Tanglewood concert reviews

How to get to the Berkshires

Here are inks for local and regional public transportation depots and stops, plus where to get Peter Pan bus and Amtrak train schedules and tickets: how to get to the Berkshires.

Beethoven and fate at Tanglewood, July 11, 2021

Article by Dave Read

The BSO program for July 11, 2021 included a concerto by Sibelius, a symphony by Dvorak, both natives of the 19th century, that were preceded by something composed by John Carlos, who was born during the Reagan administration.

Where else in the entertainment-scape can we find such fare, can we witness the work of a living artist yet wrestling with the gods of his genre? The genesis of Mr. Carlos’ work arises in an encounter with Beethoven’s notebook of 1815, wherein he read this:

“Iliad, The Twenty-second book.
But fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share
In my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit
And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.”

Carlos writes this in today’s program notes:

“We know that Beethoven strived to overcome many obstacles in his life and documented his aspirations to prevail, despite his ailments. Whatever the specific reason for including this particularly profound passage from the Iliad, in the end, it seems that Beethoven relinquished to fate. Fate now conquers.”

The performance was beautiful, and the composer was called to the podium where we hope he heard Beethoven’s own acclaim amid the audience’s hearty applause as it filled the Koussevitsky Music Shed.

Baiba Skride’s performance of the Sibelius violin concerto in D minor, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the BSO’s rendition of the Dvorak Symphony No. 6 in D, under the sure hand of Andris Nelsons, combined to make for a splendid afternoon of musical entertainment, on a day such as one wishes were the norm rather than the exception, this rainy summer.

Bloomberg Bombs in Tanglewood Debut

Up until the pandemic, Tanglewood patrons were accustomed to the indulgence of James Taylor songs on the Fourth of July. They expected a return to normalcy until the host communities set the attendance limit at 9,000, which caused Taylor to relinquish the cherished date to the plutocrat Michael Bloomberg.

US Army howitzers at Tanglewood, July 4, 2021, Dave Read photo.

Bloomberg is widely reviled in Massachusetts for being the man who spent $50 million in an attempt to install Scott Brown in the U.S. Senate seat held by Elizabeth Warren. Who knows how much he pays the BSO for use of the Boston Pops to market his view of an America segregated into a military class, an entertainer/performer class, and the hoi polloi?

Whatever the amount, it appears to be enough to let him overrule the BSO’s own pandemic protocols:

In support of regulations set by the Tri-Town Health Department and the Lenox and Stockbridge health boards, Tanglewood will limit attendance capacity to 9,000—50% of its usual capacity of 18,000; this represents a significant increase over the previously announced attendance cap of 25%.

Concert programs will not exceed 80 minutes and will be presented without intermission.

What took place July 4th at Tanglewood was an offensive 180 minute TV show. They got little right and screwed up totally by positioning 3 howitzers right next to the Shed, where the green benches used to be, for the finale of the 1812 Overture.

We’ve witnessed that piece at Tanglewood for decades, always with the artillery properly located on the Stockbridge Bowl side of the sloping lawn, and always to great effect. Tonight, instead of being an acoustic appendage to a musical score, it was an assault on the senses, utterly devoid of artistic merit.

It has been said that the end of all art is peace; neither peace nor art was in evidence tonight.

There was one spot on the program where this orgy of diversity-pandering could be redeemed. While the Boston Pops played in the background, a series of performers walked to center stage to proclaim quotations from the work of notable Americans of African descent, finishing each with the author’s name and the date of the quotation.

How did they omit this: “I can’t breathe, George Floyd, 2020?”

2005 Tanglewood Jazz Festival

Sept. 3, 2005 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Review of Diane Schuur, Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Werner, Oscar Castro-Neves, Airto, performances at the 2005 Tanglewood Jazz Festival, in Lenox, MA

Saturday is the most festival-like day at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, with performances on each of Tanglewood’s three stages (Theatre, Ozawa Hall, Koussevitsky Music Shed) plus a panel discussion sponsored by the Jazz Journalists Association on the patio at Saranak, former home of Serge Koussevitzky.

The Tanglewood Jazz Cafe added to festival-feel this year, with performances by up-and-coming jazz artists in informal settings near Ozawa Hall. They began ninety minutes before each major concert.

At noon, the Legends Trio featuring Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, and Jay Leonhart took to the Theatre Stage and first legend Henderson took to the microphone for remarks “before this epic of improvisation,” as he put it. The epic lasted but sixty minutes, close to a quarter of which were filled with Henderson’s pat show-biz anecdotes.

Bucky Pizzarelli did get a couple of opportunities to display his tasteful wizardry on his seven-string guitar and Jay Leonhart practically stole the show with his very funny talking blues about being seatmates with Leonard Bernstein during a cross-country flight. And a young violinist named Sara Caswell was a welcome addition to the trio.

We caught about forty minutes of the panel discussion which convened an interesting mix of musicians and journalists to grapple with “The Big Cross-Over: Jazz, Classical, Pop and Beyond.” You can’t argue with the location, about half a mile from the main gate on the side of the hill commanding one of the best views in the Berkshires, but for one to take in the whole program would’ve meant leaving the “Legends” show early and maybe being late to the 3 PM at Ozawa Hall.

