Tanglewood concert reviews

2006 Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

The annual pre-Fourth of July performance of “A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor” at Tanglewood allows the audience an afternoon of unabashed fellowship, giving us a glimpse at our heritage that is strong enough to quiet the clamorous ire aroused by today’s power-mongers and a feeling that it’ll be all right (if only we keep Powdermilk biscuits in our diet).

Inhabiting a media-soaked world, we’re seldom free of the streaming messages of Washington, DC and Wall Street, and so we need to tune into the News from Lake Woebegon and find the truth about who we are. And those of us fortunate to attend the performance get the extra reward of participating in the pre- and post-show songfest, that has us, unwittingly or not, professing faith while expressing kinship and national devotion.

It’s some bit of alchemy for Garrison Keillor, as politically engaged and insightful an entertainer as Mark Twain was, to somehow channel Pollyanna and send his audience on its way full of hope when their first inclination upon resuming their plugged-in lives would be less spiritual.

This year’s show, the seventh consecutive performed in Tanglewood’s Koussevitsky Music Shed, was as good as it gets even though it was almost devoid of local color. All the previous shows included at least one musical component showcasing Tanglewood musicians as well as skits with Berkshire themes. The “Guy Noir” episode this year, though set at Tanglewood, was really about the current national talent show craze.

Instead, it got its theme from the new Robert Altman movie about the Prairie Home Companion, featuring (as does the movie) a Berkshire neighbor, Meryl Streep, Gospel singer Jearlyn Steele, the Hopeful Gospel Quartet with Robin & Linda Williams, and the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.

Ms. Streep was a casually beautiful and charming presence throughout the show: in conversation with Mr. Keillor, in the skits, in singing “What’ll I Do?,” in skillfully reading a selection of poems, and poignantly (arm in arm – cheek to tear-dripping cheek) with Ms. Steele for the post-show singalong.

And re-joining the Royal Academy of Radio Acting was actress Erica Rhodes to play the part of Ms. Streep’s prodigal daughter in an hilarious episode of True Stories from Scripture. This was the second star turn here for Ms. Rhodes, who in 2001 played the role of a teen-aged Emily Dickinson hiking Monument Mountain with Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The musical selections were splendid, including a surprisingly sublime rendition of the Reggae anthem “One Love” done by the Hopeful Gospel Quartet and Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band and Jearlyn Steele’s soulful treatment of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” accompanied by Hopeful Gospel Quartet, and Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.

Special guests were the luminous Wailing Jennys from Canada, Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta, and Annabelle Chvostek, whose a capella version of “Bring Me A Little Water, Sylvie” brought to light the genius of Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a.Leadbelly. On other numbers, “One Voice,” and “Calling All Angels,” their instrumental skills were on display as well.

(Originally published on NewBerkshire.com)

2005 A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

July 3, 2005 Article by Dave Read

The sixth annual visit of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor to the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood on July 2, 2005 may be remembered by the 11,000+ in attendance as the “Palms of Victory” show because of the little “non-sectarian” hymn they were taught by Mr. Keillor, who told them they could use it as a call-sign if they should ever encounter him in the airport, but it also will be remembered particularly for Gillian Welch & David Rawlings and Inga Swearingen, who gave strikingly evocative performances that left the audience eager for more.

The humor was as good as it gets, too; the Royal Academy of Radio Acting nailed the Guy Noir episode about the Sprocket tycoon’s $200 million gift to Tanglewood being hijacked for the establishment of the Tanglewood Center for Songwriters, Inc; a wickedly funny Cafe Boeuf with Peter Schickele, and then Schickele’s P.D.Q. Bach duet with David Dusing on the loopy “If Love is Real.”

With the virtual town of Lake Wobegon and it’s fabulous citizenry at its heart, Mr. Keillor’s show is all about community and when the show is on the road, an effort is made to embrace the actual locale, and not only with the funny business. To make that point most emphatically, this show, recognizing that “this is Mohican land,” included a song composed by a Wisconsin-Stockbridge Mohican, Brent Michael Davids.

Inga Swearingen, Prudence Johnsonm, Guys All Star Shoe Band, Edith Wharton String Quartet perform Mohican song

It was sung by Ms. Swearingen and Prudence Johnson, accompanied by the crackerjack Guys All Star Shoe Band, and the Edith Wharton String Quartet, culled from the Tanglewood Music Center just for this show. The latter group acquitted themselves splendidly and no doubt will have fond tales to tell of this day decades down the road when they are wiley veterans of orchestras in places such as Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston.

