tanglewood

Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo will be the focus of this Saturday’s Spotlight Series at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall in Lenox, MA at 5PM.The event is a journey celebrating creativity through acknowledgement of the ancestors of poetry and music in the story field of the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate.Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in an contemplation of her trailblazing life. Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. Poet Warrior is also the title of her new memoir.

A year ago when we were at Tanglewood, Gail Samuel was just days into her new job as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the eighth in the organization’s 140-year history. A year has gone by.Having helped establish the Los Angeles Philharmonic as one of the world’s most successful and publicly engaged symphony orchestras, Samuel now is carrying on the BSO’s mission of connecting classical music with community. She now leads the Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and Tanglewood, and will oversee a number of initiatives that will expand the reach and relevance of orchestral music in the Boston area, the Berkshires, and beyond.

In January of this year, Asadour Santourian was named the Vice President of the Tanglewood Music Center and Learning. Santourian is joining The Boston Symphony from the acclaimed Aspen Music Festival and School, where he served for 18 years as Vice President for Artistic Administration and Artistic Advisor. At the BSO, Santourian will leverage his experience mentoring artists to the BSO’s programs in support of the next generation of musicians. Leading all of the BSO’s training, education, and community programs, Santourian will focus on expanding broader representation through wide-ranging partnerships and collaborations.

Virtuoso Swedish trumpeter and frequent Boston Symphony Orchestra collaborator Håkan Hardenberger is the beneficiary of a new BSO commissioned concerto from the British composer Helen Grime, a former Tanglewood Music Center Fellow with a dynamic, sparkling compositional style. Andris Nelsons will conduct the piece "Trumpet Concerto: night-sky-blue" on Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. along with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” for orchestra, which closes with the composer’s substantial Symphony No. 3, a late work characterized by scintillating orchestration. The Grime concerto, which is inspired by images of nocturnal gardens, has been commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, Library of Congress, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. With both appointments, and in leading a pioneering alliance between these two esteemed institutions, Nelsons is widely considered as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene today. In October 2020, the BSO and GHO jointly announced extensions to Mr. Nelsons’ contracts. His contract with the BSO was extended until 2025, and his GHO contract until 2027. Tonight’s BSO Opening Night concert begins with a benediction by Leonard Bernstein, a setting in Hebrew for baritone that was the composer’s last work with orchestra; baritone Jack Canfield makes his BSO debut. The brilliant Chinese pianist Yuja Wang performs Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. And Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary 1913 ballet score The Rite of Spring will be performed.

Conductor of the Boston Pops and Artistic Director of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina, Keith Lockhart join us to discuss this summer's Pops' programs at Tanglewood - which include live score accompaniment of a screening of “The Empire Strikes Back” on July 15 and a special Remembering Stephen Sondheim concert on August 19.

The Tanglewood Music Center Fellowship Program is the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer academy for advanced musical study. The TMC offers an intensive schedule of study and performance for emerging professional instrumentalists, singers, conductors, and composers who have completed most of their formal study. We welcome Todd Seeber who joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra's double bass section in May 1988, and TMC Fellow bass player Kebra-Seoyoun Charles, a double-bassist originally from Miami, Florida. They received their Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Anthony Fogg is the BSO’s Vice President of Artistic Planning. He joins us to discuss this season at Tanglewood.

Tanglewood says visitors to the famed Berkshire County concert grounds won’t be required to show proof of vaccination, a negative COVID test result, or wear masks this summer.

This Sunday, June 12, at 3pm - The Empire State Youth Orchestra will perform a very special concert at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood in Lenox, MA.ESYO’s new Music Director and Conductor Etienne Abelin and the Symphony Orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Egmont Overture alongside Arturo Márquez's Danzón No. 2. And Fabrizio Cassol's Concerto Grosso for DJ/Electronics, Cello, Saxophone, and Orchestra is the centerpiece of the concert.