Tanglewood

Listed here are the Boston Symphony’s weekend and Popular Artist concert schedule for the 2026 season at Tanglewood (BSO weekend concerts in bold). Besides these concerts in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, and the winter and spring Tanglewood Learning Institute programs, there are concerts, recitals and other music-related programs throughout the Tanglewood campus. To see more Tanglewood schedula and ticket info. click here.

June 2026 at Tanglewood

• Jon Stewart, w/ Church and State – June 20, 7 pm
• Yacht Rock Revue – June 21, 2:30 pm
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis – June 26, 7 pm
• Paul Simon – June 27, 7:30 pm
• Paul Simon – June 28, 7:30 pm
• Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration, Boston Pops w/ Keith Lockhart – June 30, 7 pm

July 2026 at Tanglewood

• Boston Pops – American Titans: Bernstein and Sondheim – July 2, 8pm
• James Taylor and All-Star Band – July 3, 8 pm
• James Taylor and All-Star Band – July 4, 8 pm
• Philip Glass, Symphony No. 15, Lincoln – July 5, 2:30
• 7/10, 8pm – Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with Seong-Jin Cho and Excerpts from Swan Lake
• 7/11, 8pm – Mahler Symphony No. 4 and Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 with Emanuel Ax
• 7/12, 2:30 – Brahms Symphony No. 2 and Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2 with Eric Lu
• Ziggy Marley and Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue – July 14, 7 pm
• 7/17, 8pm – Simon, Barber, and Excerpts from Nixon in China with Renée Fleming
• 7/18, 8pm – Hisaishi conducts Hisaishi and Ravel with Jean-Yves Thibaudet
• 7/19, 2:30 – Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 with Daniil Trifonov
• Weird Al Yankovic – July 21, 7pm
• 7/24, 8pm – Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 3, Polish and Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 with Augustin Hadelich
• 7/25, 8pm – Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 and Paul Lewis Plays Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27
• 7/26, 2:30 – Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 and Mozart Violin Concerto No. 1 with Himari
• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, w/ Patty Griffin – July 28, 7pm
• 7/31, 8mp – Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Wagner, Sibelius, and Beethoven with Yefim Bronfman

August 2026 at Tanglewood

• 8/1, 8pm – The Marriage of Figaro
• 8/2, 2:30 – Joshua Bell performs Bruch Scottish Fantasy
• 8/7, 8pm – Yo-Yo Ma and Renaud Capuçon perform Brahms and Fauré
• 8/8, 8pm – The Many Voices of American Music with Yo-Yo Ma
• 8/9, 2:30 – Yo-Yo Ma, Arooj Aftab, Karen Ouzounian, and Christine Lee perform Tavener, Kalhor, and Golijov
• Hugh Jackman with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, Aug. 11, 8pm
• 8/14, 8pm – Copland Appalachian Spring, Beethoven Symphony No. 7, and Rountree For Martha (Variations on a Theme of Leonard Bernstein)
• 8/15, 8pm – Maestro of the Movies: A Tribute to John Williams
• 8/16, 2:30 – Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra with Marin Alsop, conductor, and Ray Chen, violin
• Brandi Carlile, Aug. 18, 8pm
• Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens, Ozawa Hall, Aug. 20, 8pm
• Cynthia Erivo with the Boston Pops, Aug. 21, 8pm
• 8/22, 8pm – Dvorák Symphony No. 8 and Bernstein Chichester Psalms
• 8/23, 2:30 – Beethoven Symphony No. 9, Ode to Joy
• Carrie Underwood, Aug. 29, 7pm
• Judy Collins, w/ Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rosanne Cash, Aug. 30, 2:30

September 2026 at Tanglewood

• Tedeschi Trucks Band, w/ Lukas Nelson, Sept.2, 7pm
• Alabamna Shakes, w/ Mavis Staples, Sept. 5, 7pm
• John Fogerty and Steve Winwood, Sept. 6, 7pm

By Dave Read – Since the expansion of Tanglewood to include the Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) in 2019, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) now offers concerts and music-related entertainment throughout the year – well beyond the orchestra’s familiar 8-week residency during July and August.

Tanglewood Learning Institute 2026 calendar of events

All performances are in Studio E, The Linde Center – get tickets here.

February 2026

• TLI Jazz: Tammy McCann – Feb. 14, 7pm
• TLI Jazz: Tammy McCann – Feb. 15, 1pm
• TLI Chamber Concert – Feb. 22, 3pm

March 2026

• TLI Chamber Concert – March 8, 3pm
• TLI Presents: Goitse – March 15, 3pm
• TLI Jazz: Sullivan Fortner Trio – March 20, 3pm
• TLI Presents: Berkshire Bach Portals—In the Key of Bach – March 21, 3pm
• TLI Presents: Arcis Saxophone Quartet—JSB:48 – March 22, 3pm

April 2026

• TLI Jazz: Nick Hempton—A Night of Soul Jazz From NYC – April 10, 7pm
• TLI for Families: Magic Piano & The Chopin Shorts with Derek Wang, piano – April 12, 10:30am
• TLI Presents: Winterreise – April 24, 7pm
• TLI Presents: postWinterreise – April 25, 7pm

May 2026

• TLI Presents: Mirage with Hub New Music and Daniel Wohl – May 1, 7pm
• TLI Jazz: Jumaane Smith – Sweet Baby! – May 8, 7pm

By Dave Read, August 31, 2025 performance – The 2025 season of music at Tanglewood wound up the day before Labor Day, with Bonnie Raitt headlining a bill that included Jimmy Vaughn with his Tilt-a-Whirl Band. For someone who fell into the Blues bag as a college kid in Boston, around the same time Ms. Raitt began her Blues apprenticeship across the Charles River in Cambridge, this was a nice way to close the season.

Because fickle fate never takes a day off, the incompetence of traffic cops had us stuck in jam for nearly an hour, costing us all but twenty minutes of Jimmy Vaughn’s opening set. The loss is more sorely felt because that twenty minutes is on par with any twenty minutes ever spent at the Blues trough.

For all the majestic beauty of the guitar when played by musicians as great as Vaughn and Raitt, twenty minutes within earshot Jimmy Vaughn and the Tilt-a-Whirl Band will make you wonder why every guitar slinger doesn’t buttress the manipulation of guitar strings with a dollop of ballsy brass!

The piece he ended his set with reminded me of a concerto, the guitar in conversation with the brass section, such is the way one perceives musical performance, in the aftermath of an eight week series of symphony concerts!

One of the most attractive features of the blues is that, as a discrete genre, it is as firmly rooted in tradition as it is determined to propel the tradition into the future. The way that happens is on the stage through performance, not in the studio or via digital editing.

Cover and tribute bands do the opposite because their audience are on nostalgia trips, and want only to hear tunes played exactly the way they were back in the day. They ain’t interested in progress, they’re regressive, like republicans.

By way of an encore, Ms. Raitt called her colleagues back to the stage for a tasty jam session, which worked such magic on me that I forgave the knuckleheads responsible for the traffic jam on the way home. Can’t wait to see who our friends at the BSO bring into the Shed next summer. Bonnie Raitt’s band included Duke Levine, guitar, vocals, James “Hutch” Hutchinson, bass, Ricky Fataar, drums, and Glenn Patscha, keyboard, vocals. Accompanying Jimmie Vaughan were Billy Pitman, Rhythm Guitar, Jason Corbiere, Drums, Billy Horton, Bass/Vox, and the Texas Horns: Al Gomez, Trumpet, Kaz Kazanoff, Tenor Sax, John Mills, Baritone Sax.

By Dave Read, August 30, 2025 performance – All I knew about Lynyrd Skynyrd, besides the unavoidable party anthems Freebird and Sweet Home Alabama, was that the musical wizard Al Kooper had “discovered” them. Anybody audacious enough to insinuate himself into Bob Dylan’s career, and play a key role in shaping the greatest song in rock n’ roll history – Like a Rolling Stone, is somebody I’m going to pay attention to.

Here is Al Kooper describing how he “discovered” Lynyrd Skynyrd.

And so, I was excited to attend my first Lynyrd Skynyrd show, even if none of the musicians Kooper produced are alive. It was fun enough to hear their renditions of the two anthems, but it was sad to hear them do their other big hit, What’s My Name, and sad to see the audience so eager to boogie along. The song is an anthem to people who like ’em young, like Jeffrey Epstein, Matt Gaetz, and the ogre from MarALago.

By Dave Read, August 14, 2025 performance – Tonight’s concert was the sort of program Ozawa Hall was designed to accommodate at Tanglewood, which is to say amplify and transmit into the countryside, for a further blending of human voices with the natural setting that enfolds them.

The Sixteen are a choral ensemble founded in 1979 by Harry Christophers, who conducted tonight’s performance. The choral group includes six sopranos, and four each of alto, tenor, and bass.

No less a span of seventeen centuries is represented in tonight’s repertoire, which consisted of lyrics and music composed by Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Arvo Part (b. 1935), William Byrd (1540-1623), and St. Patrick (372-466).

At the risk of seeming profane, one needn’t be a subscriber to any of the represented religious sects in order to be delighted by tonight’s concert. Love of music would suffice; special devotion to the music of artfully-trained voices is rewarded especially.

Except to the adept, the program wouldn’t appear to be very dynamic, nor even captivating – but, that is exactly what it was. From the first note to the last, The Sixteen and Maestro Christophers commanded the audience’s rapt attention. And certain pieces required certain placement of singers; that alone shows a fascinating aspect of choral music.

My own attention was such that I thought I could discern individual, discrete voices, even as they weave themselves into a single, rich tarton of delicate tone. It’s neat that ten days after this evening of choral art, Tanglewood presents the annual choral-orchestral extravaganza, Beethoven’s Ninth, and so transports us from the sublime to the spectacular.

By Dave Read, August 8, 2025 performance – Tonight’s performance at Tanglewood of Symphonie espagnole in D minor, for violin and orchestra by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andres Orozoco-Estrada with violin soloist Joshua Bell brought the composer, Edouard Lalo (1823-92), up from the depths of my musical ignorance to the first echelon of favorite composers.

The five-movement piece, written for a Spanish virtuoso friend of the composer, put both Mr. Bell and the BSO on full display of their own virtuosity. From the audience, one got a virtual workout merely following the sound around the orchestra as first this section then that one was emphasized.

I think there’s a tendency for a casual fine arts consumer such as myself to pay undue obeisance to subtlety and understatement. That stance was upset immediately tonight by the almost cartoonish open in Lalo’s symphony. It felt to me as if the composer wished to remind audiences that forthwith comes a big bright orchestra in concert with a spectacular violinist. Having gotten our attention in no uncertain tones, the orchestra and Mr. Bell carry us along for an exciting exploration of musical vertuosity.

After intermission, Maestro Orozoco-Estrada was vigorous in the orchestra’s thoroughly satisfying performance of Antonin Dvorak’s familiar Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World. Written during the Czech composer’s New York sojourn at the National Conservatory of Music, the piece is informed by Dvorak’s affection for both native and African American music. His reputation for weaving motifs and themes from folk lore into his compositions led to the New York job, hoping to add American works to the orchestral canon.