TANGLEWOOD 2012: 2, 3, 4 et 14 juillet

"Le grand Shed (hangar) musical extérieur Koussevitzky, construit en 1938, a servi comme prototype de nombreuses grandes salles de festivals musicaux en plein air qui ont depuis ouverts à travers le pays.
Le shed Blossom a l'extérieur de Cleveland, le Ravinia, près de Chicago, le Wolf Trap, près de Washington, DC, le SPAC dans l'État de New York, les Red Rocks près de Denver, le Chastain Park à Atlanta, le Starwood à Nashville, le Jones Beach à Long Island, NY - il y a une longue liste de belles salles de concerts d'été qui ont suivi l'exemple de Tanglewood, et je me suis produit dans toutes.

Ces «remises», comme on les appelle dans le biz, ont été mon principal lieu de travail au cours des quatre dernières décennies, et pour moi, par une chaude nuit de Juin ou de Juillet, elles représentent le foyer collectif de mes plus beaux souvenirs d'une vie sur la route.

Tanglewood est la meilleure de ces "remises". Il y a plusieurs raisons à cela. Tout d'abord, c'est l'endroit où Kim et moi avons choisi de vivre et d'élever nos garçons jumeaux, Rufus et Henry. Il y a une douceur de vivre dans les Berkshires, et voyageant autant que nous le faisons, c'est toujours un plaisir de revenir chez nous à Lenox.

Ensuite, il y a la bénédiction d'avoir été accepté comme faisant partie de la merveilleuse famille musicale qu'est Tanglewood et le BSO (Boston Symphoony Orchestra). Je remercie ma femme, Kim, pour cela. Lorsque nous nous sommes rencontrés elle travaillait avec l'Orchestre symphonique depuis 20 années complètes.

De plus, Il n'y a aucun doute que la beauté du paysage physique du Shed de Koussevitzky et des jardins qui l'entourent ont beaucoup à voir avec la magie du lieu. On fond de manière rhapsodique à la perspective d'une soirée sous les étoiles avec des amis, des proches, et la compagnie d'amateurs de musique dans une tradition qui semble appartenir à une autre époque.

Mais de toutes ces choses, c'est certainement le public Tanglewood qui rend cet endroit si spécial pour moi: je me sens comme je me trouvais avec ma propre famille et qu'une réunion de famille se déroulait, une conversation en cours, une sorte de rendez-vous commun traditionnel.

Avec tout le poids de la responsabilité et de performance et de l'anxiété qui accompagne l'attention d'une audience massive composée d'amateurs de concert intelligents, ce lieu reste encore, sans aucun doute, pour moi, la bénédiction de toute une vie."

James Taylor, le chanteur-compositeur-interprète qui vit avec sa famille dans la ville de Washington à quelques kilomètres de Tanglewood, a joué pour la première fois en 1974 à la résidence d'été de l'Orchestre symphonique de Boston. Il y est retourné en 1975, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001-2003 et chaque année à partir de 2005 jusqu'en 2012. En tout, il a joué sous le SHED et dans l'Ozawa Hall près de 40 fois.



LENOX - Lucie Mazursky, 8 ans, ne put se contenir quand elle a découvert qu'elle allait voir Taylor Swift en concert.

"J'ai failli m'évanouir», a déclaré la petite native d'Egremont, qui avait encore du mal à conserver son sang-froid alors tandis attendait le début du concert avec ses amis sur la pelouse de Tanglewood.


Une foule d'environ 18.000 personnes a le terrain du concert à guichets fermés. La présence de Swift en tant qu'invitée spéciale de James Taylor était un secret de polichinelle - et les fans comme Mazursky étaient nombreux et préparés.


Brandissant un signe géant proclamant "Nous sommes les Fans n°1 de Taylor», Mazursky et ses deux amies, Zandy Veague, 7 ans, de Stockbridge et Maisy Seckler, 7 ans, d'Alford discutaient de combien elles aimaient Swift.

"C'est simplement une bonne chanteuse, jolie et gentille » a déclaré une Seckler bouillonnante.

"Je ne possède que ses chansons sur mon iPod» a ajouté Mazursky.

Bien que L'Eagle ait été en mesure de confirmer le line-up en Juin, Tanglewood a promu le concert en annonçant juste Taylor avec en plus un «invité spécial».

