James Taylor has three concerts and one Gala appearance on the Tanglewood 2012 schedule, marking the 20th summer he has performed there since making his Tanglewood debut in 1974. Accompanied by a band of first-rate musicians, Taylor is booked for July 2, 3, & 4, in what is becoming an Independence Day tradition in the Berkshires. Besides all that rock ‘n roll, Taylor is on the bill, along with other local favorites Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Peter Serkin, at al. for the 75TH Anniversary Gala Concert with the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center orchestras, scheduled for July 14.

James Taylor has been associated with the Berkshires practically for his entire career; his earliest experiences in the Berkshire county are referenced in the songs Fire and Rain and Sweet Baby James from his 1970 Warner Bros. album Sweet Baby James. In the early 1970s, he spent time at his friend Arlo Guthrie’s home in Washington, Mass., and 30 years later built his own house on the opposite side of October Mountain, in Lenox, home of Tanglewood, where Taylor’s annual appearances are not only wildly popular, but also of substantial importance to the economic health of Tanglewood and the local businesses that cater to and/or depend upon Tanglewood patrons.

Tanglewood season 2012 schedule overview

Tanglewood, the summer home in the Berkshires of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, celebrates its 75th anniversary with a season of special programs and events beginning June 22 and concluding September 2, 2012. There will be international radio broadcasts and first-ever recording and educational programs, including 75 streams from the archive of recorded Tanglewood performances since 1937, which will be available free for 24 hours on the day of the release, after which they will be available for purchase. 

Two gala concerts to celebrate Tanglewood’s 75th anniversary

Two special gala concerts on July 14 and August 18 mark the Tanglewood’s 75th anniversary. The July 14 gala will feature the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center orchestras, with performances by Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Peter Serkin, longtime Tanglewood friend James Taylor, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and other special guests, led by conductors John Williams, Keith Lockhart, and Andris Nelsons. This program will be made available to a worldwide audience through a series of international broadcasts, details of which will be announced at a later date.

Boston Pops Laureate Conductor John Williams, arguably the most well-known composer of his generation with many of the most memorable film scores of the 20th and 21st centuries to his credit, will be feted on the occasion of his 80th birthday year with a Boston Pops concert featuring classical music luminaries Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero, Jessye Norman, and Leonard Slatkin, along with performances by several Boston Symphony soloists who will be featured in Mr. Williams’s concert works.

BSO schedules two replicas of 1937 Tanglewood season

The Boston Symphony’s opening night concert of the 2012 Tanglewood season will set the tone for the 75th anniversary season with a program, under the direction of Christoph von Dohnányi, who was a Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1952, that replicates the very first BSO concert that took place on the Tanglewood grounds on August 5, 1937: an all-Beethoven program, opening with the Leonore Overture No. 3, followed by Symphony No. 6, Pastoral, and Symphony No. 5. This program will be made available to a worldwide audience through a series of international broadcasts, details of which will be announced at a later date.

A Boston Symphony all-Wagner program on July 21, featuring some of the best-known orchestral excerpts from Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried, Die Walküre, Parsifal, and Tannhäuser, under the direction of Wagner specialist Asher Fisch, will harken back to one of the most storied concerts from the orchestra’s first Tanglewood season in 1937, when a torrential downpour caused the August 12, 1937 all-Wagner concert to be interrupted three times, necessitating a shortening of the program due to leaks in the tent where the orchestra performed its first season.

This seemingly disastrous event triggered a happy outcome when funds raised immediately on the spot and soon thereafter were pledged toward building a permanent performance structure for the BSO—the historic Tanglewood Music Shed, which opened in the summer of 1938, and was rechristened the Koussevitzky Music Shed on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1988.

These programs are just two examples of what will be a season-long focus on many of the great musical moments of Tanglewood’s first 75 years.

Tanglewood 75th anniversary programs

A new discussion series, Concerning Music and Society, will feature a critics’ forum as well as a discussion on music and one on technology and film music. Further details will be announced at a later date.

75 new trees will be planted throughout the Tanglewood grounds enhancing what is already considered one of the most beautiful festival grounds anywhere in the world. In addition, Sandi Haber Fifield, a photographer from Westport, Connecticut, has been commissioned to create a souvenir poster in celebration of the special anniversary.

Tanglewood 2012 schedule highlight concerts

Here is a list of concerts that were scheduled to commemorate and celebrate the 75th anniversary of the BSOs summer home in the Berkshires at Tanglewood.

• Anne-Sophie Mutter as soloist/conductor for an all-Mozart program – July 13
• Pinchas Zukerman as soloist/conductor for an all-Bach program – August 10
• Yo-Yo Ma presents his Silk Road Ensemble – June 22 and 24
• Joshua Bell – July 7
• Yefim Bronfman – August 4 – also soloist with the BSO, August 11
• Christoph von Dohnányi – July 6 & August 4, 7, & 12
• Charles Dutoit – July 28 & 29
• Nelson Freire – July 27
• Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos – August 19, 25, & 26
• Lorin Maazel – August 3, 5
• Gil Shaham – August 19
• Jean-Yves Thibaudet – August 5
• Ozawa Hall, Gerhard Oppitz performs Brahms’s complete solo piano music
• Mark Morris Dance Group, Tanglewood Music Center musicians – June 28 and 29
• Chris Botti and his band will be featured – August 5
• Bernadette Peters – Boston Pops, July 8

2012 Tanglewood ticket information

Tickets to the 2012 Tanglewood season, priced from $9 to $117 for regular season concerts, go on public sale Sunday, January 29, through tanglewood.org or by calling SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200. Tanglewood continues to offer free lawn tickets to young people age 17 and under and a 50% discount on lawn tickets to college and graduate students.

Tanglewood contact info.

• 297 West Street (Rt. 183)
• Lenox, MA 01240
• Box Office: 617-266-1200; 888-266-1200
• Website: tanglewood.org

James Taylor who has been a resident of the Berkshires for several years and a frequent summertime attraction at Tanglewood will become a downtown Pittsfield attraction when A Christmas Carol opens on December 17 for a two week run at the Colonial Theatre. Taylor will appear in the role of Bob Cratchit, joining a cast that already includes wife Kim and sons Henry and Rufus who were in the cast last year too.

Berkshire Theatre Group, formed in 2010 with the merging of the Berkshire Theatre Festival and the Colonial Theatre, is producing the play under the co-direction of Eric Hill and E. Gray Simons III. The cast includes four graduate students from BTG’s partner academic institution, Brandeis University, Sarah Elizabeth Bedard, Sam Gillam, Brandon Green and Eddie Shields; three of Berkshire Theatre Group’s Artists-in-Residence, Rachael Balcanoff, Jacob Gold and Lauren Stanek; in addition to 20 children, representing nine schools and seven towns in the Berkshires.

The Colonial Theatre tickets contact information

• 111 South St. – Pittsfield, Mass 01201
• 413-997-4444
• TheColonialTheatre.org

(Photo of James Taylor in 2007 One Man Band concert at the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, by Jaime Goldenberg © BerkshireLinks.com)