Tanglewood: A Summer Tradition Transformed — New Content / Retrospective / Recitals from the World Stage

TANGLEWOOD 2020 ONLINE FESTIVAL:

WEEK SEVEN, AUGUST 10–17 

CONTENT AVAILABLE AT WWW.TANGLEWOOD.ORG;
FREE AND PAID VIDEO STREAMS ARE AVAILABLE FOR ONE WEEK AFTER STREAM IS POSTED AT WWW.TANGLEWOOD.ORG

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NEW CONTENT, RECORDED ESPECIALLY FOR ONLINE FESTIVAL:

• August 12 at 8 p.m.: Recitals from the World Stage featuring Boston Symphony Chamber Players, joined by pianist Vivian Choi, in works by Poulenc, Allison Loggins-Hull (played by BSO Principal Flute Elizabeth Rowe), Henze, Stravinsky, and Brahms, hosted by Karen Allen

• August 14 at 8 p.m.: BSO Musicians in Concert with Alexander Velinzon, Danny Kim, Adam Esbensen, Toby Oft, Stephen Lange, James Markey, and Mike Roylance, hosted by Lauren Ambrose, performing music by Beethoven and Baroque and 20th-century works for brass ensemble

• August 15 at 8 p.m.: Great Performers in Recital featuring pianist Conrad Taoperforming pieces by Beethoven, Crawford Seeger, David Lang, Tania León, and Conrad Tao, hosted by Nicole Cabell

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Click here for a sneak peek of pianist Conrad Tao’s recital, performing Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Study in Mixed Accents

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NEW TANGLEWOOD LEARNING INSTITUTE CONTENT:

• August 10 at 1 p.m.: TLI OpenForum: The Roaring Twenties presents “Theatre of Pleasure and Excess: Making Modern American Theatre” with Harvey Young

• August 12 at 10:30 a.m.: TLI OpenForum: The Roaring Twenties presents a panel discussion and live Q&A with Nadine Hubbs, Christi Jay Wells, and Harvey Young

• August 12 at 1 p.m.: TLI MasterPass featuring a violin class for Tanglewood Music Center Fellows with former BSO Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe

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FEATURED RETROSPECTIVE CONTENT:

• August 10 at 8 p.m.: Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra Encore Performances(August 2019 and July 2018) of music by Thomas Adès and Lutosławski conducted by Thomas Adès, hosted by Stefan Asbury with Thomas Adès

• August 16 at 10 a.m.: Tanglewood Music Center Chamber Concerts, an audio presentation of TMC Fellows performing chamber music by Brahms, Nathan Shields, Penderecki, George Lewis, and Beethoven, hosted by Norman Fischer

• August 16 at 2:30 p.m.: BSO Encore Performances (August 2009 and August 2013) of Keith Lockhart conducting the Boston Pops in film music and a Benny Goodman centenary tribute, hosted by Jamie Bernstein

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CLICK HERE TO VIEW COMPLETE TANGLEWOOD 2020 ONLINE FESTIVAL SCHEDULE, July 1-August 23, 2020

BSO Artistic Advisor Thomas Adès, BSO Principal Flute Elizabeth Rowe, pianist Conrad Tao, Boston Pops Conductor Keith Lockhart

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HOW TO ACCESS CONTENT:
IN ADDITION TO THE TANGLEWOOD 2020 ONLINE FESTIVAL FREE-OF-CHARGE OFFERINGS, OTHER ONLINE PROGRAMS RANGING IN PRICE FROM $5 TO $12 FOR A SINGLE STREAM, TO $15 TO $90 FOR MULTIPLE STREAM PACKAGES, ARE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC FOR PURCHASE VIA WWW.TANGLEWOOD.ORG

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TANGLEWOOD GROUNDS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC—WITH PHYSICAL DISTANCING AND CDC HEALTH AND SAFETY PROTOCOLS IN PLACE—SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS FROM 10 A.M. TO 4 P.M. AND WEDNESDAYS 9 A.M. TO NOON, THROUGH AUGUST 23; VISITS TO THE GROUNDS WILL REQUIRE ADVANCE REGISTRATION AT WWW.TANGLEWOOD.ORG

