October Mountain State Park is in a perfect location to enjoy the Berkshires! Our first night is a little rough, with no electricity and temps in the 90's, we sleep with wet washcloths on our foreheads to help us cool off. Thankfully, the nighttime temps are in the 50's and 60's for the rest of the week!
My brother, Rick, piqued my interest about Tanglewood, the Berkshires, and the Boston Pops summer home when I visited him at Harvard way back in '79. Our dear friends, Frank and Linda, introduced us to the idea of taking in a dance performance at Jacob's Pillow, thanks, you two!
We are thrilled to have tickets for two events at nearby Tanglewood. 'In August, 1934, a group of music-loving summer residents of the Berkshires organized a series of three outdoor concerts at Interlaken, to be given by members of the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Henry Hadlin. The venue was so successful that the promoters incorporated the Berkshire Symphonic Festival and repeated the experiment during the next summer. The Festival Committee then invited Serge Koussevistzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra to take part in the following year's concerts.' And the rest, as they say, is history!
'In the winter of 1936, Mrs. Gorham Brooks and Miss Mary Aspinwall Tappan, her aunt, offered Tanglewood, the Tappan family estate, with its buildings and 210 acres of lawns and meadows, as a gift to Koussevitzky and the orchestra.'
Funds of about $100,000 were raised in 1937 for the construction of a permanent structure for performances. Trustees decided that 'just a shed...which any builder could accomplish without the aid of an architect' would do perfectly for their needs. 'The Shed', a huge open-air structure which seats over 2000, held its first performance on August 4, 1938. It still retains the original clay floor!
Tanglewood annually draws more than 300,000 attendees with their Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, weekly chamber music concerts, evening Prelude Concerts, Saturday morning Open Rehearsals, the annual Festival of Contemporary Music, daily concerts by students of the Tanglewood Music Center, along with concerts from a variety of popular artists, from Yo-Yo Ma and James Taylor to Steely Dan. Folks with lawn tickets tote in their beach chairs and umbrellas, coolers, and picnics for a relaxing time while they camp out on the grounds prior to performances.
The All-Ravel Program, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, includes the 'Mother Goose' Suite,
Piano Concerto in G, Piano Concerto in D, (for the left hand) and Bolero. Mike decides that Bolero is his new favorite classical tune, purchases the CD, imagining that Roman Legions are marching along the dusty Appian Way. Can't get it outa' my head!
Ravel wrote the Piano Concerto in D (for the left hand) for Paul Wittgenstein, a Viennese WWI vet, and an accomplished pianist, who lost his right arm during the war. He made quite a name for himself as a one-armed pianist! The piece is so active and full that you would think it was being played by two hands, not one. Needless to say, it is an extremely difficult piece to play. Truly an amazing feat to witness!
Steely Dan performs to a packed crowd on a cool night following a heavy afternoon thunderstorm. 'Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Steely Dan is known for its unique sound which blends elements of jazz, rock funk and R&B. Band founding members, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, began collaborating while both were students at Bard College. They released their first album, "Can't Buy a Thrill," under the name Steely Dan in 1972. Throughout the ’70s they released the hit albums Countdown to Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, The Royal Scam, Aja, and Gaucho. They won 4 Grammy Awards including Album for 2001’s Two Against Nature, their first album in 20 years. That same year they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After time off to work on solo projects, they reunited for a tour of the US and Europe in 2009.'
We are fortunate to be at Tanglewood for Steely Dan's Shuffle Diplomacy Twenty Eleven Tour! Everyone is on their feet, dancing and clapping before the night is over! Fun evening!
'Jacob’s Pillow Dance is a dance center, school and performance space located in Becket, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires.
The organization is known for the oldest internationally acclaimed summer dance festival in the United States.
The facility also includes a professional school and extensive archives as well as year-round community programs. The facility itself was listed as a National Historic Landmark District in 2003.'
'The Pillow, as it is often called, was first settled in 1790, by the Carter family, as a mountaintop farm at the crest of a stagecoach road between Boston, Massachusetts and Albany, New York. The zigzagging road from the bottom of the hill resembled the rungs of a ladder, so New Englanders named it "Jacob’s Ladder."
A large, pillow-shaped boulder behind the Carter’s farmhouse was thought to resemble a pillow. The Carter farm acquired the name "Jacob's Pillow" as a combination of the story of Jacob from the Book of Genesis, which tells of Jacob laying his head upon a rock and dreaming of a ladder to heaven and the farm’s proximity to the "Jacob’s Ladder" road.'
'Lar Lubovitch has been hailed by The New York Times as "one of the ten best choreographers in the world," and his company has been called a "national treasure" by Variety. Lubovitch is a master of musicality; for more than 40 years his work has captivated audiences with luxurious movement and lyricism.'
'This program features two new works from 2010 including Coltrane's Favorite Things which reimagines the choreographic possibilities of jazz music, inspired by and danced to John Coltrane's 1963 "Live in Copenhagen" interpretation of Richard Rodgers' "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. The Legend of Ten, also from 2010, is a dramatic work danced to the first and fourth movements of Brahms' "Quintet in F Minor (Op. 34)," recorded by Glenn Gould and the Montréal String Quartet. '
'Lar Lubovitch's North Star was one of the first contemporary concert dances set to music by Philip Glass. North Star was first performed in 1978, and in this revival dancers command the stage with grace and boundless energy, delivering a "trance-inducing aesthetic at its purest and most satisfying" (Boston Globe).'
The dance performance by the ensemble of eleven is energetic, and full of whimsy....we are seated front and center on the second row....so close we can actually see them sling the sweat from their hair as they twirl and leap across the stage!
We enjoy ourselves so much, we make a vow to return for TWO weeks next summer!
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