Tanglewood popular artists

Trombone Shorty, Ben Harpur double bill stuns Tanglewood throng

Article updated September 6, 2019 by Dave Read

Bob Dylan’s song from the Basement Tapes, Too Much of Nothing, comes to mind while reflecting on my last visit to the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood during the 2019 season, ironically, because both headliners that day delivered an evening’s worth of entertainment, and I could’ve gone home a happy man with my musical appetite fully sated at the conclusion of Trombone Shorty’s set.

Nothing but good music tonight – but was too much squeezed into one program? I think separate programs of more typical two set shows would have been better, allowing us to stretch out and savor the music, and allow the enjoyment to linger, rather than having to rinse the auditory palate and gear up right away for another hullabaloo.

Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue 2019 Tanglewood concert review; photo:Hilary Scott.

If I had split after Shorty’s set, it would have been the dumbest decision I’d made since that time I wore my white bucks after Labor Day! Ben Harpur and the Innocent Criminals are that good. Just two nights earlier, we split the scene at the conclusion of the Mavericks rousing set, 100% incurious to hang around to find out what Squeeze sounds like. (We had taken a pass during the 1970s on the Second British invasion, which the advance publicity listed Squeeze as being in the vanguard of.)

Ben Harpur and the innocent Criminals 2019 Tanglewood concert review; photo:Hilary Scott.

I really was a little tired after the first set, because I’d got caught up front in the aisle where I’d gone to see what all the fuss was about and got trapped by aisle-clogging dancers, and eventually got caught up in the fun – the sort of infectious fun, with a pronounced aerobic aspect, that may be common in the Big Easy, but sure ain’t hereabouts! And speaking of dancing in the aisles, one could dust off the “cut a rug” cliche if you’re talking about the aisle in the Shed where the big green benches used to be, because they replaced the benches with beige carpeting!

But seriously folks, this was a real treat – two musicians with mastery of their instruments, no small feat in itself, but also two musicians sufficiently tuned in to what an audience wants that they assemble the right cohort of equally great players into bands for the performance of skillfully paced shows. One example from each set: Dan Oestreicher’s solo on baritone sax was out of this world as was the bit of business by percussionist Leon Mobley, a student of Babatundi Olatunji, namechecked in I Shall Be Free (1963) by the only musician who could bookend this report, Bob Dylan.

Mavericks thrill scant Tanglewood audience

Article updated September 4, 2019 by Dave Read

Now this was more like it – an unannounced young hard-working musician added to the bill for a concert by a band called Squeeze in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood, a bill that already boasted the Mavericks, with chastened former maverick Raul Malo included in tonight’s nonet from Nashville.

We mention that this band with a heavy Latin accent is based in the home of American county music because a mere four days earlier, the guest conductor who led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in their annual summertime swansong, Beethoven’s Ninth, Giancarlo Guerrero, a native of Nicaragua, is music director of the Nashville Symphony, with which august outfit the Mavericks have shared a program!

Too often these “popular artist” programs are nostalgia trips featuring groups that once were hard-working bands but have long since become franchises that attract audiences eager to reprise that brief shining moment – high school. If you want to see something funny, come to one and watch these incurious people attempting adolescent choreography with their imminent heart attack bodies.

Musical artists are restless people who keep moving from one unique project to the next one. Popular artists are fidgety by comparison; in concert, they are more likely to tweak an act resembling the one that got them up onto the big stage in the first place. They have become faithful keepers of some golden goose. So hooray for the young musician who ignored a nearly empty Shed and cut loose for her first time on the big stage. This is for certain – she’d look insane doing the same act at seventy five!

This was a Mavericks show for us, largely because an old pal took us to see Malo in concert at the estimable Iron Horse some years ago, and we wanted to repay the favor. The advance PR described Squeeze as emerging from the second British invasion. That would put them beyond our curiosity; we’ve been burned – er, given a splitting earache, by attending shows by unknowns; by hanging around to learn what all the fuss is about.

Richard Thompson at Tanglewood, June 21, 2019

Article updated June 22, 2019 by Dave Read

Richard Thompson strode to center stage in Seiji Ozawa hall June 21, carrying a guitar, which was all it took to fill the august band box with beautiful sound. Besides being a first-ballot shoo-in for the guitar hall of fame, artist division, Thompson also is a master at the art of stagecraft. His 110 minute concert revealed him to be a generous, tenacious, and pretty funny guy. Hip to him since the days of Fairport Convention, this was my first concert, and it was awesome.

Buy Richard Thompson music;
Read about Richard Thompson at wikipedia.
Listen and watch as Richard Thompson performs his classic song “Shoot Out the Lights” on his Lowden guitar and chats with Mark Segal Kemp about his approach to playing both acoustics and electrics.

And somehow, I heard Buddy Holly throughout the show. Something about that big bold acoustic sound* – the quality of the strings, the resonance of the soundboard, the spirit of the one animating the tools of his trade.

It was a sound vein mined to such great effect by Dylan until he got bored with it and veered away in 1965 at Newport to create rock ‘n roll’s first tributary – Dylan music. Meanwhile, back across the pond, Thompson and his mates formed bands with cool names such as Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and Pentangle.

