Summer in the Berkshires
The Boston Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2003 Tanglewood schedule, and there are plenty of reasons to start planning weekends in Lenox. Highlights include James Taylor (June 24), Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (June 27), A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood (June 28), Mark Morris with Craig Smith and Yo-Yo Ma (June 29 and 30), Kurt Masur conducting Prokofiev’s Aleksandr Nevsky with Denyce Graves, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson with Peter Serkin (July 10), the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem (July 11), Van Cliburn playing Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto (July 12), Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops with John Pizzarelli in "All That Jazz" (July 15), pianist Dubravka Tom<t-70>ˇ<t$>si<t-70>ˇ<t$>c (July 16), Nelson Freire playing the Schumann Piano Concerto (July 19), Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducting the Verdi Requiem (August 1), Yo-Yo Ma exploring the music of Brazil (August 3), Roger Norrington conducting Beethoven (August 6), Renée Fleming singing Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder (August 10), the world premieres of Robert Zuidam’s Rage d’amours and Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar (August 10 and 11), the Juilliard String Quartet (August 14), Yo-Yo Ma playing the Elgar Cello Concerto (August 16), Joshua Bell playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (August 17), Yo-Yo Ma with Emanuel Ax (August 19), and James Conlon celebrating the 65th anniversary of the dedication of the Koussevitzky Music Shed with Bach’s Cantata No. 80 (Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The Festival of Contemporary Music will take place July 17 through 21 under the direction of Robert Spano; this year’s theme is "The Sacred and the Profane," and the highlighted composers will include America’s Jennifer Higdon, György Ligeti in his 80th birthday year, and the English composer-conductor George Benjamin. The Tanglewood Jazz Festival will take place August 29 through August 31; details will be announced at a later date.
Tanglewood brochures will be available in March; call (617) 638-9467 or go to www.bso.org. Tickets will go on sale March 30 through SymphonyCharge at (888) 266-1200 or on-line through the BSO’s Web site, www.bso.org; they’ll be available at the Tanglewood Box Office in Lenox beginning June 6. For further information, call the Boston Symphony Orchestra at (617) 266-1492.
June in Venice
If summer in the Berkshires isn’t exotic enough for you, you could try spending June in Venice or July in Vienna or Paris. The only catch is, you have to be an artist. The School of the Museum of Fine Arts has announced its three-week "International Art Programs" for this summer: Venice from June 1 through 21; Paris from July 6 through 26; Vienna from July 6 through 26. "All courses," we’re told, "offer a rigorous curriculum of instruction, on-site art making, visits to artists’ studios, excursions, and critiques." Which probably doesn’t come cheap, but who knows, when you get back, the Newbury Street galleries could be clamoring for your work. For more information, call (617) 267-1219.
April in Paris
The MFA is also offering you a shot at getting to Paris for free. Anyone purchasing a ticket to the museum’s current "Impressions of Light: The French Landscape from Corot to Monet" show this month will be entered to win a vacation to Paris for two, with transportation on American Airlines and four nights’ accommodation at the Hotel Inter-Continental Paris, in the heart of the city. Members who redeem their free "Impressions of Light" tickets, purchase additional ones, or renew their memberships in February will also be entered. The winner will be chosen on March 6; the vacation must be taken before the show closes, on April 13. For complete contest rules, and to purchase tickets, call (617) 542.4MFA or visit the MFA’s Web site at www.mfa.org.
March in New York
And if March 6 doesn’t bring good news, consider that you’ll still have time to catch the second annual New York Times Arts & Leisure Weekend, which this year is set for March 7 through 9. The celebration was instituted last year to mark the paper’s 150th anniversary, but it was such a hit that the Times is bringing it back. It’s a little like First Night: you buy an access pass and get free or discounted admission at a variety of cultural institutions and restaurants — not just in New York but throughout America and even around the world.