Que l'invitée soit Swift n'a été rendue officielle qu'au moment où l'artiste a investi la scène à la fin du premier set pour rejoindre Taylor pour une interprétation de son tube "Fire and Rain», au point où la foule a éclaté, nombreux de ceux se prélassant sur la pelouse sautant sur leur jambes pour se précipiter vers le Shed.


Au cours du second set, Taylor et Swift a interprété les deux tubes de Swift "Ours" et "Love Story" avec une réponse tout aussi appréciative.

Il ne s'agit pas de leur première collaboration scénique de Taylor Swift. les deux artistes se sont parfois rejoints de leur concert respectif aux cours des cinq dernières années, et Swift, une singer-songwriter crossover country-pop qui a remporté de multiples Grammys, est un fan auto-proclamée de Taylor, comme le sont ses parents, qui lui donné son nom.


L'effort conjoint des deux stars à Tanglewood n'a pas déçu.

"Ils ont un joli son ensemble auquel on ne se serait pas attendu», a déclaré Ana Larkin, de Pittsfield, un une fan de Swift et de Taylor, qui a confié qu'elle avait sauté sur l'occasion pour assister au concert. "C'est juste un bon rebondissement pour [Taylor]."

la nouvelle de la présence de Swift aux côtés de Taylor a attiré les fans excités de toute la région.

Izzi Duprey, Jessica Varner et Wirsig Kira, toutes les trois âgées de 14 ans et vivant à Medfield, se sont vêtu tout en Swift pour l'occasion, avec le chiffre "13" peint sur leurs mains (le numéro de chance de l'artiste), des points d'interrogation dessinés sur leurs joues (une de ses chansons dite "I heart question mark"), et une guitare brillant à la remorque (Swift est connue pour en jouer).

«Nos deux dernières années entières a été consacré à Taylor" nous confie Kira.

Que ressent le groupe à propos de James Taylor?

«Je n'ai entendu que deux de ses chansons, mais nos parents l'adorent vraiment," répond Kira avec un haussement d'épaules.

Le sentiment n'était pas rare parmi les nombreux duos adultes-ados qui parsemaient la pelouse.

Margaret Déméter d'Albany a déclaré qu'elle "mourait d'amour pour James Taylor" tandis que sa fille, Ally, 17 ans, a calmement expliqué que Swift était sa chanteuse préférée de tous les temps. Les deux nous ont affirmé que c'était la première fois qu'elles étaient aussi enthousiaste pour aller au même concert ensemble.

«Je ne sais même pas - je n'ai pas de mots pour décrire à quel point je suis excitée pour ce soir," Ally a dit.

"Il n'y a aucun moyen pour que le concert nous paraisse trop long» a ajouté Margaret.

Taylor joue encore à Tanglewood aujourd'hui et mercredi, même si Swift ne sera pas là pour le rejoindre lors de ces deux dates.


James Taylor & sa fabuleuse invitée surprise, Taylor Swift, lundi 2 juillet sous le Shed Koussevitzky à Tanglewood. 5,000 personnes dans le "Shed" et 13 0000 autres sur la pelouse. Splendide soirée, brise chaude et pleine lune. Taylor Swift a chanté "Fire & Rain" avec JT, puis lors du second set, elle a chanté ses deux succès "Ours" & "Love Story." JT assurant la guitare et les harmonies vocales.


The first time I tried to find Tanglewood, I drove right past it. (The first time in my adult life, that is.) I had been hired by Peter Gelb, then the BSO's assistant manager, now the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, as his assistant. I hadn't been back to Tanglewood since childhood visits.

Several U-turns later, I spotted the tiny wooden sign, swinging in the breeze from a wooden pole, with the hand-painted letters "Tanglewood."

It was so amazingly non-annunciatory! How Bostonian, how New England, how Tanglewood-ian.

That was 32 years ago and not a lot has changed on that front. The signs have been reworked into a slightly larger version, but there is still, blessedly, nothing to really herald this world-class destination sandwiched between the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge.

The Berkshires were a very different place back then.

There was a single restaurant in Lenox, now long gone, called Ganesh which morphed into Café Lucia. And there was Loeb's, our life line to the outside world as the repository of the morning papers. None of us had TV in our rental homes -- there was no cable, no Internet, no cell phones. The land lines at Tanglewood were, at best, temperamental, and would quickly sputter and die at the mention of lightning.

