Lenox — Tanglewood Learning Institute’s 2023 season begins in less than a month, with chamber music performances by members of the Boston Symphony taking place March 12, April 16, and May 14. Those dates have been on the schedule for quite some time. Newly added to the calendar are TLI events beginning June 30 and running through the end of August.
TLI events come in six different categories:
The seven-day String Quartet Series provides an up-close look at how the Center’s resident faculty assist Fellows of the TMC with preparation of works to be performed during the String Quartet Marathon, an annual chamber music ritual that takes place each summer before the newly arrived players have recovered from jet lag (having recently arrived from home countries all over the world). Watch them rehearse demanding string quartet literature with people they met just days earlier. With only four voices in an ensemble, there’s no place to hide. But their musicianship never fails to amaze. These performances, some of which may be the most electrifying you’ll witness all summer, provide the perfect prelude to performances the Fellows, in various configurations, will give over the course of the summer in recitals and full TMC Orchestra concerts.
Open Workshops offer audiences more glimpses of Tanglewood Music Center Fellows as they work with coaches like Andris Nelsons, Yo-Yo Ma, and pianist Marc-André Hamelin.
In Conversations events feature discussions between composers, conductors, and performers, especially those participating in the Festival of Contemporary Music. On July 27, Michael Gandolfi, head of TMC’s Composition Program, will interview the four Festival of Contemporary Music Co-curators, Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Tebogo Monnakgotla, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, to learn about how they think and work. Also discussions with baritone Will Liverman (July 13), conductor Avid Afkham (July 20), pianist Andreas Haefliger (August 3), conductor Susanna Mälkki (August 10), and more.
The Spotlight Series features such respected thinkers as Pulitzer Prize winner and National Humanities Medal recipient Isabel Wilkerson, Columbia University professor Saidiya Hartman, and others to be announced. Wilkerson will talk about her New York Times bestseller and critically acclaimed book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” A book signing will follow her talk, with copies of “Caste” available for sale. Professor Hartman will talk about the 25th anniversary edition of her award-winning book, “Scenes of Subjection.”
Describing the TLI Presents series requires use of the Boston Symphony’s own language: “Unconventional, subversive … exhilarating, hypnotizing, and intensely human.” Composer-performer and media artist Pamela Z (July 9) will fit right in. So will Shakespeare specialist Keith Hamilton’s award-winning two-person play, the Othello-inspired “American Moor”; six-time GRAMMY-nominated pianist-composer Gerald Clayton; Indian classical vocalist Saili Oak; and cellist Astrid Schween with pianist Shai Wosner.
Immersion Events include “Themes from Ragtime with Angela M. Farr Schiller, PhD,” “Themes from Ragtime with Nicholas Phan, tenor,” and former BSO violist and Terezín Music Foundation director Mark Ludwig exploring the Nazi “cultural cleansing” policy targeting jazz, modernist, and non-Aryan—including all Jewish—composers before and during World War II.
Founded in 2019 as an expansion of the Tanglewood Music Center, The Tanglewood Learning Institute is an educational and cultural center located on the Tanglewood grounds in Lenox. TLI Programs feature performances, lectures, discussions, and workshops led by prominent scholars, artists, and experts from around the world. Its 2023 summer schedule demonstrates that the Institute is still on mission.
