Tanglewood concert reviews

Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration with Boston Pops, June 30, 2026

By Dave Read, June 30, 2026 performance – If classical music resides within impermeable bounds, pop music lives inside a porous membrane that allows for one genre to blend with another, so that an audience may enjoy musical mulligatawny. Who knows where, why, or how such marriages are made, but the middle-of-the -road Boston Pops Orchestra now regularly shares the stage with the far-from-mainstream music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration with Boston Pops; Hilary Scott/BSO photo

Dark Star
Here Comes Sunshine
Birdsong
Reuben & Cherise
West La Fadeaway
China Cat Sunflower—I Know You Rider [jam]
Terrapin Station
Scarlet Begonias
Morning Dew
Shakedown Street
Run for the Roses
Cats Under the Stars
Ripple

Not a few audience members danced in their seats, since heightened vigilance makes the aisles no-dance zones, inconceivable when America was run as a republic, by the people. The Shed was full and the late afternoon rain seemingly had no deleterious effect on the crowded law.

Even though I left my critical glasses home in favor of my summertime shades, I’m reminded of what Neil Young said to the acoustic engineer who was adjusting the balance on the massive speakers installed on his porch and open barn: “more barn!” I think added prominence to the orchestra would have enhanced tonight’s concert, which was plenty fun even so, even if dancers at their seats make better doors than windows!

Wynton Marsalis, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at Tanglewood, June 26, 2026

By Dave Read, June 26, 2026 performance – Two weeks before the downbeat of the first Boston Symphony Orchestra program of the 2026 season at Tanglewood, 1979 Tanglewood fellow Wynton Marsalis led the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra through a program in the Koussevitzky Music Shed.

Wynton Marsalis, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott/BSO photo.

The concert was excellent as expected, but surprisingly brief, ending 65 minutes after it began. Maestro Marsalis introduced the concluding number just as a response to the show was beginning to unfold in my mind.

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at Tanglewood, June 26, 2026 — Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott/BSO photo.

In retrospect, the program felt more like introductory recital than a concert. Each number flowed to its own end, with titles and solos called out, which made it feel serial, adding up to a sum, but not an organic whole, as jazz concerts do. Perhaps this show reflects the state of jazz, in the aftermath of a brighter time, when jazz was available all day long somewhere on FM radio, announced by well-informed deejays, who would also tell of dozens of gigs upcoming throughout the region.

Every part of every tune played tonight sounded as full and bright as could be, yet we expected something more. Earlier performances by Mr. Marsalis, leading various bands and combos, have always left us wanting more.

2026 Tanglewood photo gallery

The contents of this page will change after every Tanglewood concert we write about, so return often during the season.

Yacht Rock Revue, Tanglewood, June 21, 2026

Yacht rockers Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood; Dave Read photo.

By Dave Read, June 21, 2026 performance – Tanglewood’s beautiful and versatile Ozawa Hall proved a fair haven for devotees of Yacht Rock, an unabashed nostalgia for a time not long ago, but which now feels like an ancient age.

Yacht Roch Revuew, Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood; Hilary Scott/BSO photo.

My pop music memory reaches all the way to a time when church and civic halls hosted weekend dances for high school kids, with local bands blasting out covers of the latest hits heard over and over on the radio and American Bandstand. With such quaint things as free radio and TV relics of the ancient age, the Yacht Rock revue carries delicious youthfulness to patrons long since gone from high school.

Whereas the bands at my teenage dances had scant time to hone their chops and learn the new hit songs, the musicians who comprise the nearly twenty year old Yacht Rock Revue have their sets down pat and transition with seamless ease through ABBA, Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Toto, Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac, and dozens more. And instead of sporting letter sweaters, the varsity in attendance today wore captain’s hats!

Leonard Bernstein Centennial at Tanglewood, July 15, 2018

By Dave Read – Attending the Sunday afternoon (July 15, 2018) program in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood was no easy matter; every bit of it commanded your attention, from Mendelssohn’s beautifully familiar Italian symphony, through Yuja Wang’s dazzling performance of Beethoven’s 1st piano concerto, to the how-fit-in-these-fraught-times composition from the celebrated culture warrior Leonard Bernstein, Chichester Psalms.

Yuja Wang, piano
Rafi Bellamy Plaice, Boy soprano
Tanglewood Festival Chorus, James Burton, conductor
MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 4, Italian
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1
BERNSTEIN Chichester Psalms

Besides being the summer of Lenny, another theme at Tanglewood has been brilliant pianists whose names rhyme. Yuja Wang (Lang Lang opening night) performed the Beethoven piano concerto with an ethereal artistry; I listened to a few minutes of the first movement with eyes closed and was startled upon opening them that people were responsible for the sounds I was hearing.

Yuja Wang performs Beethovens Piano Concerto No. 1 with Andris Nelsons leading the BSO at Tanglewood July 15, 2018; Chris Lee photo.

An unfortunate ancillary matter accompanied Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, the most awaited composition on the program. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the all-volunteer organization that became beloved under nearly fifty year leadership of founding director John Oliver is in upheaval. Since assuming leadership last year, James Burton has instituted practices that have insulted and angered TFC veterans. It is reminiscient of the furor at the Tanglewood Music Center that came about in the fourth decade of Seiji Ozawa’s overripe tenure running the whole operation.

Nontheless, it was a beautiful performance of a piece that is quintessential Bernstein, this composer with such a catholic appetite – treating ancient Hebrew texts with sounds and rhythms of a mid-twentieth century American ghetto! Not that he would have needed to be egged on in that direction, but the commissioning Anglican cleric mentioned to Bernstein that “… would be very delighted if there was a hint of West Side Story about the music.”

How many in the large audience were wondering his reaction to politics today, this artist who hosted a dinner party during the Nixon administration to raise money for the legal defense of several Black Panthers?

Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, at Tanglewood

Thursday, July 12, 8 p.m. Seiji Ozawa Hall

Instrumental Ensemble
Charles Prince, conductor
Alexandra Silber, soprano
Shuler Hensley, baritone
Vocal Ensemble, Jamie Bernstein, directo

The July 12 All-Bernstein program in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, selections from the Bernstein Songbook, followed by Trouble in Tahiti, was one of those events that require your attendance if you intend to get the most out of the local cultural scene. Leonard Bernstein was a member of the inaugural class of the Boston Symphony Orchestra‘s summer music school in 1940, now known as the Tanglewood Music Center. He was a protege of founder Serge Koussevitsky, became his conducting assisstant, and then rocketed to fame as assisstant conductor the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1943. He was the un-rehearsed last-minute replacement for Bruno Walter in a Carnegie Hall concert broadcast nationally that was praised on the front page of the next day’s New York Times.

Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, cast photo with director Jamie Bernstein, at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo. — Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, cast photo with director Jamie Bernstein, at Tanglewood; Hilary Scott photo.

His final conducting performance, with the BSO in a program of Britten and Beethoven at Tanglewood on August 19, 1990 was celebrated in newspapers around the world in articles that mentioned the coughing fit he suffered in the midst of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Diagnosed with emphysema in his fifties, he announced his retirement from conducting five days before his death Oct. 14, 1990.

The celebrated and re-calibrated acoustics of Seiji Ozawa Hall, which commands the Leonard Bernstein Campus, may not be ideal for selections such as on this program; whereas the singers made good and pretty sounds, it could seem an effort to discern the semantics of various songs. Maestro Bernstien’s daughter Jamie was easily understood in her role introducing the Selections from the Bernstein Songbook, though, and her direction of Trouble in Tahiti was happily applauded.