Tanglewood

Tenor titan, Sonny Rollins, is the last of the greatest generation of post bop jazz. While a troubled teen he launched a career with many phases and changes that has lasted for decades.

During an ATCA meeting in Indianapolis we visited the Performing Arts Center in nearby Carmel, Indiana. The artistic director of the stunning theatre is Michael Feinstein. The complex houses the growing archive for his advocacy of the Great American Songbook. Through his performances and collecting activity the mandate is to keep vibrant the legacy of more than a century of great Broadway musicals. He was joined that night by Barbara Cook. That summer at Tanglewood Liza Minelli took a train from New York to join him as a guest on stage.

Hanging with WGBH DJ and host of Music America, the impeccable Ron Della Chiesa when jazz was king in Beantown. Recalling the lush life.

Country music icon Dolly Parton makes her Tanglewood debut with a season-opening performance Friday, June 17, at 7 p.m. in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, joining the Tanglewood 2016 Popular Artist line-up. Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Swing Orchestra will also perform in the Shed on Saturday, September 3, at 8 p.m.

During Soundblast '66 at Yankee stadium they pulled one blind brother, Stevie Wonder, off stage for another, top billed Ray Charles.

Bob Dylan—with special guest Mavis Staples—will perform at Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Music Shed on Saturday, July 2. This is Dylan’s third appearance at the Western Massachusetts music festival, having performed there in the 1991 season and again in 1997.

The concert opened with charming tone-poems by Ravel and de Falla, but after intermission, with Ravel's one-act "musical comedy," "L'Heure espagnole," a Feydeau-like farce, the charm quotient went up the scale. A charming cast contributed to a charming evening.

This summer we're going to make the Berkshires great again. It's going to be just terrific. The tourists and money are going to be pouring in. It's going to be incredible.

Tanglewood is appealing to all age categories with the addition of popular artists, Earth, Wind & Fire, Jackson Browne, Train and the B52's.

Depending on what acts are on tour it generally takes some time for the BSO to fill in the gaps with non classical programming. Of the four acts that have been added three have previously been featured at Tanglewood. In addition to previously announced artists Berkshire audiences will be offered Earth Wind and Fire, Jackson Browne, and Train. The dance band B-52s will appear with an evening of Pops.

Acknowledging the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the BSO programmed music by some of the greats based on his works. Music director Andris Nelsons brought his lively intelligence to the enterprise, in which a new work based on Ophelia's words by the Dane Hans Abrahamsen was the stand-out hit.

Tickets for the 2016 Tanglewood go on sale Sunday, January 24th. A diverse schedule of entertainers for the June 19th-September 1st season includes the return of Tanglewood conductor Seiji Ozawa, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and local favorite,James Taylor.

Hey Charles- I like that! With my white beard and ample belly, I could join the club with you and Santa. Below is one of a long line of my holiday poems, first written in 2005 and updated this year. Merry Christmas!

Hey kids get out your calendars. The 2016 season is beginning to shape up. OK James Taylor is returning to Tanglewood over the Fourth of July. But the season will be old by then. The fun starts at MASS MoCA on Saturday, June 11 with The National. That's almost as wicked cool as Wilco. Then Surf's Up on June 19. It's a day gig so no curfew when Brian Wilson presents his iconic Pet Sounds in its entirety. Multivalent trumpet ace Chris Botti slips into Ozawa Hall, where we have seen him before, on June 24. By front loading the season in such a manner July will seem like so over man.

When Frank Gehry was asked to design Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, he made one condition: that Yasuhita Toyota be hired as the acoustician. He was not going to build a hall for musical performance that did not have fabulous acoustics. Disney Hall is an acoustical dream and its warm, intimate seating encircling the musicians and performers is mirrored perfectly by real surround sound. Under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the LA Phil shines.

Highlights of the 2016 Tanglewood season include BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons leading Boston Symphony Orchestra in Acts 1 & 2 of Verdi’s Aida with Kristine Opolais in the title role (8/20); Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (7/29); Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (7/30); and music from Prokofiev’s Romeo And Juliet (8/21), plus music of Berlioz, Corigliano, Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius, and Tsontakis, as well as the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra’s annual Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert (7/31), an All-Brahms Program pairing the Symphony No. 1 and Piano Concerto No. 1 with Paul Lewis as soloist.

For the third evening of their triptych at Carnegie Hall, conductor Andris Nelsons presented the Russians at their bipolar best: dark battles and wild dances. Nelsons introduced himself at Tanglewood two years ago with a performance of the Symphonic Dances. He and the Boston Symphony exceeded themselves at Carnegie.

In 2014 Nelsons conducted Strauss' Salome at Carnegie. What a reprise Elektra is. Experience at Bayreuth may give the Maestro the ability to bring out the Wagner in Strauss, and then go far beyond to the condensed emotional pitch of Strauss and to his sheer beauty. Christine Goerke, fresh from her triumph in Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, gave a performance for the ages.

Strauss's early operatic masterpiece follows its Greek model closely to reveal the neurosis at the heart of modern life. Andris Nelsons led a white-hot BSO performance of a lurid, fin-de-siecle masterpiece. The cast, led by Christine Goerke, Jane Henschel and Gun-Brit Barkmin, was stellar.

Mingus and Monk were stone cold gone. Another way of saying total out there genius.

The last time Harry Connick, Jr. performed at Tanglewood there was a monsoon. Last night was a picture perfect evening as Connick and his nine piece band tore the roof off of the shed in a barn burner to close out the season during Labor Day weekend.

After a two year hiatus, Harry Connick, Jr returns to the stage at Tanglewood for a much anticipated Labor Day show on Friday evening, September 4th. Connick is a crowd favorite that hails from the 'Crescent City' (New Orleans).

The circus came to town joining the Pops for perhaps the most fun and entertaining evening of summer at Tanglewood.

With the opening of Red Velvet at Shakespeare & Company behind him John Douglas Thompson had time for a leisurely breakfast in Lenox. It was the latest in a series of interviews about his classical and contemporary roles that started with Othello in 2006. This is the first of two parts of that recent dialogue

The Berkshires' premier wine & food festival was a hit to the 1,000 plus patrons who wined and dined on local food and international wine.