Last year, more than 300 cultural institutions participated. More than 6000 Times readers visited New York City museums; more than 8000 tickets were sold to Broadway and Off Broadway shows. And more than 7000 persons attended the "TimesTalks": "three unforgettable days of live conversations between today’s leading talents and thinkers — world-famous actors, artists, directors, and authors in conversation with New York Times journalists." This year, that would include actor Jerry Orbach and producer Dick Wolf of Law and Order talking with New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly; presidential adviser Joe Gergen talking with political writer Joe Klein and documentarian Alexandra Pelosi; Charlie Rose and Barbara Walters discussing interview techniques; playwrights Arthur Miller, John Guare, Tina Howe, Lanford Wilson, and Neil LaBute; artist Matthew Barney; composer Philip Glass; and opera stars Beverly Sills and Renée Fleming. "TimesTalks" will take place Friday evening March 7 and all day Saturday and Sunday at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. Tickets are $25; call (888) NYT-1870 or go to www.nytimes.com/timestalks.
You don’t even have to go to the Big Apple to enjoy Arts & Leisure Weekend, since a number of Boston institutions are participating, among them the American Repertory Theatre, the Lyric Stage, the MFA, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Institute of Contemporary Art. And if you do win that Paris vacation and are prepared to take off immediately, make a note that the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay are also participating institutions. For more information, go to www.nytimes.com/alweekend.
Later on in the month, too, Lincoln Center’s "Great Performers" series will be presenting "John Adams: An American Master." This 10-event extravaganza, "the largest New York festival ever dedicated to a living composer," will run from March 20 through May 17, and it will kick off with performances March 20 and 22 of Adams’s El Niño directed by Peter Sellars, with soprano Dawn Upshaw, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, baritone Willard White, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic directed by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Performances, at 7:30 both evenings, will be at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. Tickets are $35 to $85; call (718) 636-4100 or go to www.lincolncenter.org. For information about "John Adams: An American Master," call (212) 875-5475.
February in Philadelphia
If you’re looking for somewhere to go this month, remember that the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s "Degas and the Dance" blockbuster — 135 works by Degas, along with costume designs, stage sets, and photographs of dancers — will open this Wednesday, February 12. You can even make a day trip out of it: catch an early-morning Amtrak train, walk from the station to the museum (it’s only a few blocks), get in two or three hours of viewing plus lunch, and make it back to Boston in time for a late supper. The show runs through May 11, and tickets are $20 for adults, $17 for seniors and students, $10 for children; call (215) 235-7469 or go to www.philamuseum.org.
This weekend in Boston
But you want something to do right now, in town? Remember that the MFA celebrates the first Friday of each month with a party. This Friday, February 7, will have a French theme, with "everything from French tapas and Parisian style drinks to decorations and wait staff in costume." Does that mean French-maid outfits? Probably not, but after strolling through "Impressions of Light," you can grab a snack, get something from the cash bar, and listen to the Rich Greenblatt Trio riff on "The Last Time I Saw Paris." That’s in the Koch Gallery from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.; for information about First Fridays, go to www.mfa.org.
And then there’s the Regattabar . . .
We’ll leave aside the perennial question of why the Regattabar’s winter-spring schedule constitutes a "Festival," except to note that over the past several years said schedule has come with heavy sponsorship. This year it’s Land Rover (presenting sponsor), Alpha Omega/Tag Heuer, Hennessy Cognac, Boston Magazine, and Boston.com. Or as Cambridge city councilor Ken Reeves put it at the festival kickoff party a week ago Thursday, "Land Rover drives to the sound of jazz!" With plenty of complimentary cocktails and hot and cold hors d’œuvre on hand, the R-Bar drew from a long list of regular patrons and music-scene regulars: writer and radio commentator James Isaacs, former Globe critic and now Marsalis Music exec Bob Blumenthal, WGBH-FM 89.7 jazz announcers Steve Schwartz and Ron Gill, ’FNX Jazz Brunch host Jeff Turton, R-Bar Festival participating musicians Laszlo Gardony, Issi Rozen, Phil Scarff (Natraj), and Mark Harvey (Aardvaark). The Milton Academy Jazz Band (on the R-Bar schedule March 9) played a couple of numbers (including Miles Davis’s "So What"). But the highlight of the afternoon was the Reeves’s presentation of the Cambridge City Council’s declaration of January 30 as "Elvin Jones Day" to the great drummer, who was playing the club all last weekend. Momentarily at a loss for words ("My mother always told me ‘You talk to much’ "), Elvin called the proclamation a "great honor. I thank you all sincerely." Then he and his quintet went into "It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)."
The Regattabar Festival continues this weekend (Thursday and Friday; the R-Bar will be closed Saturday) with the Lee Konitz Trio. For tickets and information, call (617) 876-7777.
