Music
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Wilco Wraps Solid Sound Festival
Will Return Next Year
By: - Aug 16th, 2010The total attendance for the weekend long Wilco Solid Sound Festival was about 10,000. But with weekend passes it is not clear just how many tickets were sold. Probably about half that figure. On an artistic level it was a great success. There was a nice mellow energy. With more advance planning and involvement from North Adams administration, merchants, vendors, artists and citizens it will surely be back bigger and better next year.
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John Williams Salutes Steven Spielberg
Film Night at Tanglewood
By: - Aug 15th, 2010The silver haired and silken tongued Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies was the host for the enormously popular John Williams Film night. The Tanglewood program entailed a tribute to collaborations with Steven Spielberg.
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Contemporary Music at Tanglewood
A Hotbed of Cutting Edge Music
By: - Aug 15th, 2010There is nothing hard-to-take about the music presented over five days im Osawa Hall at Tanglewood. Under the direction of Gunther Schuller, Oliver Knussen and John Harbison, 20th century composers sing and soar.
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Wilco Update
Groovin at Mass MoCA
By: - Aug 15th, 2010Up to 5,000 attended the Wilco Solid Sound Festival at Mass MoCA on Saturday. The day ended with a two hour plus Wilco performance on Joe's Field. The three day event winds down this afternoon with an acoustic set by Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy.
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Wilco Rocks Mass MoCA
Weekend Long Solid Sound Festival
By: - Aug 14th, 2010Two and half years of planning went into the three day Solid Sound Festival that brought the rock band Wilco to Mass MoCA. If all goes well the museum director Joe Thompson hopes for their return. The experimental Festival will be a template for future events on a large scale. It got off to a great start on a glorious summer night in the Berkshires.
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Herbie Hancock at Tanglewood
Imagine the Jazz Master at 70
By: - Aug 10th, 2010Grammy winner of album of the year Herbie Hancock brought his Imagine tour to Tanglewood. The recent Imagine album took two years to record on location in seven countries with all stars representing eleven nations.
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Silk Road Ensemble at Tanglewood
Yo Yo Ma’s World Music Project
By: - Aug 09th, 2010Yo Yo Ma formed the Silk Road Ensemble in 1998. The performance last night at Tanglewood was quite different from what we experienced several years ago. There is more of an emphasis on commissioned works and arrangement's of traditional music some going back thousands of years. It was the exotic high point of a rich and diverse Tanglewood season.
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Richard Goode at Tanglewood
A Gem Delivered on a Perfect Summer Night
By: - Aug 07th, 2010On Friday night, pianist Richard Goode, with the assistance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, gave the audience at Tanglewood a pitch-perfect performance of Mozart’s jewel-like Piano Concerto No. 14 in E-Flat, K-449. The piece for full orchestra sounds more like a chamber music work, probably because of Mozart’s precise, minute-like composition.
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Tanglewood On Parade
Tribute to 30th Season of John Williams
By: - Aug 05th, 2010It was a glorious summer evening for Tanglewood on Parade. The popular annual concert featured a tribute to the music of John Williams. This is his 30th season. Some special friends joined him on stage including Keith Lockhart, Stafan Asbury, Julian Kuerti, Yo Yo Ma and James Taylor. It ended with a big bang of 1812 Overture followed by fireworks.
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Yo Yo Ma Silences the Wind
Cello Virtuoso Left Tanglewood Crowd Speechless
By: - Aug 03rd, 2010Few cellists â€" or musicians of any kind for that matter â€" have the power to entrance an audience, leave them speechless by playing just a few notes. Yo Yo Ma reminded the massive crowd attending Sunday afternoon’s performance at Tanglewood why he remains one of those gifted, magical musicians.
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Ariadne auf Naxos at Tanglewood
Rising Stars in Student Production
By: - Aug 03rd, 2010This season three of the Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows who performed in Ariadne auf Naxos are headed for the Metropolitan Opera Company. Audrey Elizabeth Luna, a scampy temptress and comedienne, as the delicious Zerbinetta makes her Met debut as Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflote. Emalie Savoy who performed the role of Ariadne/ The Prima Donna joins the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Cecelia Hall, the mezzo-soprano as the Young Composer will make her Met debut as the Second Priestess in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride.
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Gilles Vonsattel Delivers at Tanglewood
Substitute Soars with Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1.
By: - Jul 26th, 2010Pianist Peter Sirkin was forced to cancel due to illness, but substitute virtuoso Gilles Vonsattel stepped up and delivered an enthusiastic performance of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 on Saturday at Tanglewood.
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Bethel Woods, Celtic Woman and a Dancing Cat
A Woodstock Pilgrimage
By: - Jul 26th, 2010“Collecting Woodstock†is an immersive work-in-progress. Less a collection of artifacts than of information, the multimedia exhibit documents a decade of civil discontent with the sights and sounds of celebration and anihilation, ascension and assassination, idealism and disillusionment. Nothing much has been sanitized, except inasmuch as time has distanced us from the immediate conditions of psychedelic squalor that characterized a generation and that necessarily prevailed when “we were half a million strong†and gathered in a field some 15 acres square.
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Betty Buckley at the Colonial August 11
Broadway in the Berkshires
By: - Jul 21st, 2010Betty Buckley received her second Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a musical for her performance as Hesione in Triumph of Love, and an Olivier Award nomination for her interpretation of Norma Desmond in the London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, which she repeated to more rave reviews on Broadway.
