WGBH - Concerts RSS

Straight No Chaser: Songs of the Decades

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:58 PM +0000

This a cappella group known for its trademark harmonies and unique charm reinvents classic songs by Stevie Wonder, Madonna, The Four Seasons, and Elvis Presley.

II Volo: We Are Love

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:36 PM +0000

The young tenor trio performs a mix of operatic, pop, and Italian love songs including, “Questo Amore,” “I Bring You to My Senses,” “We Are Love,” and other classics in Spanish, English, Italian, and French.

Tom Rush Celebrates 50 Years of Music

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:56 PM +0000

Tom Rush is joined by David Bromberg, Buskin & Batteau, Jonathan Edwards, and Dom Flemons of the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Carole King and James Taylor Live at the Troubadour

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:08 PM +0000

Carole King and James Taylor perform at LA's Troubadour nightclub in a 2007 concert.

Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan In Session

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:50 PM +0000

Bluesmen Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan perform together in a 1983 concert.

The Richard Tucker Opera Gala

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:58 PM +0000

Audra McDonald hosts a stellar lineup of Opera singers to celebrate the Richard Tucker Awards, including Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Gerald Finley, Olga Borodina, Marcello Giordani, Ildar Abdrazakov, Erwin Schrott and Ailyn Pérez, the first Latina to win the award.

Andrea Bocelli Live in Central Park

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:47 PM +0000

Tenor Andrea Bocelli performs with the New York Philharmonic in New York's Central Park, where he's joined by Celine Dion, Tony Bennett, Chris Botti, David Foster, and others.

A Celebration of Tanglewood

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 13:33 PM +0000

The summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra brings music, nature, and personalities together in a legendary setting. Join Classical New England and WGBH for a celebration of 75 years of Tanglewood.

Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Celebration premieres Friday, Aug. 10, at 9pm on WGBH 2. More airings

The BSO Concert Channel

Listen BSO concerts in a 24/7 stream

In the 1930's, a vision of classical music among the rolling hills and beautiful lakes of western Massachusetts emerged in the minds of the residents of Berkshire County, especially Miss Gertrude Robinson Smith. The Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Serge Koussevitzky eventually came on the scene to provide that music, and the seeds of Tanglewood were sown.

Now, 75 years after the founding of Tanglewood, Classical New England, WGBH, and PBS celebrate that original vision and its modern manifestation with a full weekend of special programs.

Listen throughout the weekend for Tanglewood Tales on Classical New England. These personal memories and stories come from our listeners and reflect both a broad range of experiences as well as the singular magical quality of Tanglewood.

Broadcast Schedule (all programs on Classical New England except where noted)

More from Tanglewood:
Watch Erich Leinsdorf's final interview as BSO Music Director, from Tanglewood in 1969

Friday, Aug. 10
3pm Tanglewood Turnpike
BSO broadcast host Ron Della Chiesa joins Cathy Fuller for a preview of our weekend of live concert broadcasts and highlights of music performed during the previous weekend.

7pm Tanglewood Today
Host James David Jacobs brings you an in-depth preview of our Friday night concert.

8pm Live from Tanglewood
Pinchas Zukerman leads the BSO in an All-Bach program in the roles of both violin soloist and conductor, with additional solo contributions from the BSO's Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe, Principal Oboist John Ferrillo, and Principal Flutist Elizabeth Rowe.

Meet BSO Principal Flutist Elizabethe Rowe

Tanglewood entrance

9pm on WGBH 2 Great Performances: Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Celebration
Watch a gala performance celebrating Tanglewood, with conductors Keith Lockhart, Andris Nelsons, John Williams, and David Zinman, and pianists Emanuel Ax and Peter Serkin, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, vocalist James Taylor, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and more. (Watch a preview above, and see our broadcast schedule for more airings.)

Saturday, Aug. 11

Seiji Ozawa Hall

5pm Gala Opening of Seijii Ozawa Hall
For the first time ever Classical New England brings you the opening concert of Ozawa Hall, recorded on July 7, 1994, with former BSO Music Director Seiji Ozawa, members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Peter Serkin, and members of the Bernstein family.

7pm Tanglewood Today
Host Larry King brings you an in-depth preview of our Saturday night concert.

8pm Live from Tanglewood

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma is the soloist in Elgar's Cello Concerto, and Stéphane Denève conducts the world premiere of André Previn's Music for Boston and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.