This was no Tanglewood debut for Mr. Davids; his “Mohican Soup” was sung by Chanticleer to open Tanglewood’s 1999 Festival of Contemporary Music in Seiji Ozawa Hall. In his remarks to the audience that day, he attributed the creative energy in the Berkshires to a foundation established by the Mohicans during their 6,000 year stewardship of the region.

We contacted Mr. Davids at his studio in St. Paul to learn more about him and his song. Several weeks ago he met Mr. Keillor at a local literary gathering and once their conversation got around to their mutual Tanglewood connections, Keillor said “We’re doing a show there next month, will you write something for it?”

So he wrote Stockbridge Mohican Song and sent Keillor the music, lyrics, and demo mp3 file and, as of yesterday (July 5), hasn’t heard from him again. He did listen to the broadcast and liked what he heard, though. In response to our surprise that the whole operation was accomplished so quickly, Mr. Davids said simply, “That’s what I do, I’m a composer.”

Stockbridge Mohican Song

We are coming together (k’MUH yuh WE h’now)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

We see the old ones (NAH wuh hah kah CHIGH sock)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

Today is a beautiful day (o NAHH kuh MAOW NO no)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

Mohican Land (muh HEE kun NEEw AHH kee)
We say Thanks (o NEE oh we KSEE now)

Tan Dun’s The Map, with Yo Yo Ma at Tanglewood

August 7, 2004 performance by Dave Read

Among the many memorable images from this Tanglewood program was this tableau: a Paris-born Chinese cellist and a Siberian violinist trading jazzy licks with the video-taped image of a Chinese leaf blower. Coming during the second movement of Tan Dun’s nine-part composition The Map, Concerto for Cello, Video, and Orchestra, the cellist was Yo Yo Ma, the violinist was B.S.O. Associate Concertmaster Tamara Smirnova, and it drew a round of amused applause from the audience of 9,021.

Somehow this was a night of roots music, perhaps the last thing you’d expect on a Saturday evening in the midst of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s annual sojourn in the Berkshires. And it demonstrated that music is blissfully ignorant of geography, having a way of melding ethnic sounds to speak a language known by each of us, regardless us where, or to whom, we were born.

stone drum, I Ching, shamanism

Maybe the oddest thing is that, in the most literal sense, this evening of brilliant playing by the Boston Symphony was rooted in rock music! That’s right folks, it all came about because of an encounter Maestro Dun had during a visit to his native Hunan province in 1981, while a student at Bejing’s Central Conservatory, with an old man who practiced ba gua stone drumming.

Tan recalled of the old man, who combined principles of the I Ching with shamanistic vocalizations, “The man talked to the wind. He talked both to this life and the past one. I had nothing to offer him, or even to make a record of him, but I promised that one day I would return.”

By the time of his return in 1999, no longer a student but a graduate of Columbia University (Doctor of Musical Arts), with a commission for Yo Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the ba gua drummer, and his tradition, had died. In order to reconstruct his “personal memory of someone who could do something that no one else could do,” Dun made two trips to capture the musical life of the Tuija, Miao, and Dong people, 3 of China’s 55 ethnic minority groups.

Tan describes The Map as being “about minority cultures in China, looking at the past as well as the future” – and as a reconstruction of his own “personal memory of someone who could do something that no one else could.” His aim was to invent an entirely new form, keeping the source material in its pure state on the video screen while simultaneously exploring its timbres in orchestral terms. (Source: program notes by Ken Smith.)

The evening opened with Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble presenting Music from The Silk Road Project.

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2019 Tanglewood schedule

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has released the schedule for the 2019 season at Tanglewood, which will be remembered for the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, the four buildings overlooking Seiji Ozawa Hall on the Leonard Bernstein camopus.

Music director Andris Nelsons will be present for the month of July, conducting 13 programs, including the world premiere of a new work by Kevin Puts, The Brightness of Light, based on letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz on July 20, and a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre on july 27 and 28.

A 2004 Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood, with Garrison Keillor

A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor, a delight to radio audiences since the first live broadcast July 6, 1974, has been a favorite on the Berkshire summer calendar since being added to the pre-opening week schedule at Tanglewood in 2000. The fifth local show, July 3, 2004, was an especially memorable one because it included an encore.

The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, for this show joined by Sam Bush (mandolin, fiddle) and Howard Levy (harmonica), was doing such a great job entertaining the departing audience of 10,570 that many simply stayed put. The prolonged ovation that followed their impromptu jam session brought Garrison Keillor back onstage, where he remarked on the rarity of encores in the world of radio and also mentioned that he would be having dinner in a few days with people who were with him on that first broadcast 30 years ago.

Then he took hold of the mic and led the audience in singing a beautiful Bahamian folk song, “I Bid You Goodnight,” which, rather than closing the session, only gave rise to another sing-along, “Amazing Grace.” The loquacious and oh-so-seasoned pro Keillor was so moved by his audience that he stood mute for the final chorus before offering an inaudible “thank you” and finally walking slowly off stage.

Highlights of the show included:

Inga Swearingen – It was the Californian’s 3rd appearance on APHC since May, and she simply stole the show with her beautiful, charming presence, radiant smile, and improbably varied vocal gifts that allow her to juxtapose husky textures with silky lightness;
humorist Calvin Trillin, whose “deadline poems,” rhythmic polemics on the Bush administration, were so apt they inspired us to take a subscription to The Nation, where they are published (and archived);
and, of course, the “News From Lake Wobegon,” wherein Keillor set off in praise of fresh strawberries and rhubarb and wandered into a meditation on the vagaries of true love and the stories that our mothers may or may not have to tell us!

Keillor also showed himself to be as fierce a patriot as he is a partisan and closed a riff on the primacy of individuals over groups with the image of Ray Charles and Ronald Reagan rafting the Mississippi in place of Jim and Huck Finn. Continuing the practice of including a Tanglewood-afilliated guest, we were introduced to the Existential Bass Quartet, comprising 30 year TMC faculty member Larry Wolfe and TMC students, who did a fun rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

GASB guitarist Pat Donaghue played a beautiful re-worked version of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Louis Collins” in honor of Hurt’s 111th birthday, and also led the band in a beautiful composition of his own, the “Tanglewood Waltz.”

Yo-Yo Ma’s Brazil at Tanglewood

By Dave Read, Aug. 13, 2003 performance – The esteem for Yo Yo Ma is widespread, extending even to the climate gods, who transformed Tanglewood into a rain forest August 3 to accommodate the five Brazilian, one Cuban, and one British musician who collaborated with him in the Koussevitsky Music Shed for a concert billed as Yo Yo Ma’s Brazil: An Evening of Latin American Music.

The concert opened with Ma and his long-time pianist Kathryn Stott playing three songs: first by the contemporary Peruvian composer Antonio Mariano and then Brazilians Heitor Villa Lobos and Carmargo Mozart Guarnieri, each of whom came to Boston in the 1940s to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Sérgio and Odair Assad guitar duets

Ma doubled on mic as MC to introduce the first tunes and then the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad who played an assortment of songs including compositions by Mariano, Villa Lobos, Bandolim, Jobim, Piazzolla, and one composed by Sérgio called Menino.

As Ma noted, the Assads are in the vanguard of the re-emergence of the popularity of the guitar duo, and their performance tonight showed why. The brothers play matching Millenium guitars (by Thomas Humphrey; Sérgio plays a cedar-top, Odair plays a spruce-top). Their harmonies are intricate and engaging, and they play such clear tones that at points it sounded like one was hearing a piano.

Sérgio introduced Menino by calling it “an innocent piece about a child,” and it evoked an image of a child’s day as it unfolded: busy and restful, with daydreams and excitements. Ma’s cello part served to create the frame within which the Assads painted their charming portrait of childhood. On their next piece, Bandolim’s Noites carlocas, Ma listened along with the rest of the audience as the brothers cut loose for some very impressive, very jazzy playing.

Yo Yo Ma introduces Nilson Matta, Rosa Passos

Next to come on stage, with Ma’s introductions, were: Nilson Matta, “to join me in playing a lower bass instrument,” Cyro Baptista, with 75 percussion instruments, lots of flair and humor, and Rosa Passos, “with a miraculous voice.” In various combinations, they closed out the first set with three pieces by Antonio Carlos Jobim (1925-1994), the man whose song The Girl From Ipanema brought global popularity to Bossa Nova in the early 1960s.

The whole ensemble but Odair played Jobim’s O Amor em Paz, which was a highlight of the evening, showcasing both the translucence and seductive wistfulness of Passos’ singing and Ma’s virtuosity which he demonstrated by following her first verse with a cello solo – in Portugese! – which echoed her phrasing note-for-note.

The set’s last song was introduced by Baptista, who is from Brazil’s rain forest: to some applause he said the song is called The Rains of March, – but wait, I forgot something – tonight it is called The Rains of August!. The highlight of his contribution on that piece was the delicious percussion he produced by rubbing his palms and wrists up and down against each other, looking something like a pizza tosser with limbs as pliable as dough.

virtuosity and charm of Paquito D’Rivera on display

The second set opened with Ma’s introduction of “the legendary Paquito D’Rivera,” who ambled onto the stage and displayed his Victor Borge-like playfulness before he displayed his virtuosic clarinet playing. The first five songs of the set had Paquito D’Rivera playing along with a variety of ensembles; the first and fifth were compositions of his, Preludio Y Merengue and Afro. The latter tune was something of a showcase for Baptista, who played a berimbau, an Afro-Brazilian instrument with which he produced haunting, ethereal sounds.

