Tanglewood

The first time I performed the Concerto for Orchestra I was moonlighting on last stand of the second violins in the New Haven Symphony. The New Haven Symphony has a long and respectable history as a semi-professional orchestra with many fine musicians. The gig also enabled me to pick up a few bucks for my Yale tuition.

Daniele Gatti arrived at Carnegie Hall with the Boston Symphony Orceshtra for their annual spring visit. Gatti had recently triumphed at the Metropolitan Opera conducting Parsifal in a consummate performance. Katrina Dalayman, the Met’s Kundry, reports that the group of mega stars gathered to sing were exceptionally collaborative, guided by Gatti, emailing back and forth. This group effort showed on the stage with the BSO.

When Michael Feinstein appeared at Tanglewood last summer Liza Minnelli hopped the train with him at the last minute and popped on stage to thrill the audience in The Shed with "New York New York." While Faith Prince and Megan Hilty are confirmed as guests this summer we asked him if there is a chance that Barbara Cook may also board his Lenox bound Chattanooga Choo Choo. Barbara, who loves Tanglewood, just smiled.

Claybourne Park, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and 2012 Tony Award for Best Play is coming soon to a theatre near you. Here in the Berkshires from September 26 through October 13 at Barrington Stage in co production with Vermont's Dorset Theatre Festival where it will run from August 15-31. It begs questions about regional theatre companies focused on a short list of recycled Broadway and Off Broadway plays.

During our meeting of the American Theatre Critic's Association we visited Carmel, Indiana for an evening of The Great American Songbook with its Ambassador, Michael Feinstein and guest artist, Barbara Cook. For the audience of 1,600 filling the Palladium it was a love fest.

The Terence Blanchard Group, featuring New Orleans’ jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, joins the 2013 Tanglewood season line-up with a performance in Ozawa Hall on Friday, June 28, at 8 p.m. Mr. Blanchard first performed at Tanglewood during Jazz Fest on August 31, 2008.

American folk singer Joan Baez, and folk rock duo the Indigo Girls, have been added to the 2013 Tanglewood line-up, with a special concert in the Shed on Sunday, June 23, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. Joan Baez and the Indigo Girls last performed at Tanglewood on August 30, 1990. Also performing this year will be Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds Five and Guster with support from Boothby Graffoe as part of their 30 city “Last Summer on Earth Tour” on Tuesday, July 23, 2013, at 7 p.m.

This is the second in a series of articles on the crisis in the arts by Larry Murray. They are reposted with permission of Berkshire On Stage. He reports that appropriations to state arts agencies grew by 110 percent between 1992 and 2001, reaching an all-time high of $450.6 million in 2001 before decreasing to $354 million in 2008. Since 2008, state appropriations have decreased by 27 percent, close to 1996 spending levels.

Andris Nelsons, who helms the Birmingham Symphony in England, is everywhere these days. He can pick and choose his venues, but the big, tantalizing question is Boston. He conducted there last week and early this week and reports that the acoustics in Symphony Hall are superb. Members of the BSO do not hide their enthusiasm for this thoroughly musical young man.

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.