BerkshireLinks

Dave Read

Yo-Yo Ma leads master class at Tanglewood, August 7, 2019

By – Sometimes life in the Berkshires will feel like an embarrassment of riches, such as when you can attend a master class led by Yo-Yo Ma, as brilliant as any artist at work today, held in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, a structure and a setting as aesthetically pleasing as J.S. Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. The event is part of Tanglewood’s new Tanglewood Learning Institute OpenStudio program.

Yo-Yo Ma and TMC Cello Fellow Isaac Berglind (Hilary Scott)

Ma’s students were three Tanglewood Music Center Fellows – Isaac Bergland from Seattle, WA, Shangwen Liao, from Shenzen, Guangdong, China, and Ethan Brown from NY, NY. Each is nearning the end of intense musical educations and the beginnings of careers as cellists. You can’t help but think that such a class must be at least a little bit like a minor league baseball player getting batting tips from Ted Williams – in front of an audience!

Yo-Yo Ma, TMC Fellow Shangwen Liao, and an audience member explore the Bach Cello Suites (Hilary Scott)

And speaking of audience, when Mr. Ma asked for someone who does Irish dance, a gentleman leapt on stage faster than you can spell shilelagh! Whether or not Ma was expecting someone like the frenetic Michael Flatley, his volunteer performed a brief sample of “old time Irish dancing” while Shangwen Liao played a Bach passage.

TMC Cello Fellow Ethan Brown and Yo-Yo Ma during the TLI OpenStudio (Hilary Scott)

The exercise demonstrated some fine point of musicianship that lays beyond my ken, but also revealed something about spontaniety and being available for fun. As wonderful as their playing sounded to these undisciplined ears, each student also manifest aplomb and good humor – even glee, as when Liao grinned a thumbs-up to the audience while Maestro Ma swapped chairs for him!

Yo-Yo Ma cello master class Ozawa Hall; Dave Conlin Read photo.
Yo-Yo Ma cello master class Ozawa Hall; Dave Conlin Read photo.

Berkshires hotelsFind hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

Read Dave’s poem chosen for a Beat Poetry anthology

Article updated July 29, 2019 by

My poem, Dozen Ways of Looking at Stuff, has been selected for publication in the upcoming We Are Beat, National Beat Poetry Festival Anthology, which I think is scheduled for publication in late August.

Dozen Ways of Looking at Stuff

v.1

on the edge of nature
the haughty docent
said to me

here the pretty
flowers are and there
the poetry

v.erotic

on the edge of nature
the naughty docent
beckoned me

there the pretty
flowers are and here
the poetry

occidental version

the poet who dissembles
all day long to earn his pay
will have his say
if he assembles
honest verse along the way

oriental edition

the poet’s lot is
to limn what it has amused
the gods to encrypt

Metro Edition

Some poems reflect everybody
seen in the Metro by Ezra Pound,
while others recall faces I know
whose voices make a beautiful sound.

version vice versa

If it is the poet’s bane to like all the interesting stuff
then her boon is to love only what is perfect.

The poet’s bane is to love only what is perfect,
but her boon is to like all the interesting stuff.

v.epigram

consider any bag of thoughts,
some passel of inklings,
or worry of oughts:

string them together,
the least on top, laced so tight
that the other ones pop!

in re:form

The function of form in a poem
is to devise a scheme so that
you can conceal

the clue to your notion of hiding
an antonym to the rhyme
you mean to reveal.

v.homeric

Turned inward like a bad toenail is the mind’s eyeball,
an unblinking cyclops ready to light me up
like a bored cop at the intersection of reflect and write.

scholastic ed.

Poetry is Miss Zeitgeist
rapping on your knucklehead.

v.paean

Passing by the MacLeish homestead,
a poet espied the globed fruits and sighed
I’m just off the sweets, alas.

double paean

With a smile of recognition he lopes to work
looping George Harrison through earbuds.

Dave Conlin Read

Hotels in the Berkshires

Berkshires hotelsFind hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

Nelsons leads 2019 Tanglewood on Parade

Article updated July 27, 2019 by

Tanglewood on Parade took place on the penultimate Tuesday of July, only the second time this millennium that it hadn’t been scheduled for the first Tuesday in August. Since a good surmise is available, we’ll dispense with the transmission of a query up the media affairs ladder: the Maestro made it happen so he could participate, before returning to Europe for an August full of projects and programs?

BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons conducts the TMCO in Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries (Hilary Scott)

This is the BSO’s big fundraiser during Tanglewood, so, of course the music director should play a key role in the event, which includes a full afternoon of recitals and performances throughout the sprawling Tanglewood campus.

The evening concert is a spectacle of orchestras/choirs and conductors – four of each: Andris Nelsons and the BSO, Keith Lockhart with the Boston Pops, James Burton and the Boston Symphony Children’s Choir, Thomas Wilkins and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. Providing a preview of the massive Wagner weekend following, Nelsons led the BSO in “The Ride of the Valkyries.”

Thomas Wilkins conducts the TMCO and the BSO in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (Hilary Scott)

For the grand finale, which culminates in mortar fire and pyrotechnics, Thomas Wilkins leads the combined orchestras in the endlessly renewable 1812 Overture, Tchaikovsky’s paean to a forgotten Imperial deed, which sounds like nothing more than an excuse for a staid ensemble to cut loose and kick out the jams!

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Pops Orchestra
Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
Boston Symphony Children’s Choir
Andris Nelsons, Keith Lockhart,
Thomas Wilkins, and James Burton, conductors
Program to include
WAGNER “The Ride of the Valkyries”
from Die Walku?re
James BURTON The Lost Words, for children’s
choir and orchestra (world premiere)
TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture

Hotels in the Berkshires

Berkshires hotelsFind hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

2014 July 4 encore How Sweet It Is, video

Article updated July 19, 2019 by

We got lucky with the end-of-show crowd surge at James Taylor’s July 4, 2014 Tanglewood concert, recording five minutes of fairly steady video to afford a good look at how much fun he is having. Of course, the audio ain’t so hot, but still worth it to catch Lou Marini’s hot sax solo – and related hamming it up!

Milos classical guitar at Tanglewood, July 17, 2019

By – Classical guitarist Milos drew a large and appreciative audience to Ozawa Hall on July 16, the third program to feature guitar we’ve enjoyed this season at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, following concerts by Richard Thompson, also in Ozawa Hall and by Rodrigo y Gabriela in the Koussevitsky Music Shed. A full appreciation of the marvelous possibility the guitar affords an artist was apparent in each of those three programs; the opportunity to attend all three almost constitutes an embarassment of riches! (Alas, that’s life in these bucolic hills.)

Ozawa Hall environs during Milos classical guitar concert at Tanglewood; Dave Conlin Read photos.
Ozawa Hall environs during Milos classical guitar concert at Tanglewood; Dave Conlin Read photos.

Twenty years on the Tanglewood beat, we are delighted by the new buildings uphill from Ozawa Hall, blending into the old familiar vista – so soon ago itself an architectural and acoustic revelation.

Lenox the Berkshires summer photos

Article updated July 16, 2019 by

Following a busy weekend at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, where Maestro Andris Nelsons conducted three programs comprised of a dizzying array of music composed by Copland, Grieg, Verdi, Beethoven, and HK Gruber, who was present to enjoy the audience’s enthusiastic response to his Aerial, Concerto for trumpet and orchestra, sharing the limelight with trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger, whose vertuosity and flair was thrilling, we captured a few snapshots of Lenox, as dusk approached.

Hotels in the Berkshires

Berkshires hotelsFind hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.