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2012 Tanglewood reviews

2012 Review A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

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The 13th live broadcast from Tanglewood of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor, featured the familiar guests Arlo Guthrie, Heather Masse, and The DiGiallonardo Sisters, as well as the Guys All Star Shoe Band and the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Mr. Fred Newman.

The show got off to a fast start with the DiGiallonardo Sisters harmonizing on a hilarious Berkshires version of George M. Cohan’s Give My Regards to Broadway:

“Give My Regards to Stockbridge, Remember me To Lenox and Lee;
…
Oh how my heart is yearning, to see the Koussivitsky Shed;
Give my regards to Tanglewood, We’re gonna try to knock’em dead.”

By the time the live broadcast closed with City of New Orleans, Arlo Guthrie at the grand piano leading a vast chorus of singers, Mr. Keillor had once again delivered a thoroughly entertaining program, comprised of a perfect blend of heartfelt and hokey singing and humorous skits with pan-o-sonic effects. Then there’s the News from Lake Woebegon, which always has a poignancy because its denizens and their misadventures, for all their odd particularities, are pretty much like the people we know, some of whom we miss now.

Sometimes at Tanglewood, the 2 hour radio program can feel like a pretty fancy warm up to the best event of the day – the on-stage after party concert and sing-along that today lasted well past 9PM. We left the Shed during the enchanting Swing Low Sweet Chariot, which is great fun to sing as a member of an ad hoc choir of thousands.

Thirty minutes earlier we sang along with Arlo on Home on the Range; watching him singing that song and wearing a handsome cowboy hat, we remembered that Arlo Guthrie was named for Davy Crockett!

Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble June 24, 2012 concert review

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June 24, 2012 Article by

Yo-Yo Ma with musicians from the Silk Road Ensemble, Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood.
Yo-Yo Ma with musicians from the Silk Road Ensemble, Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood.; photo: Hilary Scott.
Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble got the BSO’s 75th anniversary season at Tanglewood off to a rousing start with a pair of concerts in Ozawa Hall June 22 and 24. Whatever Maestro Koussevitsky had in mind when he established the orchestra’s retreat and training center in the Berkshires, not even a visionary of his stature would have forseen a concert opening with a green haired gaita player wending her way through the audience.

As the musicians assembled on stage and settled into an improvisation called Wandering Winds, Christina Pato, a raven-haired Spaniard (streaked with Kelly green), strolled through the audience on the lawn playing the gaita, the bagpipe of the Galician people of Spain. She is the second Galician bagpiper I’ve seen in concert, after Carlos Nunez, who toured with the ChieftainsJimi Hendrix.

Galician bagpiper Christina Pato

Although fresh and original to all appearances, Ms. Pato is anything but a novelty act. She has a Doctorate from Rutgers and briefcase full of other academic credentials, leads her own touring band, and is a member of the Silk Road leadership council. The prominence of her role in this report is a function of my predilections; the show was so varied and full of treats that one couldv’ve focused on a dozen other elements.

Such as the finale, Turceasca, from the Romanian gypsy tradition. It allowed all 17 musicians to seem to solo simultaenously, until a duet/duel developed between Wu Tong and (oops!) Ms. Pato. Wu Tong plays the Chinese sheng with the verve and personality one remembers from Dizzy Gillespie.

Besides the role of host/MC, Yo Yo Ma was largely an ensemble player, except on Qasida, premiered on the 22nd. A Silk Road commission by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, from Uzbekistan, it was written for MA to play with Kayhan Kalhor on the ancient Persian kamancheh.

There were 20-30 minutes of encores, which resulted in as upbeat and cheerful an exiting audience as I’ve ever seen. They are sure to regale their friends about this event, a concert by the Silk Road Ensemble, at Ozawa Hall where Yo Yo Ma founded it in 2000. Depending on their predilections, they may focus their reports on the pipa, or the tablas, or the jang-go.

Diana Krall at Tanglewood June 23, 2012 review

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Diana Krall at Tanglewood

June 23, 2012 performance reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Diana Krall performing at Tanglewood, June 23, 2012
Diana Krall performing at Tanglewood, June 23, 2012; photo: Hilary Scott
Miss Diana Krall gave a bravura performance in the Shed on the opening weekend of 75th season of concerts at Tanglewood. The show featured a crackerjack combo Anthony Wilson (guitar), Robert Hurst (bass), and Karriem Riggins (drums) in support of an almost wierdly diverse setlist that visited many provinces of the jazz empire. While it wasn’t the sort of program Miss Mary Aspinwall Tappan had in mind in 1936, when she laid the family cottage (and 210 sylvan acres) on Maestro Koussevitsky (and the BSO), it was the sort we locals have become accustomed to while the BSO has become an increasingly important element of life in the Berkshires*.

Since her first Tanglewood apearance years ago, on a bill as Tony Bennett’s guest, when “show-stealing siren” could’ve been an apt description, Miss Krall has become a full-fledged star with a commanding stage presence and an easy rapport with the audience. That was especially evident during the solo portion of her two hour set when she led into several numbers with references to her parents; and talked about her 5 year old twins. (She made a surprise appearance just before their birth during husband Elvis Costello’s performance on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz during the 2007 Tanglewood jazz Festivl).

Miss Krall’s artistry is a melding of her voice and the piano; combined with her personality and musical sensibility, tonight’s two hour concert thouroughly satisfied. Her band was equally brilliant, bass and drums blending in primarily supportive roles, but bassist Robert Hurst had some prominence, including one passage where he brought a song home with descending notes until perfect silence was made to reverberate.

Guitarist Anthony Wilson alternated between solo and support all night, as well as being Miss Krall’s go-to guy in deciding the setlist. He played several leads and riffs that excited the audience, and altogether produced the perfect complimentary sound to Miss Krall’s.

setlist: Fats Waller, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Sergio Mendes, Tom Waits …

Her setlist drew from the work of Fats Waller, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Sergio Mendes, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan and included a stunning rendition of John Lennon’s Come Together. Since Quiet nights was released in 2009, Krall has performed on four continents, produced Barbra Streisand’s Love Is the Answer, contributed Simple Twist of Fate to the charity album Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International and performed on Paul McCartney’s new album, Kisses On The Bottom.

Opening the show were the Canadien duo Denzell Seymore and Devon Thompson; really tasty music, but just too much patter for an un-familiar opening act.

*We overheard a conversation – someone was bemoaning the Berkshires remoteness from the ocean or the great lakes – her interlocutor said true enough, but can’t you imagine Tanglewood as a sort of ocean where wave after wave of great music washes ashore?

2011 A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

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Just as Tanglewood is important to the Berkshires, so too is it important to Garrison Keillor, who told the audience in 2000 during the first live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood that it was where he and his wife had their second date. Keillor and his nonpariel radio crew have come back every year since, putting on shows in the Koussevitsky Music Shed on the Saturday before the Boston Symphony Orchestra arrives for their summer residency.

It is an aspect of Garrison Keillor’s genius that he can basically do the same thing week after week year after year for decades and have each program feel like a singular work of art. The lineup for the 12th annual broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood hasn’t been announced, but it takes only a glance at a list of guests from the first eleven shows to be assured that it will be a winner. Follow the links to see our review, plus photos and/or video from that show.

Tanglewood picnic with Garrison Keillor and Andrea Suchy

This video clip of Garrison Keillor and Andrea Suchy serenading Tanglewood patrons minutes before the start of the June 28, 2010 live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood shows an element of the show unknown to the radio audience.

An extra benefit from attending the live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion are the encores, such as these from the 2009 show posted to our Youtube channel: