Tanglewood

Bloomberg Bombs in Tanglewood Debut, July 4, 2021

Up until the pandemic, Tanglewood patrons were accustomed to the indulgence of James Taylor songs on the Fourth of July. They expected a return to normalcy until the host communities set the attendance limit at 9,000, which caused Taylor to relinquish the cherished date to the plutocrat Michael Bloomberg.

US Army howitzers at Tanglewood, July 4, 2021, Dave Read photo.

Bloomberg is widely reviled in Massachusetts for being the man who spent $50 million in an attempt to install Scott Brown in the U.S. Senate seat held by Elizabeth Warren. Who knows how much he pays the BSO for use of the Boston Pops to market his view of an America segregated into a military class, an entertainer/performer class, and the hoi polloi?

Whatever the amount, it appears to be enough to let him overrule the BSO’s own pandemic protocols:

In support of regulations set by the Tri-Town Health Department and the Lenox and Stockbridge health boards, Tanglewood will limit attendance capacity to 9,000—50% of its usual capacity of 18,000; this represents a significant increase over the previously announced attendance cap of 25%.

Concert programs will not exceed 80 minutes and will be presented without intermission.

What took place July 4th at Tanglewood was an offensive 180 minute TV show. They got little right and screwed up totally by positioning 3 howitzers right next to the Shed, where the green benches used to be, for the finale of the 1812 Overture.

We’ve witnessed that piece at Tanglewood for decades, always with the artillery properly located on the Stockbridge Bowl side of the sloping lawn, and always to great effect. Tonight, instead of being an acoustic appendage to a musical score, it was an assault on the senses, utterly devoid of artistic merit.

It has been said that the end of all art is peace; neither peace nor art was in evidence tonight.

There was one spot on the program where this orgy of diversity-pandering could be redeemed. While the Boston Pops played in the background, a series of performers walked to center stage to proclaim quotations from the work of notable Americans of African descent, finishing each with the author’s name and the date of the quotation.

How did they omit this: “I can’t breathe, George Floyd, 2020?”

Christopher Eisenbach leads BSO and TFC in stunning Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood

Christoph Eschenbach leads the BSO, TFC, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Sasha Cooke, Joseph Kaiser, and Thomas Hampson at Tanglewood August 26, 2018; Hilary Scott photo. — Christoph Eschenbach and Sasha Cooke at Tanglewood August 26, 2018; Hilary Scott photo.

Article updated August 30, 2018 by Dave Read

Spirits were yet scurrying back to their haunting places when Christopher Eisenbach took to the podium less than fifteen hours after the Bernstein Centennial Celebration to lead the Boston Symphony and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in the program that would conclude the BSO’s Summer of Lenny in the Berkshires.

Like wedding guests who meet for lunch the day after before resuming the routine of their lives, the audience today couldn’t stop talking about what they’d witnessed yesterday.

So, let’s get on with it, let’s play the program and put the season to bed. A routine rendition of that splendid chestnut – Beethoven’s Ninth, although never expected here in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, may have been acceptable – just this once.

What Maestro Eisenbach and his charges delivered, however, was anything but routine, it was outstanding, so brilliant that it cut room for itself in memory, rather than settle for being an appendage to the events of the preceding eight weeks. We can attribute that to the two Bernstein works prefacing today’s program; traditionally, Beethoven has the season-ending concert to himself.

Something else added to my enjoyment – two silences, lacunae less than a second in length, but of profound depth – a tremendous bit of artistry, accomplished by a visiting conductor, orchestra, and amateur chorus. Bravo!

It was my uncanny luck to be seated adjacent to a woman who sang in the Berkshire Chorus, antecedent to the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, in the news this summer because of policies instituted by director James Burton, in the wake of founder John Oliver’s 45 year tenure. Before the concert, she told me that she sees merit on both sides of the re-audition issue; later, she said that they had never sounded so good. Charles Munch conducted the last program she was part of; and she sang at Maestro Koussevitsky’s funeral!

Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood

Aug. 7, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

The Silk Road Ensemble, with Yo-Yo Ma, used the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood like a high school during their Aug. 7, 2016 performance, presenting both lessons in social studies and the senior assembly. Eighteen years since being co-founded by Yo-yo Ma at Ozawa Hall, the Ensemble presented a program that displayed their global roots, with segments being introduced by various members, each of whom stressed the social while while eschewing the pedantic.

The Silk Road Ensemble, with Yo-yo Ma performed at Tanglewood Aug. 7, 2016; Hilary Scott photo.

They talked about being ready now to leave home, after 18 years of growing up; but the effect of the concert was a synthesis of disparate musical traditions, culminating in a glorious global hoedown, to wit: Kinan Azmeh’s composition Wedding, his representation of a Syrian wedding celebration, a public jam session that could last for days. His dedication, to “all the Syriancs who have managed to fall in love in the past five years,” gave the audience an opportunity to express solidarity with those beleaguered people. An extra-musical takeaway from the evening was the opportunity to look at and celebrate the wild differeces among peoples without resorting to polemics. Extra-musical? yes – not beyond, but to the max!

The audience responded to the opening minute or so with tittering and noisy whispers, because of the novelty of a strange instrument on one side of the stage communicating with an equally unfamiliar one on the other side. By the time Fanfare for Gaita and Suona concluded though, the whole house was totally into the world music thing, and the party was on. The gaita is the bagpipe of the Galician people from the northwest part of the Iberian peninsula, the suona is a Chinese horn, and the piece was developed by the players Cristina Pato and Wu Tong, who are as dissimilar to each other in appearance as are their instruments.

Like many of their colleagues, these two were featured several times tonight; Wu Tong especially notable for his singing, including both Manchurian and English verses of Going Home, which may merit a place in World Music lore for being lyrics set to the score of Czech composer Dvorak’s 1893 New World Symphony while in America, and which sounds like a Shaker hymn! When everything is improbable, nothing is, so, another highlight of this show was the Ensemble’s almost cinematic rendition of Billy Strayhorn’s Take the A Train, which took the audience on a raucous, rumbling ride under the streets of Manhattan and Harlem, with images of Ella Fitzgerald and the Duke Ellington Orchestra flashing in their minds.

Bob Dylan at Tanglewood July 2, 2016

July 2, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

It was a night of biblical proportions at Tanglewood, a concert by Bob Dylan that was a revelation, following a set by Mavis Staples that was a revival. The revelation is that some 55 years into his career, by remaining true and not wavering from his original vision, Bob Dylan was able to belt out a genre-skimming array of 20 songs, imbuing each one of them with just the right degree of scorn or glee, humor or haughtiness, bile, blasphemy, or belligerence.

Dylan’s constancy was demonstrated by She Belongs To Me, the second song tonight, which he also performed the first time I saw him, on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Tonight’s set started with Things Have Changed, his trophy-winning song from 2000, which was performed with more ardor and vehemence than an opening number usually gets, as if he’d been singing along backstage to old girlfriend Maris Staples!

Bob Dylan sings the Great American Songbook

Tonight’s setlist also demonstrated that Mr. Dylan’s perusal of the Great American Songbook is no passing fancy; besides doing five songs from the 2 new “Sinatra” albums, Fallen Angels and Shadows in the Night, he also sang How Deep is the Ocean and I Could Have Told You, brand new entries on Bob Dylan’s setlist. While it’s hard to imagine that his own lyrics have overlooked any nuance of emotion or condition of life, nontheless he seems all fired up to be singing this material, making a fresh wind blow through Tin Pan Alley.

Those seven songs were distributed evenly among his own, five of which hail from Tempest, which took the world by storm upon release in 2012, when Dylan-wags reminded us that The Tempest is the name of Shakespeare’s last play. Turns out not to mark the end of the line for the bard of Hibbing, at all! Tempest is a great album, and tonight Bob Dylan delivered five songs from it with a high degree of fidelity to the recorded versions: Pay in Blood, Duquesne Whistle, Early Roman Kings, Scarlet Town, Long and Wasted Years.

Duquesne Whistle gets your attention

Duquesne Whistle, in the 7tyh spot tonight but 1st on the album, reminds me of Like A Rolling Stone, the opening number on Highway 61 Revisted. Whereas the latter shocks the listener with the loud crack of a snare drum right up front, Duquesne Whistle lollygags for more than half a minute before slapping you awake. Bob Dylan is an artist who doesn’t put much effort into promotion, but every now and then he takes the measure of our attention.

And tonight, he even addressed the audience, after the first 9 songs, telling us the band would be leaving the stage but would return in a few minutes. For years, he spoke only to introduce the band and maybe say thank you at the end of the set and before the encore, but hadn’t even been doing that much talking lately. This encore alone was worth the price of admission: Blowin’ in the Wind, with Dylan’s vocals and piano assiduously accented by violin, and a rollicking reading given to Love Sick, off the immense 1997 album Time Out of Mind.

Mavis Staples rouses the audience

Mavis Staples had the audience in the palm of her hand by the time her opening set wound up, and on their feet, singing along and testifying! She doesn’t share Dylan’s reticence, rather is as chatty as your sister, eager to tell you what’s been happening. We couldn’t sit still during her set, which left us revived with the fervor of the Sixties. Her band is awesome and they mix up an intoxicating blend of gospel, soul, funk, blues, and rock ‘ roll.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Wynton Marsalis at Tanglewood

July 18, 2015 Article by Dave Read

Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra gave a concert in Ozawa Hall yesterday that could serve as the template for all concerts: two sets artfully arranged to engage, sustain, and satisfy an auditor’s attention, with just the right measure of exposition from the stage to establish a conversation, contextualize the selections, and identify the musicians. Marsalis was an amiable host from his 3rd row seat in the trumpet section of the band, which he led through an overview of early 20th century jazz in the first set, followed by a set made up of compositions and arrangements by musicians in the band.

Tonight’s concert got underway with fairly quiet and subtle playing on compositions from the 1930s by Benny Carter, Symphony in Riffs and Duke Ellington, Mood Indigo. By the time the 3rd piece was over, George Gershwin’s Fascinating Rhythm, we knew we were in for quite a treat, as we’d already heard lovely solos by Marsalis on trumpet, Victor Goines on clarinet, and all three trombone players. The set ended with Things to Come by Dizzy Gillespie, which afforded everybody ample space to play, especially the exquisite rhythm section, emerging in the wake of a long trumpet run.

After intermission, the concert continued with a piece called 2/3 Adventure, by bassist Carlos Henriquez, then one rooted in spirituals by trombonist Chris Crenshaw. Next in the spotlight was pianist Dan Nimmer with a selection from a suite he composed from important political speeches. That was followed by sax player Sherman Irby’s arrangement of a composition by Wayne Shorter, who played with the orchestra recently.

The concert closed with Marsalis’s own Back to Basics from his Oratorio, Blood on the Fields, the first jazz composition to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music (1997). Everyone in the band got another chance to solo, with Marsalis himself bringing it all to a humorous, muttering conclusion, waving the plunger mute over the bell of his trumpet.

Marsalis dedicates concert to the late Gunther Schuller

Marsalis dedicated the concert to the late Gunther Schuller, telling the audience that his stint at the Berkshire Music Center, which Schuller ran from 1970 until 1984, “changed my life.” At 17, he was the youngest musician ever admitted; two years later, he joined the Jazz Messengers lead by legendary drummer and bandleader Art Blakey.

2005 Tanglewood Jazz Festival, Sept. 3, 2005

Review of Diane Schuur, Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Werner, Oscar Castro-Neves, Airto, performances at the 2005 Tanglewood Jazz Festival, in Lenox, MA

By Dave Read – Saturday is the most festival-like day at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, with performances on each of Tanglewood’s three stages (Theatre, Ozawa Hall, Koussevitsky Music Shed) plus a panel discussion sponsored by the Jazz Journalists Association on the patio at Saranak, former home of Serge Koussevitzky.
Serenak at Tanglewood
The Tanglewood Jazz Cafe added to festival-feel this year, with performances by up-and-coming jazz artists in informal settings near Ozawa Hall. They began ninety minutes before each major concert.

At noon, the Legends Trio featuring Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, and Jay Leonhart took to the Theatre Stage and first legend Henderson took to the microphone for remarks “before this epic of improvisation,” as he put it. The epic lasted but sixty minutes, close to a quarter of which were filled with Henderson’s pat show-biz anecdotes.

Bucky Pizzarelli did get a couple of opportunities to display his tasteful wizardry on his seven-string guitar and Jay Leonhart practically stole the show with his very funny talking blues about being seatmates with Leonard Bernstein during a cross-country flight. And a young violinist named Sara Caswell was a welcome addition to the trio.

We caught about forty minutes of the panel discussion which convened an interesting mix of musicians and journalists to grapple with “The Big Cross-Over: Jazz, Classical, Pop and Beyond.” You can’t argue with the location, about half a mile from the main gate on the side of the hill commanding one of the best views in the Berkshires, but for one to take in the whole program would’ve meant leaving the “Legends” show early and maybe being late to the 3 PM at Ozawa Hall.

As it was, we heard plenty, including comments on the increasing importance of the Internet, at the expense of major record labels, as a means of distribution. Panelist Walter Beasley, a saxophonist and long-time faculty member (and alumnus) of Berklee College of Music, said that he encourages his students to “do it yourself” rather than rely on established labels, adding that he makes more money today selling his own CDs at concerts than he would with a traditional label deal.

During a segment on terminology, panelist Donal Fox, whose program “Remembering the Modern Jazz Quartet: Donal Fox, Inventions in Blue” was a highlight of the 2003 festival, offered the cautionary note that “it’s an important historical fact that artists do not use the word ‘jazz’,” citing Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis as examples.

Donal Fox and Steffon Harris Tanglewood Jazz Festival — Donal Fox and Steffon Harris perform during 2003 Tanglewood Jazz Festival

The very existence of any such thing as “Cross-over” was questioned by panelist Tom Reney, host of a daily jazz program on WFCR since 1984, who said he never sees references to such a genre in the mainstream jazz media. Beasley had a more provocative take on what may be seen by some as a meaningful genre when he said, “I hate smooth jazz because it isn’t smooth and it isn’t jazz.”

Probably due to logistics, the audience barely out-numbered the panelists, which is too bad because it was a very collegial group of experts, each of whom not only had pleny to say but also the facility to say it well.

Marian McPartland’s guest for her fourth annual taping of NPR’s “Piano Jazz” at Tanglewood was vocalist (and guitarist) Madeleine Peyroux, who, for about a week, had been the subject of articles in the British press that had her missing but that turned out to be a publicity stunt.

The ageless Ms. McPartland was at the top of her form, chatting with the audience that an arthritic knee and an injury to the other leg leave her “not one leg to stand on;” and that the constraints of taping for radio prevent her from being “free and easy as I like to be;” and introducing her guest as “a chart-topping chanteuse.”

Ms. Peyroux played selections from her current release “Careless Love,” about which she has said, “I am in love with every one of these songwriters as well as their songs. I was eager to make that heard during the recordings.”

It came across in performance, on Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End Of Love,” and Bessie Smith’s “Don’t Cry Baby,” and on Josephine Baker’s first hit, “J’ai Deux Amours,” which she explained that she means to reference her own dual allegiance for both France and the USA.

During the ninety or so minutes of the “live taping,” Ms. Peyroux seemed to be more comfortable in Ms. McPartland’s company, rather than in front of an audience of 3,600 fans, but her performance didn’t suffer for it. She was gracious, and sang beautifully; her voice sharing the fragile, vulnerable sound of Billie Holliday’s.

The headline event turned out to be a great crowd-pleaser but we found irksome because it was made to feel like dozens of sound samples rather than be allowed to coalesce into a fluid musical event. This was mostly the case during the opening set by the Count Basie Orchestra, when every solo was taken center stage followed by a bow to the audience and a handshake with band leader Bill Hughes and then the walk back to their seat.

They tell me that’s how it was done during the heyday of the Big Bands, but not only did it destroy the effect that was the composer’s object (in stringing together so many notes without big non-musical gaps), but it seemed demeaning to the musicians, the perfunctory handshakes resembling treats and pats on the head given to trick dogs.

Tony Bennett plays final concert of 2014 Tanglewood season.

Tony Bennett was absolutely splendid, as always, looking fit and tanned in royal blue suit and most ably accompanied by his quartet, Lee Muskier, piano; Gary Sargent, guitar; Paul Langosch, bass; Harold Jones, drums, as well as by the Basie band.

Mr. Bennett’s set was much more fluid; his custom is to sidle up to his sidemen during their solos and so direct the spotlight – and the applause – on them. And speaking of applause, he got one of the greatest rounds ever heard here when he announced mid-set, “I’m not working for pay tonight – I’m sending it all to the fellows down south.”