SCRIM PANELS MOUNTED TO KOUSSEVITZKY MUSIC SHED FEATURE NAMES OF 1,072 GRADUATING SENIORS THROUGHOUT THE REGION AND ARTWORK BY LOCAL ARTISTS; PITTSFIELD-BASED MILL TOWN CAPITAL IS LEAD UNDERWRITER, BERKSHIRE UNITED WAY AND GREYLOCK FEDERAL CREDIT UNION ARE SPONSORS, AND LEE BANK, THE PITTSFIELD COOPERATIVE BANK, AND PRICE CHOPPER ARE SUPPORTERS

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TANGLEWOOD 2020 ONLINE FESTIVAL, BSO AT HOME, BOSTON POPS AT HOME, AND BSO HOMESCHOOL AUDIO AND VIDEO CONTENT SERIES WERE CREATED IN RESPONSE TO CONCERT CANCELLATIONS OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS DUE TO CONCERNS OVER THE SPREAD OF COVID-19; SINCE LAUNCHING BSO AT HOME ON MARCH 23, BSO REPORTS WEBSITE TRAFFIC HAS DOUBLED AND MORE THAN 15 MILLION INTERACTIONS ON WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

The Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival is a groundbreaking digital series of audio and video streams featuring newly created content being recorded at Tanglewood’s Linde Center in July alongside previously recorded material from Tanglewood being released for the first time. The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever Tanglewood digital festival—designed to capture the beauty and spirit of the Tanglewood grounds—will feature artists and programs of the originally announced 2020 Tanglewood season, among other content. Click here to view a quote from BSO Artistic Administrator and Director of Tanglewood Anthony Fogg.

In addition to the Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival free-of-charge offerings, other online programs ranging in price from $5 to $12 for a single stream, to $15 to $90 for multiple stream packages, are available for purchase via www.tanglewood.org.

The Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival is being offered in response to continuing concerns over the spread of COVID-19 and official crowd restriction policies that have necessitated the cancellation of the festival’s live performance series.
NEW CONTENT AT WWW.TANGLEWOOD.ORG

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RECITALS FROM THE WORLD STAGE SERIES: BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS
Wednesday, August 12, 8 p.m. – Hosted by Karen Allen, $8 for single video stream, $42 for series
Poulenc’s Trio for winds and piano, a model of neoclassical style and French lyricism, opens the program, which continues with four solo works. BSO Principal Flute Elizabeth Rowe performs innovative flutist-composer Allison Loggins-Hull’s evocative Homeland which explores racial injustice and the concept of belonging. Edwin Barker plays Hans Werner Henze’s introspective solo bass piece San Biagio 9 Agosto ore 12.07, which refers in its title to an ancient Tuscan church. Steven Ansell performs Stravinsky’s ceremonially somber Elegy from 1944. The program culminates with one of the great chamber-music works of the late Romantic era and one of Brahms’ final compositions, the warm and lyrical Clarinet Trio, Op. 114, one of several works Brahms wrote for the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld.

Established in 1964, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players is an immensely flexible ensemble that includes first-chair players from the orchestra’s wind and string sections along with guest performers from within and outside of the orchestra.

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BSO MUSICIANS IN CONCERT FROM TANGLEWOOD SERIES
Friday, August 14, 8 p.m. – Hosted by Lauren Ambrose, $5 for single video stream, $28 for series
This concert opens with Beethoven’s String Trio in G, one of a set of three string trios representing the composer’s most important and substantial chamber music works of the 1790s. The concert continues with a potpourri of music for low brass instruments ranging from Gabrieli’s late 16th-century canzone and Johann Schein’s early-17th-century Padoua (Pavane) to a new work by West Virginia-born composer and jazz pianist Kevin Day. The BSO performers for the Beethoven are violinist Alexander Velinzon, violistDanny Kim, and cellist Adam Esbensen. Trombonists Toby Oft, Stephen Lange, James Markey, and tuba player Mike Roylance (right) play the other works on the program.