… to be continued.

*That may be my entry in the redundancy tournament.

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

Live From Here at Tanglewood, June 15, 2019

Article updated June 20, 2019 by Dave Read

Chris Thile has the hardest job in show biz, following Garrison Keillor as host of a live radio broadcast from the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood. The show he ran June 15, 2019, was on par with the 16 editions of Keillor’s that we covered.

Just as we remember the bit from the initial show in 2000, when the pretend Bill Clinton responds to Keillor’s inquiry as to what it’s like to be leaving the house he has called home for eight years by mimicing Bob Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone, Thile’s troupe had us rolling in the aisles with something as funny and as original – and therefore, memorable.

They created a universe in which whenever a put-upon father (Father’s Day on the horizon) responded to his teenager in an unsatisfactory way, a clip from the awesome Harry Chapin’s Cats in the Cradle would fill the air and guilt-trip dad into action!

Thile also has pre-existing Tanglewood conditions – his maternal grandfather, a composer, had a piece performed here sixty some years ago, AND he himself is a wrangler in Yo Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo. Keillor had one too – a second date with his eventual wife when she was a student here at BUTI. The both are right up front about how much they like Tanglewood, especially that this show concludes their live radio season. And the audience seems pretty happy too.

Listen to the show.
Cellphone snaps of the lawn audience and a couple views of the stunning new Tanglewood Learning Institute up by Ozawa Hall.

Lawn scene Live From Here at Tanglewood, June 15, 2019; photo Dave Conlin Read

Lawn scene Tanglewood Learning Institute — Ozawa Hall and Tanglewood Learning Institute

Hotels in the Berkshires

2019 Tanglewood schedule

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones at Tanglewood, June 29, 2018

Article updated July 2, 2018 by Dave Read

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones played a generous and rousing concert in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood on Friday, June 29, 2018. We hesitate to describe the performance as firey or electrifying, because then the band may be blamed for the heat wave that followed in their wake and three days later has not let up. This show comes a little past the midway point in the Popular Artist Series and was the first of four that we’ll attend in a six day stretch, about which we’ll write more when it’s over! Meantime, here are photos from the show:

Bela Fleck and the Original Flecktones at Tanglewood, June 29, 2018; photo: Hilary Scott.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

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Tanglewood tickets and box office information

Tickets for the 2018 Tanglewood season available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org, SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA.

Getting around the Tanglewood campus

The Tanglewood campus, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center comprises several hundred acres in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge. It is the location of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and Ozawa Hall, where hundreds of thousands attend concerts and a variety of events, including picnics. We always advise new visitors to arrive early and take their daily walking exercise wandering the beautiful Tanglewood grounds. This dynamic map of the Tanglewood grounds includes photos and information for such points of interest as Aaron Copland Library, Highwood Manor House, The Glass House, and The Lion’s Gate.

Harry Connick, Jr. at Tanglewood June 23, 2018

Article updated June 25, 2018 by Dave Read

Harry Connick, Jr. transported the Tanglewood audience Saturday night from the high land overlooking Lake Mahkeenac to the Ninth Ward below Lake Pontchartrain by way of a concert/seminar of nearly two and a half hours that included a second-line parade through the Koussevitsky Music Shed.

Is it a coincidence that America’s sole contribution to the world of art – jazz, encompassing the blues (or vice versa) has its origins in the capital of the slave trade, America’s original sin? Probably not, since the two are inextricably linked; my guess is that one is compensation for the other, as if the beauty and transcendent power of jazz is how the universe seeks atonement for the horrors of slavery.

We Tanglewood patrons are likely to know as much about life in Latvia as we do about life in New Orleans; thanks to the musicianship and generosity of Mr. Connick and his band, we’ve gotten a taste of life in the Big Easy, without having to pay the dues required to make a living there. Perhaps most poignant tonight was Mr. Connick’s show-and-tell tribute to his childhood piano teacher James Booker, who got the gig thanks to the unconventional administration of justice by the District Attorney, Harry Connick, Sr.! After showing us how Booker taught him the rudiments of “stride” piano playing, he played a wistful Hear Me in the Harmony in tribute.

Other highlights from this show included solos and duets by Johnathan DuBose, Jr. on guitar, Arthur Lantin on drums, Lucien Barbain on trombone, and an amazing display of tap dancing by Mike Hawkins. Allen Touissaint‘s infectious Yes We Can Can was a party. An over-introduced Gospel segment preceded the band’s foray into the audience, for chorus after chorus of When the Saints Go Marching In, with umbrellas waving in genuine second-line fashion.

Wynton Marsalis and Louis Armstrong in the Berkshires

Harry Connick, Jr. spent a summer honing his classical chops here as a teenager, as did fellow New Orleanian Wynton Marsalis (Tanglewood Music Center Fellow 1979). Another denizen of the Crescent City, Louis Armstrong, held forth just down the road during Folk and Jazz Roundtables hosted by Stephanie and Phil Barber, which led to the brief but critically important Lenox School of Jazz – the first of its kind in the world.

[James Booker photo credit: By Lionel decoster – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link]