As it was, we heard plenty, including comments on the increasing importance of the Internet, at the expense of major record labels, as a means of distribution. Panelist Walter Beasley, a saxophonist and long-time faculty member (and alumnus) of Berklee College of Music, said that he encourages his students to “do it yourself” rather than rely on established labels, adding that he makes more money today selling his own CDs at concerts than he would with a traditional label deal.

During a segment on terminology, panelist Donal Fox, whose program “Remembering the Modern Jazz Quartet: Donal Fox, Inventions in Blue” was a highlight of the 2003 festival, offered the cautionary note that “it’s an important historical fact that artists do not use the word ‘jazz’,” citing Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis as examples.

Donal Fox and Steffon Harris Tanglewood Jazz Festival — Donal Fox and Steffon Harris perform during 2003 Tanglewood Jazz Festival

The very existence of any such thing as “Cross-over” was questioned by panelist Tom Reney, host of a daily jazz program on WFCR since 1984, who said he never sees references to such a genre in the mainstream jazz media. Beasley had a more provocative take on what may be seen by some as a meaningful genre when he said, “I hate smooth jazz because it isn’t smooth and it isn’t jazz.”

Probably due to logistics, the audience barely out-numbered the panelists, which is too bad because it was a very collegial group of experts, each of whom not only had pleny to say but also the facility to say it well.

Marian McPartland’s guest for her fourth annual taping of NPR’s “Piano Jazz” at Tanglewood was vocalist (and guitarist) Madeleine Peyroux, who, for about a week, had been the subject of articles in the British press that had her missing but that turned out to be a publicity stunt.

The ageless Ms. McPartland was at the top of her form, chatting with the audience that an arthritic knee and an injury to the other leg leave her “not one leg to stand on;” and that the constraints of taping for radio prevent her from being “free and easy as I like to be;” and introducing her guest as “a chart-topping chanteuse.”

Ms. Peyroux played selections from her current release “Careless Love,” about which she has said, “I am in love with every one of these songwriters as well as their songs. I was eager to make that heard during the recordings.”

It came across in performance, on Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End Of Love,” and Bessie Smith’s “Don’t Cry Baby,” and on Josephine Baker’s first hit, “J’ai Deux Amours,” which she explained that she means to reference her own dual allegiance for both France and the USA.

During the ninety or so minutes of the “live taping,” Ms. Peyroux seemed to be more comfortable in Ms. McPartland’s company, rather than in front of an audience of 3,600 fans, but her performance didn’t suffer for it. She was gracious, and sang beautifully; her voice sharing the fragile, vulnerable sound of Billie Holliday’s.

The headline event turned out to be a great crowd-pleaser but we found irksome because it was made to feel like dozens of sound samples rather than be allowed to coalesce into a fluid musical event. This was mostly the case during the opening set by the Count Basie Orchestra, when every solo was taken center stage followed by a bow to the audience and a handshake with band leader Bill Hughes and then the walk back to their seat.

They tell me that’s how it was done during the heyday of the Big Bands, but not only did it destroy the effect that was the composer’s object (in stringing together so many notes without big non-musical gaps), but it seemed demeaning to the musicians, the perfunctory handshakes resembling treats and pats on the head given to trick dogs.

Tony Bennett plays final concert of 2014 Tanglewood season.

Tony Bennett was absolutely splendid, as always, looking fit and tanned in royal blue suit and most ably accompanied by his quartet, Lee Muskier, piano; Gary Sargent, guitar; Paul Langosch, bass; Harold Jones, drums, as well as by the Basie band.

Mr. Bennett’s set was much more fluid; his custom is to sidle up to his sidemen during their solos and so direct the spotlight – and the applause – on them. And speaking of applause, he got one of the greatest rounds ever heard here when he announced mid-set, “I’m not working for pay tonight – I’m sending it all to the fellows down south.”

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.

Giancarlo Guerrero conducts climactic Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood

Article updated August 27, 2019 by Dave Read

To close the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2019 season at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero conducted the annual climactic Beethoven’s Ninth. The program opened with Arnold Schoenberg’s brief choral work Friede auf Erden, which translates to “Peace on Earth.” It has roots as a Swiss Yuletide poem, as Ode to Joy originated as a drinking song, making them perfectly suitable bedfellows for a Tanglewood afternoon!

Conductor James Burton’s Tanglewood Festival Chorus was outstanding; I am always in awe of the magnificient instrument they become, the synthesis of scores and scores of voices into some bespoke thing that pleases the senses as it moves the soul. For the Beethoven, of course, they are augmented by a solo quartet, soprano Nicole Cabell, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass Morris Robinson.

Maestro Guerrero, a native of Nicaragua who is music director of the Nashville Symphony, conducts with a focused and bold manner. Without seeming at all histrionic, he commands your attention – there was one passage where it looked as if he were an augur boring through the podium.

The program, with the “peace on earth” preface concluding in time for the national bell-ringing, reflects the orchestra’s decision to participate in what seems like a misguided project of the National Parks Service, of all people, to mark the anniversary of the arrival in the Virginia colony of a ship carrying slaves from Africa. We say misguided because the only people who may be up in the air about slavery today are busy dismantling America’s National Parks, and generally making life miserable for everybody.

Furthermore, descriptions of the ship’s arrival in 1619 betrayed the attention to detail of a Philadelphia lawyer, because 1619 did not mark the arrival here of slavery, which was a tactic used by indigenous peoples of North America, as it was on every other continent. Slavery is more a defect of human character, than an aspect of nationality.