Berkshire Lyric will present a gala concert at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall on Sunday June 9 at 3PM as the sixth and final concert of its 50th Anniversary season. Ozawa Hall is one of the foremost concert halls in the world, having opened in 1994 at the Boston Symphony’s world famous summer campus in Lenox. The chorus is excited to return to this elegant venue after having performed there several times in the early years of the hall’s opening. The 90 voice Berkshire Lyric Chorus will be joined by our own Blafield Children’s Chorus in an afternoon of great choral music from several centuries. Choral masterpieces by Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Rachmaninoff will be sung as well as contemporary American choral works by Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Stephen Paulus, Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridson. The program will be led by Berkshire Lyric artistic director Jack Brown and accompanied by Joe Rose.

Berkshire Lyric’s founder back in 1963 and guiding spirit until his retirement in 2006, Robert Blafield, will make a special appearance. Bob is writing a special work for this concert to be sung by both choruses, and will also be accompanying Jack Brown in a performance of Schubert’s An die Musik. The guest soloist for the concert is internationally acclaimed soprano Maureen O’Flynn. A native of Stockbridge and student of Robert Blafield as a teenager, she went on to sing leading roles at all the major opera houses of the world including the Metropolitan Opera. In her very early days, she was a frequent soloist with Berkshire Lyric. In this concert she will join the chorus in the gorgeous Mozart Laudate Dominum and also sing some surprise solos on her own. This promises to be a very special afternoon with a look back at half a century of community music making at the highest level.