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The 2025 Tanglewood Season

Clockwise from top left: María Dueñas, Kristine Opolais, Keith Lockhart, Andris Nelsons, Elim Chan, Carlos Simon
Allan Cabral: Dueñas; Polina Viljun: Opolais; Marco Borggreve: Lockhart; Hilary Scott: Nelsons; Simon Pauly: Chan; Kendall Bessent: Simon
Clockwise from top left: María Dueñas, Kristine Opolais, Keith Lockhart, Andris Nelsons, Elim Chan, Carlos Simon

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has announced its next summer season in the Berkshires, which includes Puccini's Tosca, with soprano Kristine Opolais and bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, a new piano concerto by John Williams to be premiered by soloist Emanuel Ax, and a celebration of Keith Lockhart's 30th anniversary as Boston Pops Conductor with guest artists Bernadette Peters, Ben Folds, and Jason Danieley, among many others.

Other notable highlights include performances by pianists Daniil Trifonov, Yefim Bronfman, Yuja Wang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Lang Lang, and Seong-Jin Cho, whose appearance anchors a series celebrating the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel's birth. Violin soloists in BSO concerts include Augustin Hadelich, Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, Pekka Kuusisto in his Tanglewood debut, and, in her BSO debut, María Dueñas.

Music by BSO Composer Chair Carlos Simon is part of several programs, and guest conductors in BSO concerts include Elim Chan, in her Tanglewood debut, Dima Slobodeniouk, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and, in his BSO debut, Zubin Mehta, among many others.

For more details hear the BSO's Chad Smith in an interview with CRB's Brian McCreath using the player above, and read the transcript below. For the entire 2025 Tanglewood schedule, visit the BSO.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Chad Smith, the President and CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the Tanglewood announcement, which, Chad, thank you for taking some time to talk it through with me. It's always a big event. There's always so much to talk about. So, I hope I don't take up too much for your time today.

Chad Smith Not at all. This is a welcome break in my day to actually talk about music and art. So, I'm happy to be here.

Brian McCreath And that dispels the myth that your whole job is about music and art. There's a lot more that goes into it, but someone can listen to the previous interview we did to learn more about that.

Let's just start off with what [BSO Music Director] Andris Nelsons is doing. The first half of the season is really built around Andris's activities, so he's opening with All-Rachmaninoff and Daniil Trifonov [July 5] and then also on the same weekend, All-Beethoven with Yefim Bronfman playing the piano [July 6]. So that's exciting. But then I'm really interested in what happens after that with this Romeo and Juliet program. Bill Barclay, whose work we've seen here in several other environments, is coming to do a Romeo and Juliet program [July 11]. Is there something you can flesh out about that, that can give us a picture of what's going to happen?

Chad Smith I saw his work for the first time here. In fact, it was last year when he did Peer Gynt. And what I was struck by was how musical his staging was. And the actors were so integrated into the music making. It was as if they were bowing their way across the stage. So, he's a deeply musical director, and we asked him to bring that magic to the out-of-doors. It'll be a kind of a mélange of takes on Romeo Juliet. And of course, Romeo and Juliet has inspired music for centuries, literally centuries. And he's going to weave that together to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet. So it will be excerpts from Romeo and Juliet that take us through the evening.

Brian McCreath I can't wait to see it because his work with A Midsummer Night's Dream at Tanglewood was also just absolutely brilliant. So that's going to be a true highlight. And then Andris always wants to include opera. He's such a great opera conductor. And this year it's [Puccini's] Tosca [July 19]. Tell me about your discussions with Andris, about which opera to do and why you ended up at Tosca.

Chad Smith So Tosca is a piece that he has always wanted to do. But what I love about the way Andris does operas is that he does opera in concert. And it allows for this real balance between the incredible symphonic work that is happening with the orchestra as well as the singing. So often when you're in an opera house, the staging overwhelms you, or perhaps the singing overwhelms the playing of the orchestra. But here there's a real balance. You get to hear the symphonic score. The musicians are on stage. You get these great voices. And what voices, I mean, Kristine Opolais is singing Tosca. Bryn Terfel is Scarpia. Seok Jong Baek is our Cavaradossi. This is a world class cast, and Andris loves digging into opera. Of course, when he was a young musician in Riga, he got his start doing opera at the Opera House there.

Brian McCreath Yeah, exactly, this is where the roots of his artistry and also even just being trained as a singer – we think of him as a trumpet player, but he spent so much time learning to sing.