Back then, the press office at Tanglewood was housed next to the Main Gate; it had a flat, tar roof upon which the sun would beat down mercilessly. If one could wheedle a fan from Jim Kiley, who ran the physical plant, one was very lucky.

Before each concert, the office would be converted into a makeshift bar for the press. There were plates of Freihofer's chocolate chip cookies and lots of gin.

In many ways, a trip to Tanglewood was much more of an elitist excursion. Although the years of passing out paper skirts to under-dressed patrons had disappeared, ticket holders for the Shed dressed for the occasion: the women in silk wraps and heels sure to be ruined by the Tanglewood turf.

My first summer began with an all-Copland concert conducted by the composer himself. There were performances by great singers of the era -- Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Jon Vickers paired with Jessye Norman in the second act of Wagner's "Tristan," a remarkable Verdi "Requiem."

Seiji Ozawa presided over it all in his impeccably tailored, white mandarin-collared Hanae Mori creations with his mane of jet-black hair.

Seranak -- the name deriving from an acronym of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky for their former home overlooking Tanglewood, the Stockbridge Bowl and clear down to Connecticut -- was acquired in 1981. It soon became the locus of post-concert soirees and a pre-concert supper club. One of the earliest parties there, after the BSO had reclaimed it, was an 80th birthday celebration for Copland, attended by Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein.

I was given the task of capturing the cake-cutting in a photo. "Get those three together and do it now!" hissed Gelb.

New at wrangling anything, I tried in vain to corral them for a photo. The BSO's late photographer, Walter Scott, gently put an arm around Lenny (as he was known to all) and Aaron and signaled me to grab Seiji. Voila, success!

The visitations by Bernstein were always a high point of the summer. When he arrived "on campus" in his gleaming vintage Mercedes convertible with its "Maestro One" license plates, one could feel the electricity ripple through the grounds. Everyone was at attention.

I found that being the junior press officer made for good scapegoat material.

In the early ‘80s, Bernstein had designated one of his performances as a benefit for the Tanglewood Music Center. The three-sheet (the in-house name for the large posters by the Main Gate) neglected to mention this. Bernstein, for whom the strict rules regarding automobiles on the grass were discarded, noticed this omission upon driving past the entrance. He was furious. I was summoned.

There clearly had been some miscommunication about this but since these posters were within my purview, I was the one who was told to explain. I delivered an abject apology. He was gracious and forgiving, surveying me with a cigarette in one hand and silver cup of some libation in the other.

I escaped unscathed.

I was also summoned a number of times to try and assuage visiting conductors who were less than pleased with the reviews they had received. One such visit occurred at Wheatleigh, the elegant resort near Tanglewood. For a 26-year-old, this was very heady stuff, waiting in the Italianate grand foyer.

I was shepherded to the garden where an illustrious German maestro was pacing and whacking the table with the newspaper in question. This is "schrecklish" (German for "terrible"), he kept shouting. "I want this man brought to me."

I tried to explain that this wouldn't be possible, which further infuriated him. He muttered, "In Germany, we handle this differently." Indeed.

Tanglewood, ultimately, is more than the sum of its parts, more than patchwork memories of a Mahler symphony, an appearance by an Ewok, a glimpse of greatness, the image of the orchestra resplendent in white. It is walking across that great expanse of lawn and feeling there may be a greater truth to be revealed or that somehow, one has access just for this moment, to something greater than oneself.

There is a mystery and a beauty that belongs to this place. On a summer Sunday afternoon, with a cool Berkshire breeze and a cloud scuttling by and the orchestra about to tune, one can't help invoke Robert Browning: "God's in his heaven; all's right with the world."

Caroline "Kim" Taylor joined the Boston Symphony's press office in 1979. She rose to director of public relations and marketing for the BSO and married James Taylor on Nov. 18, 2001, having been introduced a few years earlier by film composer and conductor John Williams. Currently, she is a trustee of the orchestra.

Wednesday July 4, 2012

LENOX -- There's a double mystery about James Taylor's enduring appeal to multiple generations of fans who turn out every year not only at Tanglewood -- 54,000 strong for the three Shed performances that end tonight with the county's best fireworks show -- but overseas and across North America for his annual tours.

The first conundrum can only be solved through speculation. The robust quality of his voice at Monday night's high-energy performance of songbook classics as well as a few, rarely-heard deep tracks could be explained by his healthy, athletic lifestyle. Yet, a look at his road-show schedule since March still begs the question of how a 64-year-old, indefatigable performer can keep up so hectic a pace.

