The Koussevitzky Music Shed dominates the center of Tanglewood’s grounds, a grand wedge-shaped structure that fans out onto the sprawling lawn beyond. For almost a century, attendees have flocked to the leafy summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to take in everything from the music of Wagner and Bernstein to Raffi and Nas.
“If you look at the logo of Tanglewood, it's a tree. And Tanglewood, the experience of Tanglewood, it's inextricable from nature, and that's the best part of this,” said Tanglewood and BSO Director of Patron Services Amy Aldrich.
This summer, the proceedings within the shed – including performances by the BSO, Weird Al, Paul Simon, Wynton Marsalis, and Jon Stewart – will be powered by newly installed solar panels.
“And this is something that we are proud of, and really excited about- To be able to say that Tanglewood is doing its part to reduce our carbon footprint and increase sustainability,” Aldrich told WAMC.
The cavernous building has a stage built for a full orchestra and can accommodate around 5,000 concertgoers under its massive roof.
“The system size is over 250 kilowatts, and that's a huge component," said Aldrich. "Where you put some solar panels in your house, that's maybe two to three kilowatts.”
She says the project has been in the works for years, and has been laden with a bevy of considerations.
“We didn't want to offset or take away from the architectural footprint of the venue," Aldrich explained. "The Tanglewood Koussevitzky Music Shed is iconic and historical, and we didn't want to alter that in any way. We really were very conscientious in maintaining the acoustical integrity. We didn't want something that was going to be noisy or humming, or making noises that would be distracting, and we're right in the heart of the Berkshires, where there's a lot of weather that comes in as well.”
The panels were purchased with the help of the Fitzpatrick Charitable Trust and the Mass Office of Travel and Tourism. Aldrich says Tanglewood expects them to pay for themselves within four years.
“We're expecting approximately 122% of the shed annual electrical consumption to be what that offset will be, and that that's great, because we're going to take that excess, and it's going to provide bill credits to other campus meters throughout Tanglewood through National Grid's metering program," she said. "And that's saving us over $100,000 a year in avoided electricity costs, bill credits.”
With the summer season about to fully kick off, years of planning and careful implementation are now over. The new clean energy infrastructure on the shed has been installed so as concert goers won’t even notice it’s there.
“The beauty of the relationship between us doing a project like this with solar panels on the shed and being in the environment we are with beautiful music, incredible music, with our amazing orchestra in the heart of one of the most beautiful places in nature- It's a marriage made in heaven," Aldrich told WAMC. "And that's something we're really proud of and very excited about.”