Chad Smith Well, when you sit in to a rehearsal and you hear him singing out these dulcet tones as he sings through these passages, it's inspiring. It really is.

Brian McCreath There's a really interesting program that, first of all, features María Dueñas, this violinist who's just been making amazing waves all over the world, particularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic [July 25]. So, I wonder if you had run into her in your time there. But on the second half of that program, the Bach Air from the Third Orchestral Suite, plus Mahler's Adagio from the Symphony No. 10. What a combination.

Chad Smith So María's an extraordinary violinist, and I've known her for a long time. I think she was about 17 when I first heard her play. She's Spanish, but she had moved to Vienna and Gustavo [Dudamel, Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic] heard her play in Spain and invited her to come and play a concerto in L.A. And it was just breathtaking what she did. And soon after that, we commissioned in Los Angeles a piece for her from Gabriela Ortiz, the Violin Concerto, which is one of the great modern violin concertos. And in fact, Gabriela Ortiz is going to be heading up our Festival of Contemporary Music [July 24-28].

Brian McCreath On a little tangent here, yes, that's exciting news. Gabriela Ortiz leading the Festival of Contemporary Music. That's really exciting.

Chad Smith That's true. But we'll go back to María. I mean, she's a remarkable player. And I've heard her play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and it is exquisite playing and such a deeply, deeply passionate violinist. But just crystal clear, too. If I were to look at our season this year, I would say, one, it is an absolutely star-studded season, and I could list the world's greatest violinists who are going to be playing with us this summer. And [two] there's the next generation of great violinists, including María Dueñas, who's going to be there this summer.

Brian McCreath And also one of those concerts that Andris will conduct – and again, we're not going to get to all the details of every concert, but this one is worth mentioning – the world premiere of a piano concerto by John Williams [July 26]. The concerto that Anne-Sophie Mutter premiered a couple of years ago was really exciting. And to have Manny Ax play this new piano concerto, I don't even know what to expect from it because John has so much of a span, a variety, a spectrum...

Chad Smith He said he is inspired by jazz legends.

Brian McCreath Wow. Going back to the Johnny Williams days.

Chad Smith [Laughs] You can say that. So, John, of course, in many ways started his career as a jazz pianist and a pianist in studio sessions. I won't give too much away now, but each of the movements is named after a jazz legend. John finished the piece several months ago. Manny was out with him in Los Angeles, spending some time going through it. And it's a huge deal for us. It is really one of the tentpoles of the summer, that weekend when we premiere the John Williams Piano Concerto. And there's going to be a lot more that we do with it in the time ahead. But to have Manny learning it, he's premiered so many great works and I know that he's really excited about this, too. But you know, when you look at the season, and forgive my tangent here, it is a bit overwhelming.

Brian McCreath [Laughs] Tanglewood is supposed to be, Chad.

Chad Smith It is. But if you just think about, again, the pianists: Daniil Trifonov, Fima Bronfman, Seong-Jin Cho, Yuja Wang, Lang Lang, Manny Ax. And then you think about the violinists: Augustin Hadelich, Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, María Dueñas. Yo-Yo [Ma] is there for three programs. Bryn Terfel. The Sixteen are making a residency.

Brian McCreath Yes, with Harry Christophers.

Chad Smith [Director] Peter Sellars is coming back and doing a project with Matt Aucoin. It is a remarkable season, and I'm so proud of it. I'm so proud of Andris and the team and the season that they put together, because it really does reinforce that idea that Tanglewood is where music goes for the summer.

Brian McCreath Before we leave the category of Andris behind. Tell me what you see when you observe his Art of Conducting workshops [July 13, 22]. What can an audience expect when they show up at, probably in the Linde Center, I imagine…

Chad Smith Yes, in the Linde Center.

Brian McCreath …where the Art of Conducting sessions happen, and Andris gets in front of the audience with a group of musicians and student conductors. Tell me about that experience.

Chad Smith So this was a revelation for me. I've spent my life around conductors, but what I was so struck by was the generosity with which he approaches this work. You know, conducting is a challenging profession. In order to practice your craft, you have to have a hundred players who are willing to sit down and work things out with you. And that's a hard thing to do, right? If you're a guitarist, you can sit and practice your guitar, but if you're a conductor, you need an orchestra. And so, every year, the Tanglewood Music Center invites probably the two or three most talented young conductors from around the world. We just went through our auditions this year, and I'm very happy to say, again, another two extraordinary conductors will be joining us this summer as Fellows.

