Classic Arts NewsTanglewood’s Upcoming Season Will Pay Tribute to Leonard BernsteinAudra McDonald, Tony Yazbeck, and Jessica Vosk will all appear during the 2018 season.
By
Robert Viagas
November 16, 2017
Leonard Bernstein
The annual Tanglewood Music Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, has announced programming for its 2018 season, which will pay special tribute to conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990).
Bernstein is known to Broadway audiences as the composer of musicals West Side Story, Candide, On the Town, and other musicals, but he’s cherished by classical music buffs as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, for his classical compositions—and for his 50 years conducting and teaching each summer at Tanglewood.
The 2018 season will include concert performances of On the Town (on July 7) and Candide (August 22–23), with casts to be announced. Multiple Tony Award winner Audra McDonald will solo with the Boston Pops on June 24.
The season will culminate with The Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood—A Gala Concert on August 25 hosted by McDonald, and featuring performances by Broadway stars Jessica Vosk (Fiddler on the Roof) and Tony Yazbeck (On the Town, Prince of Broadway).
The concert will also feature classical artists Midori Gotō, Thomas Hampson, Isabel Leonard, Yo-Yo Ma, Kian Soltani, Nadine Sierra, and Susan Graham, plus the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. They will be accomanied by The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) augmented by musicians from the New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra (TMCO), and the Pacific Music and Schleswig-Holstein Festivals. The concert will be conducted by Andris Nelsons, Keith Lockhart, John Williams, Christoph Eschenbach, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Titled Bernstein Centennial Summer—Celebrating Lenny at Tanglewood!, the season will include Bernstein’s concert works Chichester Psalms (July15), alil for flute and orchestra (July 21), Songfest (August 4), the Serenade (after Plato's "Symposium") (August 18), and the BSO-commissioned Divertimento for Orchestra (also August 18). Also planned: Bernstein’s operas Trouble in Tahiti (July 12) and A Quiet Place (August 9); his ballet score Facsimile (July 23); the full ballet Fancy Free performed by Boston Ballet (August 18), and a concert screening of the Oscar-winning film version of West Side Story with the BSO playing the score live as the movie is shown on large screens in high definition with the original vocals and dialogue intact (July 28).
