Tanglewood

Steve Miller Band performs on July 29. The witty and fast-paced radio program Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! appears in the Shed on Thursday, August 29. Let the good times roll.

his Sunday, January 27, is the first opportunity for the public to purchase tickets for the recently announced popular artist concerts at Tanglewood including a Melissa Etheridge performance (June 21); the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration featuring guitarist and vocalist Warren Haynes with the Boston Pops and conductor Keith Lockhart (June 22); a Jackson Browne concert, featuring special guest Sara Watkins (July 4); and an Ozawa Hall performance featuring jazz bassist/vocalist/composer Esperanza Spalding in her Tanglewood debut (August 4).

Daniel Gatti led the enormous orchestra and chorus and four vocal soloists in Verdi's sole attempt at large-scale sacred music . Ferocious, uncompromising, Verdi’s Requiem is a Requiem for the End of the World. Maybe we can appreciate it now more than when it was written – we have witnessed several worlds end in our time and daily contemplate the imminent end of the planet.

Tanglewood is filling out its dance card with pop bookings. Singer-songwriter Melissa Etthridge will be featured in the Shed on June 22 with Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration the following night. Good times will be had by all.

American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, along with special guest Sara Watkins, returns to Tanglewood for the first time in 15 years, on Thursday, July 4, 2013, at 7 p.m. to perform in the Shed, with fireworks following the concert. Mr. Browne last performed at Tanglewood with Bonnie Raitt on August 24, 1998. He made his first Tanglewood appearance on July 31, 1973.

With a diverse staff of contributors Berkshire Fine Arts strives for national theatre coverage. In this year end roundup we provide an overview with highlights rather than a top ten or best of list. There are numerous links to plays, features and interviews. Overal,l it was a great year that include a week in Chicago for the meeting of the American Theatre Critics Association as well as in depth coverage of the Berkshires and a taste of Broadway.

The melodies are glorious, but this performance of Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda featured the chorus, a character in the opera, and a magnificent performance by the Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie.

Because three Pops concerts last summer drew audiences of 10,000 each the number is upped with two more this coming season. The kickoff on June 23 will feature comic and banjo player Steve Martin. On the all important and yet to be fully announced July 4th weekend Keith Lockahrt will conduct Pops with guest artist, the Country singer, Vince Gill. Michael Feinstein and Audra MacDonald are also penciled in for Pops as well as the perennial John Williams Film Night and the epic Tanglewood on Parade.

There are ways to consume culture at affordable prices. There are half price tickets for Broadway shows and lawn access at Tanglewood. A movie costs about ten bucks or you can see it on Netflix. Kids pirate downloaded music and videos. But it takes deep pockets to travel the world visiting great monuments and museums. Only the mega rich can afford to own the contemporary art displayed in galleries and museums. For social and economic reasons the fine arts are more elitist and esoteric than other art forms. Then there are matters of taste- High Brow, Middle Brow and Kitsch.

Violinist Gerald Elias departed the Boston Symphony Orchestra some years ago for greater opportunities in Salt Lake City. He returns each summer to get his "orchestral fix" performing with Tanglewood. Several years ago he conflated music and writing with a series of successful mystery novels. We met briefly during WordFest a weekend long writer's conference at The Mount.

With its French and Russian traditions, the BSO seemed the ideal orchestra to present these two rarities. But the Stravinsky had never been done before, and the Ravel only 3 times. Both works are oddities within the composers’ oeuvre, but that makes them even more of a delight to encounter.

Many recall the fine cuisine of Chef Gerhard Schmid from his Gateways Inn in Lenox in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, and the Devonfield Inn, formerly known as Haus Andreas in Lee, from 1980-1994. He is now presiding over the kitchen of Haflinger Haus an elegant mansion in Adams, Mass. Some 40 members of the Berkshire International Club gathered there to enjoy his special Octoberfest menu.

The BSO's performance of George Gershwin's classic American "folk opera" was sumptuously played and well sung, but it tried to make Gershwin a late Romantic like Strauss or Puccini. The production is musically rich, bringing out the complexities of the score with a clarity that only underscores how great the work is. It is the first time the orchestra has performed “Porgy,” which opened in Boston in 1935 as a try-out for its New York premiere, in Symphony Hall.