But they get up in front of the orchestra and Andris, you know, he's not directive in what he says. He's not saying, “Do it this way,” because these emerging conductors, they have a perspective on the music that they're playing. Sometimes it's just a technical question of can they express that without saying the words, right? Can you imagine if conductors were shouting out in the middle of a performance like, "No quieter," right? They have to do all of these things non-verbally or they ruin the performance. So that nonverbal communication is something that you see Andris really helping them understand and helping them get their arms around. And I've watched him let them go down rabbit holes. And then he says, "Now let's go back and try it this way." It's wonderfully generous. And you also see that the musicians who are playing for them are also learning how they respond. So, it's not just the conductors learning how to get what they want out of the players. It's the players recognizing, when he does this, this is how my body intuitively responds. So, it is absolutely stunning. We sit in the Linde Center. We have either an orchestra or a small ensemble, and we have cameras on the conductors and on Andris so that the audience can see the facial expressions and what Andris is doing and how he's kind of giving examples to clarify, perhaps we call them corners in music as the musicians have to go around a corner. So, it is one of my favorite things each summer.

Brian McCreath And it's just the tip of the iceberg of TLI, which we'll come back to. But there's so much going on at the Tanglewood Learning Institute. But yeah, Andris, he is such a great communicator and such a charismatic, as you say, generous person.

I want to come back to more conductors who are coming this summer. But first, there's one particular conductor we must mention right now, and that is Keith Lockhart, who's celebrating his 30th anniversary as the Boston Pops conductor. And a couple of different things going on this summer. But there's one particular program on August 22nd that is meant to be the special 30th anniversary celebration. What can you tell us about that concert?

Chad Smith Look, Keith is already a legend. After three decades, I think he's only the third music director of the Boston Pops in the past 80 or 90 years: Arthur Fiedler, John Williams, and Keith Lockhart. And it's a huge achievement. He is beloved within the city, and what he has done for the Boston Pops over the past three decades has been nothing short of a full change in the way that our audiences perceive it and the artists that we engage. And this 30th anniversary is a celebration of friends.

So, you have Bernadette Peters and Ben Folds and Brian Stokes Mitchell and Time for Three. These are just some of the names that we know of now that are going to be joining us. And I suspect that by the time we get to August, it's going to be a cavalcade of people coming and saying congratulations to Keith. So, I'm really looking forward to this. And what's also beautiful about the summer is that Keith is such a generous artist as well, and he honors John Williams every opportunity that he can as his predecessor and as the remarkable artist that John is. And so, in addition to his 30th anniversary concert, Keith is also going to be conducting a program of John Williams's music. So, it'll be a really special way to honor him.

Brian McCreath And you say that it's friends, which is, of course, true. But what I think maybe audiences don't fully absorb when they're in the hall enjoying a Pops concert is that that friendship is born of the work these artists have done together. It's hard, hard work. If you observe Pops rehearsals and the trajectory of a Pops season, nobody works harder than Keith. It's kind of amazing to watch him run a rehearsal with major artists like Bernadette Peters or Ben Folds. I mean, he's a master of making the pieces move when they need to move but keeping things really efficient and getting the most out of everybody in the moment.

Chad Smith Yeah. And you know, you think about a Broadway show which has six weeks of rehearsal and then two weeks of previews before opening night. We have one or two rehearsals on a Pops concert to put that show together. That's a two-and-a-half-hour show. And it's remarkable, and Keith is such a pro at doing that.

Brian McCreath Well, getting back to some of the other conductors that are coming to Tanglewood specifically to lead the BSO, two names jumped out at me and especially ones that I'm sure you know quite well. Esa-Pekka Salonen is coming back to the BSO for the first time in...

Chad Smith 40 years.

Brian McCreath Salonen hasn't been to Tanglewood in 40 years?

Chad Smith Correct.

Brian McCreath Oh my gosh. I was just thinking of the last time he was here...

Chad Smith So he made his debut at Tanglewood in 1985.

Brian McCreath That's wonderful. And then Zubin Mehta, who's never led the BSO.

Chad Smith Correct. But he was at Tanglewood in 1958.

Brian McCreath My goodness.

Chad Smith And I love this, and these are two buddies of mine, in fairness. I worked really closely with Esa-Pekka in Los Angeles, and he still lives there. And Zubin, of course, I've worked with for two decades.