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The 2010 Festival of Contemporary Music
Tanglewood August 12-16
By: - Jul 21st, 2010The 2010 Festival of Contemporary Music, August 12-16, will be the culmination of a season-long celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO’s renowned summer music academy for young professional musicians, with performances of works by the TMC’s distinguished composition faculty over the course of its history.
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Audra McDonald at Tanglewood
Broadway in the Berkshires
By: - Jul 19th, 2010Broadway star and four time Tony winner, Audra McDonald is on the run. It took some 26 hours of travel time, including multiple delays in Mexico City, to reach a scheduled Tanglewood concert. From the stage of sold out Ozawa Hall she announced that she was about to perform for the Obama family. Despite all that jet lag she settled into a stunning and intimate evening of show tunes. The evening was a highlight of what is proving to be a sensational season in the Berkshires.
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Michael Tilson Thomas at Tanglewood
Mozart and Stravinsky Launch the Weekend
By: - Jul 17th, 2010Stepping in for the ailing James Levine, the sprightly and masterful Michael Tilson Thomas is becoming a familiar presence at Tanglewood. For the second weekend he conducted Stravinsky and Mozart on Friday night and returns on Saturday with more Mahler. On Sunday afternoon Pops features Alec Baldwin and Arlo Guthrie as guest artists. In one of the most anticipated concerts of the season Audra McDonald appears in Ozawa Hall on Sunday evening.
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Maureen McGovern: at the Colonial July 23
A Long and Winding Road: The Concert
By: - Jul 14th, 2010This eclectic concert at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, on July 23, is an entertaining and introspective look at the songs that inspired Maureen McGovern before her Academy Award-winning hit “The Morning After.†Her repertoire includes selections of iconoclastic singer-songwriter material including “The Circle Game,†“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?†“The Moon’s A Harsh Mistress,†“Imagine,†“Fire and Rain†and many others.
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Opening Night at Tanglewood
Michael Tilson Thomas Conducts Mahler’s Symphony No.2
By: - Jul 10th, 2010The opening night of Tanglewood saw the transformation of adversity into triumph. There was concern over the announcement that yet again maestro Jame Levine would miss the entire season due to chronic health issues. As the opening night of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor amply demonstrated Michael Tilson Thomas proved to be far more than a substitute. He brought his unique vision and passion to the complex, eclectic and visceral symphony. With this performance the season in Lenox has been launched with magnificent confidence.
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Viva Quetzal at the Clark Art Institute
Performing on the Lawn July 27
By: - Jul 08th, 2010Viva Quetzal, playing contemporary North American jazz and rock and the indigenous rhythms of Latin America, will perform on the lawn of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute on Tuesday July 27 at 6:00 pm. The public is invited to bring family, friends, lawn chairs and a picnic to this high-energy, multi-cultural concert. Barbeque fare is available for purchase and museum exhibitions Picasso Looks at Degas and Juan Muñoz are open until 6:00 pm. In the event of rain, the concert will be held in the auditorium. Concert admission is free.
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Tanglewood Season Opens July 9
Michael Tilson Thomas Conducts Mahler's Resurrection
By: - Jul 06th, 2010Although Tanglewood had some 60,000 visitors last weekend for Pops followed by three sold out concerts by James Taylor and Carole King the season officially opens this weekend. Which means that the Boston Symphony Orchestra is in residence until the end of August. Michael Tilson Thomas will conduct the orchestra in the absence of the ailing James Levine. Thomas was a Tanglewood Music Fellow in 1968 and 69. He will be joined by two other TMC fellows soprano Layla Claire and mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe.
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James Taylor and Carole King at Tanglewood
Spectacular July 4th Musical Fireworks
By: - Jul 05th, 2010The Berkshire season was launched in a sensational manner with three sold out Tanglewood performances by James Taylor and fellow singer/ songwriter, the legendary Carole King. They shared music, memories and intimate moments during concerts that averaged two and a half hours. Fans who bought lawn tickets last winter were rewarded by a gorgeous summer evening under the stars.
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Getting More Out of Tanglewood Concerts
Lenox Library Lectures by Jeremy Yudkin
By: - Jul 05th, 2010For the past few years I have been getting a lot more out of Tanglewood concerts by attending the lectures at the Lenox Library. On Friday and Saturday afternoons, from 2:30 to 4 PM, the music to be performed is discussed with recorded intervals by Professor Jeremy Yudkin. He brings zest, charm and enthusiasm to the experience. It allows me to listen more attentively and enjoy the concerts by a world class orchestra and its renowned conductors.
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EnlightenNext Free Jazz Concert
At Foxhollow in Lenox July 30
By: - Jul 03rd, 2010A jazz concert headlined by Israeli guitarist Oz Noy and five-time Gibson Female Jazz Guitarist of the Year Leni Stern - Noy wrote the soundtrack for Tommy Chong's AKA Tommy Chong documentary, and Stern has a new album out Now called sa belle sa ba. Berkshire-based Unfulfilled Desires will also perform fresh off a Paris engagement at Sunset-Sunside.
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Richie Havens at Mass MoCA
A Winter Lion on a Summer's Eve
By: - Jul 03rd, 2010An often perplexed, if forgiving, crowd seemed relieved when he and his accompanist, Walter Parks (whom Havens never mentioned, whose presence he never acknowledged) negotiated their way back to coherence in the language of music. Richie Havens’ artistry has mellowed but not lost much of its power and none, really, of its sweetness. His rhythms drive like a locomotive through the mists and downpours of yesteryear, spanning a generation and, as it were, a continent, undergirded all the while with a steady and persistent optimism that charms even as it meanders, disengaged, from song to song.
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