The Fortnightly Music Club is a San Francisco Bay Area music performance club. Founded in 1908, the Club is made up of musicians, many of whom are professionals, and music enthusiasts, who meet regularly, usually October through May, to share and enjoy live music. Formal concerts, which are free and open to the public, are held at the Palo Alto Art Center Auditorium. The Club, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in January 2008, continues to be vitally active in the musical culture of the Bay Area.

History of the Club

In January 1908, a number of Stanford faculty wives who were interested in community cultural involvement began meeting as a music study group on alternate Monday afternoons (fortnightly). A particular subject was chosen for study, with one or more of the group’s members giving an illustrative musical performance. From these beginnings grew the Fortnightly Music Club, now one of the oldest continuous cultural organizations in Northern California.

Within a few years of its inception, the Fortnightly Music Club evolved from a study group into an evening performance club, now accepting both women and men members. The membership gradually expanded further to include non-performers and music lovers from the surrounding communities as well.

In 1912, the original Fortnightly members did a house to house canvassing of the area to determine if people would be interested in having professional concert artists visit to perform. Acting on the positive response, these early Fortnightly members established a concert series which was held in the Assembly Hall (no longer in existence) on the Stanford University campus from 1912 through 1928. Some of the illustrious artists who appeared were:

This series became the forerunner of the ASSU Concert Series, student-managed from 1928 until the mid 1960s. Today, the greatly enlarged series has become the popular Lively Arts at Stanford.

The purpose of the Club remains today the same as was originally intended, the advancement of the standards of music in the community and the sharing of talent and enjoyment of music through performance.