The Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Massachusetts. Photo courtesy Boston Symphony Orchestra
“Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a popular draw for tourists in the Berkshire Mountains, has canceled its 2020 live performance season due to the coronavirus,” writes Anastasia Tsioulcas on Friday (5/15) at National Public Radio. “Instead, the famed summer music festival is moving some of its offerings online, in the form of video and audio streams of archival performances and newly created material. Audiences will have to pay to stream some of that content…. Other offerings will be free…. Several [popular music] shows have already been rescheduled for the summer of 2021. The Lenox, Mass., institution is also the home of … the Tanglewood Music Center, for college-aged and emerging-professional instrumentalists and singers, and a program for high school-aged musicians affiliated with Boston University. Tanglewood also represents a substantial portion of the BSO’s annual income. [In] 2017-18, Tanglewood brought in more revenue than either the Boston Symphony’s regular concert season or the Boston Pops. The BSO has already been forced to take significant measures to curtail its financial losses due to the pandemic…. The only other times that the festival has been curtailed or canceled completely were during World War II.”