The second quandary is more easily settled. The greatest hits collection he re-created for his devoted audience included such evergreens as "Mexico," "Your Smiling Face," "Shower the People," "How Sweet It Is," "Carolina," "Sweet Baby James," "Fire and Rain," and "You've Got a Friend," among others.

Though we all know the words and the audience often sang along with encouragement from the stage, Taylor, through some chart rearrangements and a touch of vocal improvisation, managed to make them sound fresh and vital. And he generously credited his band members and backup singers, most of them longtime collaborators with a couple of new faces this year.

Nevertheless, there is a hard-to-explain, magical quality to these gatherings, a communal spirit of shared experience going back, for many of us, to his eponymous debut album produced by Paul McCartney and first released in December 1968 on the Beatles' Apple label.

Taylor has had his share of hard times, including drug addiction during the ‘80s that coincided with a lull in his career, but he emerged stronger than ever thanks to an indomitable spirit and a thoroughly professional dedication to honing his craft.

On Monday night, his two sets lasting just over two hours also included several of his crowd-pleasing, hard-rocking hits -- "Steamroller," "Slap Leather" and "Sun on the Moon" -- that brought the audience to their feet in a paroxysm of near-ecstasy. But, as a master of timing and pacing, Taylor followed these with a mellow melange of his more contemplative, soft-rock classics.

Taylor beamed with the benevolent gaze of a veteran performer introducing Tanglewood audiences to the rapidly rising country-pop crossover superstar Taylor Swift, who collaborated with him on "Fire and Rain" and returned after intermission to perform two of her own breakout selections, "Ours" and "Love Story." Her parents, devoted JT fans, named their daughter after him, and she exuded a genuine thrill to be sharing his stage, as he did at one of her Madison Square Garden concerts last November.

"He's this most amazing, down-to-earth person!" she said, recounting how he invited her to join him "for this little show I do in Lenox, Massachusetts."

"This is no little show," Swift observed sagely. And her fans -- mostly young and female -- made no secret of their enthralled rapture at her presence (videos are already posted on YouTube).

Taylor's three-song encore started off with "You've Got a Friend," accompanied by a full-throated audience chorus, and included a novelty, his take on Chubby Checker's "Do the Twist." We saw teens, parents and grandparents dancing in the aisles.

Joined by his wife, Kim, Taylor ended with his now-traditional "Close Your Eyes," designed to send fans home with a lump in their throats.

In the end, the mystery of a performer's 43-year enduring ride at or near the top of the pop-folk-rock pantheon can best be resolved with two words: charisma and authenticity. Those qualities he possesses to the nth degree.

LENOX - Dans ce que la police Lenox décrit comme un «acte de Dieu», un mélomane qui quittait mercredi soir le concert de James Taylor à Tanglewood a été tué lorsqu'un arbre s'est écrasé sur lui sur Richmond Mountain Road que lui et son épouse empruntait à pied pour rejoindre leur voiture garée.

Lester J. Holtzblatt, 61 ans, de Sudbury, a été transporté au Berkshire Medical Center dans une Ambulance du comté (assisté par les premiers secours du Lenox Fire Departments)où il a été déclaré mort.

L'accident a été signalé à 22h25, environ 35 minutes après la performance de Taylor a conclu.

Sudbury, une ville de près de 18.000, est juste au nord de Framingham et à environ 20 miles à l'ouest de Boston.

LENOX, Mass. — The second weekend of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s residency here at the Tanglewood Festival spoke to past as well as present. And quite possibly to the future.
ArtsBeat

A concert on Saturday evening celebrated the 75th anniversary of the establishment of Tanglewood as the orchestra’s summer home. A catchall of classical and pops pieces, it included a film on the history of the festival, which was founded in 1937 by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and the presentation of the first Tanglewood Medal, which the orchestra described as a “new tradition.”

The medal went to Seiji Ozawa, the orchestra’s music director from 1973 to 2002, for “his myriad contributions to the B.S.O.’s performance, touring and recording activities.” Mr. Ozawa, who is recuperating from surgery for esophageal cancer in 2010 and continuing back problems, could not attend but sent a statement of gratitude, read by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

As for the present, the concert prominently featured James Taylor, who has essentially become the house songster. He is a consistent audience draw at the festival, and his presence undoubtedly contributed heavily to the attendance of almost 17,000 on a lovely Saturday evening, even though he had given concerts of his own on July 2, 3 and 4.