Stéphane Denève talks about Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5

Sunday, Aug. 12
6am The Bach Hour: Bach in the Berkshires
Host Brian McCreath brings you performances of Bach's music from Tanglewood, with the BSO and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Hear the program

Keith Lockhart

Noon Boston Pops on New England Summer Festivals
Keith Lockhart leads the Boston Pops in a program that includes Duke Ellington's Harlem, and the evocative score to Taxi Driver by Bernard Hermann.

1pm Tanglewood Today
Host Rani Schloss brings you an in-depth preview of our Sunday afternoon concert.

2pm Live from Tanglewood

Paul Lewis

Paul Lewis is the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, and Christoph von Dohnányi conducts Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 and Richard Strauss' Til Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.

5pm The Bach Hour: Bach in the Berkshires
Host Brian McCreath brings you performances of Bach's music from Tanglewood, with the BSO and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Hear the program

6pm Arias and Barcarolles: Elly Ameling at Tanglewood
Host Cathy Fuller shares highlights from an all-Schubert recital with pianist Rudolf Jansen at Tanglewood's Theatre Concert Hall in July of 1987.

Hear the program

Lion Gate at Tanglewood

Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Celebration
Co-hosts Ron Della Chiesa and Fred Child of Performance Today bring you all the music from Tanglewood's gala celebration of its 75th birthday, with three orchestras, five conductors, including Keith Lockhart, John Williams, and Andris Nelsons, and guests artists including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianists Emanuel Ax and Peter Serkin, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and singer James Taylor.

9pm BSO on Record: Koussevitzky's Final Tanglewood Recordings
Classical New England's BSO broadcast producer Brian Bell brings you the stories and the music from Serge Koussevitzky's final recording sessions with the BSO at Tanglewood.

More from Tanglewood, including the full broadcast schedule and on-demand concerts

(Tanglewood entrance image courtesy of Great Performances; all other images courtesy of the Boston Symphony Orchestra)

Hear the Sounds of Havana

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:16 AM +0000

This music documentary vibrates with the soul and energy of African-Cuban drummers, guajira guitarists and the pulsing melodies of celebrated Cuban musician Raul Paz, who brings together fellow musical stars for a concert in Havana.

Friday, 9pm on WGBH2

Arts Ahead: Shadows, Pops and Merry Poppers

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:52 AM +0000

May 10, 2012

Olive Another as Maryand in the lastet production from Gold Dust Orphans.

BOSTON — Traditions take new and wild turns as a band of theater renegades reinterpret Mary Poppins, Tim Burton drops a vampire into 20th century Maine and the Boston Pops celebrate America's diverse music history with Steve Martin on banjo.

Mary Poppers
Presented by the Gold Dust Orphans
At Machine (in the Fenway) through May 20th

Gold Dust Orphans give us another rollicking ride through the twisted imaginations of Boston's foremost comedic troupe with the musical parody they have been waiting a lifetime to present. "Mary Poppers" features Olive Another as Maryand other Orphan favorites: Ryan Landry, Penny Champayne, Bill Hough, Robin Banks and Delta Miles. The troupe is at their best with this show, which is fun and hits the heights of Orphan outrageousness.

Dark Shadows
Opens in Theaters Friday

Director Tim Burton's latest movie is a revival of the 1960s cult television classic, “Dark Shadows”.

In 1752 an family with a young son set sail to the new world to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family and they settle in Collinsport, Maine. Decades later, as the master of Collinwood Manor, the son, Barnabas, is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin and plenty of chaos ensues.

Burton has created a gothic comedy with an all-star cast, led by Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter. It's delicious from start to finish

2012 Boston Pops Season
May 9-June 16

The Boston Pops led by conductor Keith Lockhart kicked off the 2012 season, “Visions of America”, with a gala opening night performance featuring Tony Award-winning icon Bernadette Peters. Celebrating the American musical traditions that weave together the imagination and spirit of our diverse nation, this season will feature the striking images of photo historian Joseph Sohm and his extraordinary photographs representing all 50 states. The season theme will culminate with the photos in a multi-media project, enhanced by the recorded narration of Clint Eastwood and featuring acclaimed vocalist Patti Austin.

During the 2012 spring season, catch comedian, author and musician Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers; John Williams will celebrates his 80th birthday by leading the Film Night; conductor Charles Floyd and the Boston Pops Gospel Choir give their 20th annual performance with American Idol’s Melinda Doolittle and gospel singer Crystal Aitkin and finally, don't miss a sports night complete with Fenway Franks as a special tribute to the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park.