Before closing with two rousing full-ensemble pieces, Ma played a duet with his pianist Stott, Gismonti’s Bodas de Prata/Quatro Cantos, which was elegant and showed their affection for each other; and then Piazzolla’s Tango Suite with the Assads, which was dazzling and included all three musicians at times tapping out the rhythm on their instruments.

The encores turned out to look like a courting ritual between Rosa Passos and Paquito D’Rivera, as amid the spirited playing around them and with the audience dancing up to the foot of the stage, they couldn’t take their eyes off one another, and D’Rivera even suggested a way to a tryst when he segued into Take the A Train! That’s about when Passos, who had expressed her love for Mr. Ma several times already, declared, I love Paquito D’Rivera.

And off to the muddy parking lots of Tanglewood slogged a few thousand, not a few carrying crushes for Ms. Passos, and all full of gratitude to Yo Yo Ma for his brilliance as a musician, excellence as a talent scout, and overall generosity of spirit.

2003 A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood, with Garrison Keillor

July 1, 2003 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Read

For the fourth year in a row, the first Saturday of the Tanglewood season saw the Koussevitsky Music Shed become the capital of the public radio universe, as “A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor” closed their 2002-03 live performance season far away from their Minnesota home.

And for the 3rd time in 5 days (James Taylor-Tuesday, and Wynton Marsalis-Friday) the Tanglewood headliner had a special, personal connection with the venue, and although Keillors’ mayn’t be quite so profound as the others,’ he outdid them in his praise, laying on enough encomia to make a lesser venue blush, calling it “the Mecca, the Vatican, maybe the Cooperstown” of classical music.

(And they even created “A Tanglewood Lollapalooza” about their previous visits to the Berkshires on their website, which is probably the best of its kind.)

This show was just about as good as it gets; a seamless 2 hours of aural entertainment, with just the right mix of humor, comedy, pathos, several examples of musical virtuosity, all knit together by the pretty good singer and great monologist Keillor, who even exposed his really-nice-guy-ness by devoting the show’s closing minutes to a lovely farewell to 3 departing staff members.

(Funny how these things work, but the little tune that’s been looping in my mind for days now is the Irving Berlin song “What’ll I Do (When You Are Faraway And I Am Blue)?” that Keillor personalized for his departing friends.)

Hsing Ay Hsu performs on A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood June 2003.

The guest line-up was perfect, besides the Nilsson Quartet which augmented the “house band,” there was accordian wizzard Dan Newton, who created the “Norman Rockwell Polka” for the show (he did that by squeezing together 14 or 15 popular American melodies), the brilliant guitarist Leo Kottke, and Tanglewood Music Center fellow Hsing-Ay Hsu, a dazzling talent on the piano with oodles of star quality, too. (Leo Kotke – Photo by Anthony Pepitone, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

She even had a bit of a go -’round with the host, trying to get the audience to decide between Chopin and Debussy compositions, which Keillor nixed, saying “I choose the Chopin, this isn’t a democracy, we tried that, it didn’t work.”

And speaking of democracy, we found the show’s most profound moment to be the line from the Ketchup Advisory Board skit, “Ketchup has natural mellowing agents that help us to accept the fact that the big problem with democracy is that it depends so much on people like us.”

Keillor’s disdain for George W. Bush came through loud and clear in the “Hobo” skit, which featured “Waco George,” but the swipe he took at journalists during the re-working of “Where have all the flowers gone” with guitarist Pat Donohue was more telling (” Are they having too much fun/ Embedded down in Washington,/ When will they look around/ And see what’s going down? “)

A treat available only to the Tanglewood audience was to see the great affection with which Keillor addressed Hsing-Ay Hsu, already seated at the piano, adding an un-heard element to the introduction that told of the Tanglewood Music Center and Boston University Tanglewood Institute being the true heart and soul of the globally-popular Tanglewood experience.

We ain’t picking no nits here, but there were 2 errors of fact that jumped right out at us: Norman Rockwell didn’t paint all his masterpieces in the Berkshires (see current Stockbridge exhibit: “Norman Rockwell’s Vermont Years”) and, despite the the Shed’s nonpareil acoustics, during his July 4, 1991 Tanglewood concert, Bob Dylan was largely unintelligible.