On a glorious fall weekend WordFest was held at Edith Wharton's estate The Mount. There was an intense program of back to back panel discussions, interviews and poetry readings. It seemed like many in the audience were New Yorker readers while the speakers were top loaded with contributors. Surely it was a well read and well-heeled assembly in the posh Berkshires.

After opening night the Shakespeare & Company production of Terry Teachout's new play Satchmo at the Waldorf was "frozen." Teachout attended a number of performances and took notes for revisions working with director, Gordon Edelstein, and the actor, John Douglas Thompson, for the next production which opens at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven in October. For this installment Teachout discusses the primary sources researched for the harsh language of Louis Armstrong and his gangster manager Joe Glaser.

A lady a few rows in front of us was waving her cane, literally, in time to the music of Michael Feinstein's American Songbook. Later she joined him on stage for a duet of "New York New York." Incredibly, Liza Minnelli made a surprise appearance during the last day of the Tanglewood season. Tony winners Betty Buckley and Christine Ebersole also helped to bring the curtain down on another Tanglewood season.

Close Encounters With Music introduces grand prize winners of the Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition and Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in their Berkshire debuts; presents one of the preeminent Baroque ensembles, Tragicomedia, to usher in the holiday season; and adds another notch on its belt of successful commissioning projects with a new work by American composer Robert Beaser, who has written for Glimmerglass and New York City Opera.

After 40 years of collaborations pianist Chick Corea and vibraphone player Gary Burton are about to release their sixth CD. Hot House is an album of the standards they loved and grew up on. For a nearly sold out gig in Ozawa Hall, with nearly as many outside on the lawn, they played a set of duets followed by one with the Harlem String Quartet.

An ingenious thriller, the ultimate murder mystery, The 39 Steps has it all. Shakespeare & Company opens the 2012-2013 Fall & Winter season with this hilarious adaptation of John Buchan’s novel, which also draws inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film. Featuring a seasoned ensemble including Elizabeth Aspenlieder (Bad Dates), Jason Asprey (Parasite Drag), David Joseph (The Tempest), and Josh Aaron McCabe (Hound of the Baskervilles), The 39 Steps offers an intriguing, sidesplitting evening or afternoon at the theatre. The 39 Steps runs from September 22 through November 4 in S&Co.’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre.

Both nine time Grammy winner, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis leading his Quintet, and renowned bass player Christian McBride with a trio, commented warmly on the honor of returning to Tanglewood. But, for both, not in many years. The evening that ended at 11 PM closed in a jam session with all of the musicians trading riffs.

Last night in Ozawa Hall the French Ebene Quartet offered a divided program that included two works by Mozart and Tchakovsky followed by a jazz set. It is a part of he overhaul of jazz programming at Tanglewood. On Monday, August 20 Wynton Marsalis and Christian McBride are featured. With Chick Corea and Gary Burton slated for Sunday, August 26.

Last night at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown the legendary singer/ songwriter, Art Garfunkel launched an 18 city tour that will end on December 1. It supports the issue of a double CD which is a retrospective of his career but includes new material. While he spoke to the audience of "giving my heart to you" he struggled to push a voice that he virtually lost just two years ago. An appreciative audience supported his courage and poetic humanity.

Just before Chris Botti came on stage for a two hour performace at Ozawa Hall there was a brief but ferocious downpour that had hundreds of fans on the lawn scurrying of shelter. The downpour soaked some fans but failed to dampen spirits of a stunning, eclectic and thoroughly entertaining evening with one of our greatest living artists.

Amazingly, it has been fifty years since the last visit of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet to Jacob's Pillow. The classical ballet company demonstrated its diversity during a two hour program in three segments- In Tandem, Moonlight Sonata, and Carmina Burana. For most audience members it was a highlight of Pillow's 80th season.

Donizetti was a master of opera buffa - comic opera - and "Don Pasquale" is one of his enduring hits. By focusing on singers and their interactions, Boston Midsummer Opera gets it right.