Here he performed three standards with the Boston Pops Orchestra (made up of Boston Symphony players), conducted by John Williams. Mr. Taylor sounded less than comfortable in soupy arrangements of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Shall We Dance?,” but, guitar in hands, he made “Ol’ Man River” something of his own.

Yet the main interest of the weekend had to do with a potential future, in performances conducted by Andris Nelsons, a 33-year-old Latvian who is widely thought to be a prime candidate for the music directorship of the Boston Symphony, left vacant by James Levine’s resignation in 2011. This, though Mr. Nelsons has yet to conduct a subscription week with the orchestra.

He first conducted the orchestra in March 2011, filling in for Mr. Levine on short notice in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, with little more than a day’s rehearsals. Though sympathetic to the circumstances, I was not particularly impressed with his muscular performance of a work better served by expansiveness and resignation. But seemingly a minority of one in this assessment, I remained curious to hear him again.

Mr. Nelsons canceled subscription performances in Boston last season because of the birth of his child but has been re-engaged for next season. Meanwhile, he conducted the Boston Symphony here not only in the anniversary concert but also in a program of his own on Sunday afternoon. And for the most part he shone in disparate works.

His reading of Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms,” with typically superb work from John Oliver’s Tanglewood Festival Chorus, was taut and expressive in its first two movements. But Mr. Nelsons eased into the hypnotic strains of the final hymn of praise with utmost delicacy and refinement.

That was paired on Sunday with Brahms’s Second Symphony, given a shapely reading with due regard for the “non troppo” (“not too much”) markings in the opening Allegro and the following Adagio. The forward surge in the finale (Allegro con spirito) was arguably too much, and you could have wished for breaths between phrases in the all-out rush to conclusion, but to a listener whose favorite recording of the work is one in which Herbert von Karajan’s impetuousness in the finale outstripped even the formidable capabilities of the Berlin Philharmonic, Mr. Nelsons’s interpretation seemed only exhilarating. And more power to the Boston Symphony for having kept up in fine style.

It was illuminating to see Mr. Nelsons not only in performance but also in rehearsal, on Saturday morning. He is a somewhat hulking presence on the podium, insistently active. Though not particularly balletic, his gestures speak music eloquently and draw ready and wholehearted response from the players.

Mr. Nelsons put his hands-on, detailed approach to good use in the anniversary concert with a kaleidoscopic account of “La Valse,” Ravel’s sardonic deconstruction of the Viennese waltz, with the Boston Symphony. He also conducted the students of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in Sarasate’s “Carmen Fantasy,” in which the heroine is a violin. Anne-Sophie Mutter, as soloist, gave proof, if such were needed, that she has little Gypsy in her soul, but she has plenty of electricity in her fingertips and bow, which served to good effect.

In other rewarding solo stints with the Tanglewood fellows, Emanuel Ax, always deft of touch, made the piano sound uncannily like a fortepiano in two movements from Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D (Hob. XVIII:11), and Mr. Ma drew the young string players and the audience into his orbit in an unconducted, understated performance of Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile for cello and strings.

The pianist Peter Serkin, with the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Festival Chorus conducted by David Zinman, seemed intent on single-handedly redeeming Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, a way station toward the Ninth Symphony, from the potboiler status to which some would consign it. Mr. Serkin’s father, Rudolf Serkin, a deeply serious performer, made something of a specialty of this work but performed it relatively straight. Here Peter Serkin offered a deliberate, deeply probing reading of the opening and carried it through the subsequent incursions of orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus. This made for an apt culmination (and finally some work for the chorus, which had sat through some two and a half hours as mere stage dressing for the PBS broadcast of the concert next month).

Presumably to compensate for the logistical nightmare that was the Saturday gala, the Boston Symphony opened its weekend on Friday in low-key fashion, with a concert of Mozart violin concertos (Nos. 2, 3 and 5), with two dozen or so players led (more or less) by the soloist, Ms. Mutter. No one needs to be told that Ms. Mutter can play these works beautifully, as she has been doing for most of her life. But that she could do so in the drooping humidity on Friday (at one point, changing the tension in her bow in midcadenza) was truly remarkable.