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GREAT PERFORMERS IN RECITAL FROM TANGLEWOOD SERIES: CONRAD TAO, PIANO
Saturday, August 15, 8 p.m. – Hosted by Nicole Cabell, $12 for single video stream, $90 for series
American pianist Conrad Tao, who made his Tanglewood debut as soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G in August 2019, is known as a composer as well as a pianist. Mr. Tao shows the breadth of his musical interests in this recital, at the center of which is Beethoven’s towering Tempest sonata, which exploits the full range and power of the piano. The shorter 20th- and 21st-century works flanking the sonata include two studies by the important American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger; Cuban-born composer Tania León’s Ritual, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang’s introspective wed, and Conrad Tao’s own contemplative All I had forgotten or tried to. Opening the program is a 2017 piece commissioned by Tao from Brazilian composer Felipe Lara, Injust Intonations, a response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Note there will be a special post-concert Q&A with Conrad Tao on August 15 only, available exclusively to patrons purchasing this individual event (or the Recitals from the World Stage series). A private link will be emailed to these ticket buyers shortly before the concert begins.

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TLI OPENFORUM: THE ROARING TWENTIES
Monday, August 10, 1 p.m. – Theatre of Pleasure and Excess: Making Modern American Theatre by Dr. Harvey Young of Boston University, $5 for single video stream, $20 for series
The 1920s witnessed the evolution of an array of dynamic performance forms—vaudeville, variety shows, cabarets, and musicals—that would serve as the foundation for a new American theatre. From Bert Williams to George Gershwin to Eugene O’Neill, innovators employed the stage to question “What it Means to be an American?” in an increasingly global world. They also imagined the possibilities of a new century. Skillfully balancing serious topics with fun and whimsy, theatre makers transformed popular entertainment throughout the decade. The talk will be followed by a live Q&A session with Tanglewood Learning Institute Director Sue Elliott. Please note: this TLI video stream is available August 10, 2020 at 10 a.m. through August 30, 2020.

Wednesday, August 12, 10:30 a.m., $5 for single video stream, $15 for series
Series presenters Dr. Nadine Hubbs, Dr. Christi Jay Wells, and Dr. Harvey Young join the stage for a thought-provoking panel discussion. It is followed by a live Q&A session with Tanglewood Learning Institute Director Sue Elliott. Please note: this TLI video stream is available August 12, 2020 at 10 a.m. through August 30, 2020.

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TLI MASTERPASS
Wednesday, August 12, 1 p.m. – Violin Class for Tanglewood Music Center Fellows led by former BSO Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe, $5 for single video stream, $32 for series
Malcolm Lowe joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as concertmaster in 1984, becoming the tenth concertmaster in the orchestra’s history and only its third since 1920. Mr. Lowe is a faculty member at the Tanglewood Music Center, New England Conservatory, and Boston University. Prior to his Boston appointment, he was concertmaster of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra. He studied at the Regina Conservatory of Music with Howard Leyton-Brown, former concertmaster of the London Philharmonic. Mr. Lowe also studied violin with Sally Thomas and Jaime Laredo and was greatly influenced by Josef Gingold, Felix Galimir, Alexander Schneider, and Jascha Brodsky. Please note: This TLI video stream is available August 12, 2020, at 1 p.m. through August 19, 2020.

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TLI SHOPTALKS
Thursday, August 13, 1 p.m. – BSO President and CEO Mark Volpe, $5 for single video stream, $32 for series
Thursday-afternoon ShopTalks feature candid, informal discussions on life, music, and the future of the field with conductors, composers, soloists, and unsung heroes. For this week, host and Tanglewood Learning Institute Director Sue Elliott interviews BSO President and CEO Mark Volpe. Please note: This TLI video stream is available August 13, 2020, at 1 p.m. through August 20, 2020.

From a June 25, 2020 recording session at the Linde Center for Music and Learning
(Photo credit by Hilary Scott) 

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RETROSPECTIVE CONTENT AT WWW.TANGLEWOOD.ORG

TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA ENCORE PERFORMANCES
Monday, August 10, 8 p.m. – Hosted by Stefan Asbury with Thomas Adès FREE video stream
In 2018 and 2019, the director of Tanglewood’s world-renowned Festival of Contemporary Music was BSO Artistic Partner Thomas Adès, who has achieved fame as a composer, pianist, and conductor. This program features two works in which he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, his hyperkinetic Asyla (recorded in August 2019) and Lutosławski’s tulmultuous Third Symphony (recorded in July 2018).

