be adapted to a mix of wine, food, and music.
Musimelange was born.

VI.
Miami, Florida
2025
“In Miami there is space for everyone to create,” Chicheportiche says. “But there is a real need for greater connection.”
It’s true. Everyone is so busy and spread out and let’s not even pause to ponder the time we spend gridlocked in these air-conditioned pods navigating the South Florida traffic. Miami, many transplants aver, is friendly but a tough nut to crack socially.
Yet Musimelange has prospered, growing slowly but steadily, to become a Miami institution, as cosmopolitan as it is accessible.
In the beginning, there were no tickets. It was all word of mouth and fifteen-ish people arriving with $50 bills. Chicheportiche’s sister-in-law made the food; her best friend engineered the desserts. Another close friend brought fundraising skills to the table.
Chicheportiche, however, knocked on every door, distributed flyers, reached out to the French community. She had a hunch the people were there. Just play the right notes and they would turn their heads. It took time, but the instinct proved right.
As a professor Chicheportiche is constantly revisiting compositions from many angles to meet the unique needs of individual students. That process of refinement and empathy has proved invaluable in scaling Musimelange. Sure, there have been challenges—hello, Covid!—and changes, but the heart and soul of Musimelange has only adapted not waned.
“I’m always very stressed before Musimelange,” Chicheportiche says. “Because in Miami people always buy their tickets last minute and I worry if people are going to show up and if they do show up if they’re going to like it. But on the day of the show, it’s like a switch is turned on. And the energy is always good. People arrive at the door and you can just watch their shoulders drop. You can see the tension and stress of the day leave them. I don’t entirely know why. But I feel it, too. And I’m so humbled by it. Because we all have problems and grief and loneliness and things to deal with in life. But, here, for one night—together—it feels like…it’s just so beautiful.”
It is when Chicheportiche says this that you realize the words and sentiment are echoing between herself now, in this moment, and that five-year-old girl sitting in front of a television and hearing the whispers of destiny in an instant rice commercial.
SAVE THE DATE:
What: Musimelange: The Piano Trio — An Immersive, Multi-Sensory Voyage Through the Belle Époque
When: January 27
Time: from 7:30-10pm
Where: National Hotel 1677 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33139
More Info: www.musimelange.com