Tanglewood schedule June 22-July 5, 2012

Tanglewood schedule for the week before the BSO opens its 75th season, June 22-July 5, 2012 features Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble, June 22 and 24; Diana Krall returns to Tanglewood June 23; Mark Morris Dance Group performs June 28 & 29; A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor broadcasts live from the Shed on June 30; and James Taylor plays concerts on July 2, 3, and 4th.

Yo-Yo Ma, a beloved Tanglewood fixture who has performed at the festival in all but one summer since 1983, opens the 2012 Tanglewood season with two performances featuring his Silk Road Ensemble in Ozawa Hall Friday, June 22, and Sunday, June 24. With musicians from around the globe, the Ensemble will perform a special program that reflects a diversity of styles and nationalities, combining Western and non-Western instruments from the old and new worlds in ways that transcend cultural boundaries.

Diana Krall performs Saturday, June 23, in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, where she last appeared at the festival in 2009. The double platinum-selling recording artist is known for her distinctive jazz stylings across a range of repertoire, especially tunes from the American songbook.

The Mark Morris Dance Group makes its annual appearance in two highly anticipated concerts Thursday, June 28, and Friday, June 29, collaborating as usual with Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center. The program includes three Morris works: Something Lies Beyond the Scene, set to William Walton’s Façade: An Entertainment and featuring soprano and longtime TMC faculty member Phyllis Curtin in the role of narrator; Rock of Ages, set to the second movement of Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat, D.897; and Festival Dance, set to Johann Hummel’s Piano Trio No. 5 in E, Op. 83.

A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor and a colorful cast of friends from the shores of Lake Wobegon, has become a favorite Tanglewood tradition and once again broadcasts live from the Shed Saturday, June 30. James Taylor, another beloved and annual guest, appears in three concerts July 2, 3, and 4, in a program called James Taylor at Tanglewood, reflecting the style and the songs that have made him an icon. Tanglewood’s annual Independence Day fireworks display follow the July 4 concert.

The pre-season concludes Thursday, July 5, with the always outstanding Emerson String Quartet. In an Ozawa Hall program juxtaposing the classic and the new, the group performs Mozart’s String Quartet No. 21 in D, K.575, internationally acclaimed British composer Thomas Adès’s Four Quarters, and Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat, Op. 130, with the composer’s original Große Fuge finale.