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TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER CHAMBER CONCERTS
Sunday, August 16, 10 a.m. – Hosted by Norman Fischer FREE audio stream
The finale to this series of Sunday morning broadcasts is bounded by two pillars: the C major Piano Trio of Brahms, about which the composer (modestly) wrote to his publisher that “you very likely have not published its equal in the last ten years,” and the third of Beethoven’s Op. 59 Razumovskyquartets in which he expanded the proportions and gravity of the quartet genre beyond anything that come before. In contrast, the central portion of the broadcast contains all 21st-century works—two by TMC composers, and one in memoriam. Nathan Shields was a Composition Fellow in 2015 and the recipient of the following summer’s commission for brass and percussion—a work of both terror and humor that he entitled Vigil, which received a tour-de-force premiere. Composer-performer-improvisor-theorist George Lewis is a member of the Composition Faculty; his Thistledown is written for piano, percussion, and cello, though its sounds transcend the size of the ensemble. And Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki—known for his groundbreaking explorations of texture and allusions to musical forms of the past—passed away on March 29, 2020. The Quintetto per archi is an arrangement of his 2008 String Quartet No. 3 that expands the group to include a double bass.

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BSO ENCORE PERFORMANCES FROM TANGLEWOOD SERIES
Sunday, August 16, 2:30 p.m. – Hosted by Jamie Bernstein FREE video stream
Boston Pops Conductor Keith Lockhart leads this program which is comprised of two different concerts. The first half, which is from an August 16, 2013 performance in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, features film music ranging from the main theme of Gone with the Wind to “Unchained Melody” from Ghost. The second half, recorded at Tanglewood on August 7, 2009, is a Benny Goodman centenary tribute with BSO Associate Principal Clarinet Thomas Martinevoking the 20th-century musical legend. Among the selections is a movement from Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, which Goodman premiered in 1950. Also included is John Williams’ rousing Summon the Heroes, which was composed for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The performance features BSO Principal Trumpet Thomas Rolfs playing the piece’s soaring solo.Board Members and Friends to Match Contributions Made to the BSO, May 15-August 31, in Support of Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival

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Brief Background on Tanglewood and the Boston Symphony Orchestra

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Tanglewood, located in the Berkshire Hills of Lenox and Stockbridge, MA, has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937 when the festival was founded by Serge Koussevitzky (BSO Music Director 1924-1949). In addition to performances by the BSO and the annual Popular Artists series, Tanglewood also presents concerts by the Boston Pops, a chamber music and recital series in Ozawa Hall, and performances by the Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO’s acclaimed summer music academy, established in 1940 by Koussevitzky. The Tanglewood Learning Institute—introduced in summer 2019 and offering a wide spectrum of performances and multidisciplinary activities designed to engage curious minds seeking to become more involved with music and the arts—is Tanglewood’s first new programmatic offering since the introduction of its Popular Artists series in the 1960s. TLI activities take place in the Linde Center for Music and Learning, a four-building complex that opened to critical and popular acclaim in summer 2019.

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Tanglewood typically draws an attendance of approximately 340,000 people and brings more than $100 million in economic activity annually to the Berkshires region. Except for several years during World War II, when the performance schedule was curtailed or, in 1945, canceled in its entirety, Tanglewood has been a fixture in the Berkshires and has strengthened its position as this country’s premier summer music festival. This year, the unprecedented health crisis resulting from the spread of COVID-19 has necessitated the cancellation of live performances with audiences at Tanglewood for summer 2020. In response to this understandable disappointment, the BSO has put all its creative energy into offering thoughtful and innovative online performance streams, Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival, designed to connect performers—both BSO musicians and guest artists—with audiences. In addition, the BSO is pleased to open the magnificent Tanglewood grounds to the public on a limited, scheduled basis.

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Further information about Tanglewood can be found at www.tanglewood.org; further details about the Tanglewood Learning Institute can be found at www.tli.org.