Tanglewood

Wide Slumber is a taped work presented at the Prototype Festival.  It premiered in Reykjavik in 2014.  Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurdsson adapted a much lauded poem by Canadian a. rawlings. In evocative, erotic and riotous words. rawlings shows us the night zone between sleep and dreams.  Shakespeare dwelt there often – to sleep perchance to dream.  Wide Slumber is a large work.

Labor

Artists everywhere are communicating and presenting work virtually that was conceived and created or executed this year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Life and art had mostly moved from our physical to our virtual world. Artists at the Eclipse Mill have done the same. Here we present three projects, two 'real' and one online, just a slice of artistic work that's being created in 40 studios. 'IMPROMPTU' has become a virtual exhibition on August 15 and 'Airborne Transmission' has been installed as described below.

For the first time in its 139-year history, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will suspend its fall season of performances at Symphony Hall, September 16-November 28. Plans for winter programming will be announced in September,

Chef Daniel Boulud, a two star Michelin Chef at 'Daniel' in Manhattan has brought his crew to run his one star Michelin restauarant, 'Cafe Boulud' at the Gilded Age Mansion, Blantyre (Lenox, Massachusetts). The French inspired restaurant will remain open, Wednesday to Sunday, through mid-October.

My colleague Phillip S. Kampe spent opening day at Tanglewood. It. was not what he expected. He enjoyed bottled water only. Yet the scenery and the quiet was transforming. You can fill in the real thing with rich program streaming from the Boston Symphony.

Opening day at Tanglewood, at 10 AM in July 5, was not what one expected.

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Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a grande dame of Berkshire music, financed the building of a concert hall for the Library of Congress. A concert planned at Coolidge Hall this spring was presented live streamed instead. The Library of Congress joined with co-presenter, Portland Ovation, and the International Contemporary Ensemble to present a program that worked amazingly well in Zoom.

Tanglewood is cancelled for live performances but will continue on line.

Then 27 the Institute of Contemporary Art was the first of many boards that Sydney Roberts Rockefeller joined. Director Andrew C. Hyde quit not long after the beginning of his second term. Left in the lurch was a planned conference on public art. When she stepped up to rescue the conference the board made her director. She was on site during the renovation of 955 Boylston Street. It was designed and largely funded by the architect Graham Gund.

Tuning Meditation is presented by Ione, who lived with the composer, and Music on the Rebound. Participants from 30 countries joined on Zoom to listen for their own notes and others. Find a pitch that no one else is sounding. Tod Machover, America's most wired composer, was there. So too, quietly, piano and composing phenom Conrad Tao. The celebrated and willing joined together in unique sounds.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Network for New Music (NNM), an adventuresome Philadelphia group, gathered at The Discovery Center at the Hidden Reservoir in Fairmont Park.. The long pathway to the building’s main entrance leads visitors to a striking view of the center’s reservoir, a pristine, 37-acre body of water that was closed to the public for nearly 50 years. The Center provided a concert hall for music related to ecology.

Metropolis is a Grammy-nominated Ensemble founded by Andrew Cyr, who encourages artists to realize their bliss. The group was not named for the Fritz Lang film, but the temptation to take on this silent great must have been tantalizing. The live, electronic score by Ricardo Romaneiro was brilliant and brilliantly realized by the musicians. Cyr conducts.

The Crypt Session as imagined and realized by Death of Classical point the way to music’s lifefulness going forward. New, young audiences wait for months to get a ticket to one of these events. Tickets sell out moments after events like this Salon Séance are announced. Andrew Ousley, whose creation Crypt Sessions and The Catacombs assures us that more events in new locations are coming. A cave is promised in the future.

The Crypt Session as imagined and realized by Death of Classical point the way to music’s lifefulness going forward. New, young audiences wait for months to get a ticket to one of these events. Tickets sell out moments after events like this Salon Séance are announced. Andrew Ousley, whose creation Crypt Sessions and The Catacombs assures us that more events in new locations are coming. A cave is promised in the future.

It's time to mark your calendar. Tanglewood has annpunced the Popular Artists for the 2020 season. More to be announced later. By Popular Artist the BSO differentiates them from what we assume to be the unpopular ones. Its notable that so far the uber popular James Taylor is not a part of the lineup. But is likely to slip in late, As of now his usual slot for the July Fourth holiday weekend ia wide open. What's announced so far is the Popular prequel.

Jazz entrepreneur Fred Taylor has passed at 90. He never retired producing concerts and programming for the Cabot Theatre in Beverly. Not surprisingly his yet to be published autobiography, a collaboration with Richard Vacca, is titled What and Quit Show Business. Taylor booked Boston's Jazz Workshop/ Paul’s Mall from 1963 to 1978. From 1991 to 2017 he booked Scullers Jazz Club and produced the Tanglewood Jazz Festival from 2001 to 2007.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra announces Tanglewood’s first-ever fall/winter/spring schedule of performances and activities to take place on the grounds of the famed music festival, October 2019 through June 2020.

From 4:20 PM to an exit at 5:45 PM country music star Reba McEntire laid down a vapor trail of a jet charged fifteen tunes. It was the final performance of a record setting 2019 Tanglewood season.

Special concerts do not happen too often in one's lifetime. Fortunately, the double bill of Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals paired with Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, fit the bill as one of the most exciting musical shows that I have witnessed.

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Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook are treated like royalty. They are often referred to as prolific composers like Lennon & McCartney. They have been working together for forty years-churning out hit after hit. Their genius was shared with a jubilent and dancing in the aisles audience at Tanglewood.

It was a soulful night of nostalgia at Tanglewood. The Spinners went on at 7 and cooked. We needed the heat on a cool wet night. In ever sense they warmed up the audience for Gladys Knight. There was a long intermission before she went on at ten of nine and by 10:25 after some 20 songs we made our way home.

Three great musicians, one small music hall and an overflow lawn crowd made this special concert, a night to remember. Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavados and Yo-Yo Ma turned this marvelous summer night into magical music. It was an all Beethoven programp of three Piano trios.