60s Pop, Rock & Soul: My Music

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:17 PM +0000

In a special rebroadcast dedicated to the memory of Davy Jones, Jones, co-host Peter Noone, and other artists perform classics from the decade of peace, love, and profound social change.

Airs this month on WGBH

My Music: Superstars of 70s Soul Live

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:50 PM +0000

Soul diva Patti LaBelle hosts the historic reunion of classic recording artists of the decade, including the Commodores ("Brick House"), Yvonne Elliman ("If I Can’t Have You"), Earl Young’s Trammps ("Disco Inferno"), and more.

Airs this month on WGBH

Tony Bennett: Duets Two

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:51 PM +0000

Thrill to the singing of the legendary Tony Bennett, who’s joined by Lady Gaga, John Mayer, Michael Buble, Norah Jones, and other artists. Amy Winehouse, in what became her last recording, is also featured.

Inside Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's New Wing

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:04 AM +0000

Jan. 20, 2012

See a preview of the new wing on "Greater Boston."

BOSTON—The Boston area’s museum renaissance has reached even greater heights with the opening of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s new wing. Designed by celebrated architect Renzo Piano, the gleaming, modern glass structure manages to get closer to Gardner’s own vision.

A triumph of will and passion, The Gardner museum is an Italian oasis in the Fenway brimming with some of the most enviable pieces of art in the world. It’s affectionately called “the Palace,” which for architect Renzo Piano, made designing its new wing, downright daunting, according to director Anne Hawley.

“The first day he came to work with us, which was in December of 2004, looking at the building and he said after spending some time in the courtyard, ‘This woman was mad, this is extraordinary. I have to quit the job, no one can do this.’ By which he meant what Gardner did was so tangibly evocative and pulled out of you such emotions that you really can’t touch it,” Hawley said.

And he hasn’t, really. The Gardner’s new wing is set 50-feet back from “the Palace.” It is larger in square footage, but smaller in height. In more affectionate terms, it is the great great-grand nephew to the original museum, the grand dame aunt.

As Piano describes it, “The new building always refer to the Palace. Doesn’t matter what you do in the new building. When you enter, you see the Palace there. When you sit in the living room you see the Palace. When you walk up and down or you have a meal or you walk in the stair, you always see the Palace. The Palace is the constant reference. I can say it’s the object of desire. Of ultimate desire,” he said.

A 180 million dollar project, this copper-clad offspring is now the repository of the real world. It’s here where you enter, its glass façade ensuring a smooth and transparent transition off the Fenway. It’s where you do your real-world business of buying tickets, shopping in the gift shop and dining in the new café. But it calms you. It’s designed to be cozy, like a book-lined living room, right down to the Italian canaries in the new orientation space.

“Gardner in her time shared her collections and hospitality to visitors and her friends and today’s trustees and staff were the extensions of that. And so that idea of sharing and welcoming was what we wanted to carry into that space,” said Hawley

Thenyou leave it and shed the real world by passing through a glass corridor into the Palace. Piano calls it the umbilical cord. It’s lined with trees and he wants visitors to feel as though they’re passing through a forest andthrough time.

‘The link is a kind of a place from change. You change speed. You enter a piece of history, and the museum made that miracle. You enter in the different world. It is out of time. It is timeless,” he said.

This new entrance to the Palace restores the central axis Gardner herself designed so that visitors are gently guided directly to the museum’s wow moment—its soaring and newly restored courtyard.

“You can’t be occupied with mundane thoughts anymore. You have to surrender to the beauty of it,” said Hawley.

Also restored in the Palace is The Tapestry Room which for the first time in nearly a hundred years is at it was. It no longer doubles as an unfortunately cluttered music hall, because back in the new wing, Piano has created a very singular one, a perfect cube.

“Its small and the stage is the floor, the ground floor is the stage, then it’s surrounded by two rows of audience on all four sides. Then there are three balconies going up, each with 60 seats, only front-seats. So everyone has a front-row seat. And the sound is incredible,” said Hawley.

In many ways, Hawley also sees the new wing as a workshop. It’s where music is made, where the museum’s artists-in-residence live and work and where the greenhouses that serve the courtyard are housed. It’s a reflection of Gardner’s own mission for the Palace.

“It was always meant to be used by artists, scholars, performers, to build on to make their work and to present it to the public, which Gardner did all the time. She was a real patron of the artistic and the creative process,” she said.

Which is manifested in the new special exhibition gallery. Four times the size of the old, cramped one, it now features an installation by Glasgow artist Victoria Morton, a former artist-in-residence.

“Gardner so championed that,” Hawley said. “One of her favorite phrases was ‘fire the imagination.’ I think the public is going to hopefully get into this relationship with the work of young artists who are responding to our time and influenced by the collection in doing so.”

A triumph of concept and execution, the new wing flatters and compliments “the Palace” in a most brilliant fashion.

Jared Bowen's Arts Ahead: Marilyn, Eichmann And A Fiddle Choir

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:31 PM +0000

Dec. 2, 2011

BOSTON — What to do this weekend? Jared Bowen talks about the area's hottest arts events with WGBH "Morning Edition" host Bob Seay. This week, he's excited about "My Week With Marilyn," the new play "Captors" and the eclectic all-string group Childsplay puts on its annual series of concerts.

Country Pop Legends

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:52 AM +0000

Country pop legends from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s unite to perform their biggest and best-loved hits. Roy Clark hosts this emotional trip down three decades of memory lane.

Listen Live: Newport Jazz Festival

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:35 AM +0000

Together with NPR Music, WGBH is happy to be returning to the Newport Jazz Festival for a live webcast and recording Aug. 6-7, 2011. Listen for WGBH hosts Eric Jackson and Steve Schwartz, as they announce some of the 2011 acts from the stage.

Along with hosts, engineers and producers from WBGO (New Jersey/New York) and WYPR (Baltimore), WGBH and NPR Music we'll be presenting a live online stream of concerts from "the grandfather of jazz festivals." You can visit npr.org/newportjazz for live coverage — including photos, blog and Twitter updates and the webcast — and revisit the site afterwards to explore a trove of festival recordings, including video highlights. Recordings from 2010 and 2009 are there now.

Once again, founder George Wein and his team have devised a diverse lineup for his signature jazz event. Iconic musicians like Eddie Palmieri, Wynton Marsalis, Randy Weston and Charles Lloyd are scheduled to perform, while exciting younger players like Esperanza Spalding, Hiromi and Trombone Shorty will play multiple sets. Also on the lineup are bands led by Steve Coleman, Joey DeFrancesco, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green, Regina Carter, Avishai Cohen, Ambrose Akinmusire and many more. A schedule of our broadcast will appear close to the weekend of Aug. 6-7.

For more information about the lineup, visit the official Newport Jazz Festival website.

Rescue Reversed: Rossini's 'L'Italiana in Algeri'

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 22:05 PM +0000

Mezzo-soprano Anna Bonitatibus is Isabella and tenor Lawrence Brownlee is Lindoro in a production from the Lausanne Opera in Switzerland.
Today at 6:30pm on 99.5 All Classical

Monadnock: Music In The Meeting House

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 08:47 AM +0000

Classical New England weekly journey to festivals all over New England continues with a trip to the churches and meeting houses of New Hampshire. The Monadnock Music Festival combines the communitarian ethos of those spaces with stellar acoustics to create unique concert experiences.

Hear the 2012 Monadnock Music Festival episode of New England Summer Festivals

Hear the 2011 Monadnock Music Festival episode of New England Summer Festivals

The 2012 Monadnock Music Festival begins on July 6 and runs through August 11, with new Artistic Director Gil Rose.

Concerts are held in several locations throughout the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. Our map shows the location of Peterborough, where the festival is based, and where concerts take place in the historic Peterborough Town House.

Other concert venues include the Jaffrey Center Meeting House, the Harrisville Community Church, and Francestown's Old Meeting House.

The Monadnock region is approximately two hours from Boston and offers a wealth of dining and lodging options.

Music lovers travelling through the Monadnock region may also want to visit the famous MacDowell Artist Colony, where countless masterpieces of music, literature, drama, and visual art have been created. Monadnock State Park offers excellent hiking and other outdoor experiences, and Toadbooks will keep book lovers occupied for hours.

James Bolle founded Monadnock Music in 1966 with a few concerts at the Nelson Meeting House. Bolle was committed to programming music by American composers, resulting in visits, coachings, and performances with composers such as Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, John Adams, and many others.

More New England Summer Festivals

Shared Madness: Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:49 PM +0000

Soprano Sandrine Piau and tenor Jeremy Ovenden star in a rarely heard opera from La Monnaie in Brussels.
Sunday, June 26 at 6:30pm on 99.5 All Classical