Brian McCreath How many years was he leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic?

Chad Smith He led the L.A. Philharmonic for 17 years. Esa-Pekka led the L.A. Philharmonic for 17 years. And Zubin still lives in L.A. And so, we're very, very pleased that he's going to be coming back. He was a conducting Fellow in 1958, a very special class. Claudio Abbado was in his class, and he conducted a program, I think it was Lalo Cello Concerto. And Esa-Pekka was here at Tanglewood in 1985, and he conducted a program with Sibelius's Symphony No. 5. So, both of them are coming back this summer. Zubin is coming back and leading Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the end of the season [August 24], his BSO debut at, I think he's 88 or 89 years old. And Esa-Pekka is coming back and doing a couple of things. He's going to be doing a program with us [July 13] with a wonderful piece by Gabriella Smith, a California based composer, and then Sibelius's Violin Concerto with Pekka Kuusisto, and Sibelius's Symphony No. 5, the piece that he did 40 years ago when he debuted with the BSO at Tanglewood. But then he's going to be spending time with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and he's going to do [Stravinsky's] Rite of Spring. So, I'm very, very excited about that.

Brian McCreath And that guest soloist you mentioned, Pekka Kuusisto, is an amazing soloist who just did his BSO debut. Was it just last season?

Chad Smith Last season, yeah.

Brian McCreath An amazing player, and a really funny guy, too.

Chad Smith Quirky! But also, just brilliant. Of course, he plays Sibelius and all the great violin concertos but is also a huge advocate for new music and experimental music. And just one of the great ones.

Brian McCreath And then another conductor that really jumped out at me. We have Dima Slobodeniouk, who's now becoming a perennial, right?

Chad Smith A dear friend.

Chad Smith ...and always gets the most out of the BSO. We have the two Assistant Conductors.

Chad Smith Samy [Rachid] and Anna [Handler].

Brian McCreath But also, Elim Chan is coming back [August 2], and she was here, I think, the season before last to do her debut. And wow, I mean, I'll tell you that just at our station, in the office, people were talking about this after that weekend because she is such an amazing conductor.

Chad Smith She's a dynamo. You know, she gets up and she creates this remarkably robust sound. And she gets orchestras to play with this depth and fullness, which is really, really exciting. And to say this she's having a moment is not the right way to describe it. She's been having many, many moments for many, many years.

Brian McCreath Building moments one after the other.

Chad Smith She's just been working with the great orchestras and opera companies around the world.

Brian McCreath Yeah, I'm so glad she's coming to Tanglewood. That's great.

Chad Smith I'm excited about our two title positions, Samy Rachid is going to be doing a program with Yo-Yo Ma [August 10]. And he did a step in this year.

Brian McCreath Yes. Literally last minute.

Chad Smith Last minute. I mean, he was up in his room studying scores. And I had to go in and say, "You're on." And he did such a great job and had the trust of the players. And so, I'm really excited about that. And Anna Handler's our new Assistant Conductor, and she is spectacular. Just super creative. [August 16]

Brian McCreath And that'll be her BSO debut. You mentioned Yo-Yo, who, as you say, is doing three different programs. You're bringing back-- [laughs] You're putting the band back together, put it that way. You've got Leonidas [Kavakos] and Manny [Ax] with Antoine Tamestit doing a Shed concert, all Beethoven. [August 3]

Chad Smith These are big personalities. And if there was ever a collection of musicians who could fill the space like the Shed, it is Antoine, Leonidas, Manny Ax, and Yo-Yo Ma. It's all Beethoven. And, you know, this is something that they have done. As you've said, bringing the band back together. So, I'm really excited for that. But then, you know, Yo-Yo obviously is also one of the most creative and has one of the most probing musical minds. And he's doing a recital with Brooklyn Rider, as another example [August 13].

So, there are so many ways for our audiences to get to know the artists of our time. And this is something that I want to reinforce about Tanglewood. It's not just transactional. You don't just come to the concert and hear a great concert and then get in your car and leave. You can. But it is also truly experiential. You have an opportunity, audience members have an opportunity to engage with the next generation of musical performers. Our TMC Fellows. These are truly... The percentage of these players who are going on to have major musical careers as some crazy number, 75% of them. But it's also an opportunity to be in line at the pizza restaurant. Leonidas Kavakos might be there with two students. Our audiences have that experience. And that's what's so special and unique about a weekend at Tanglewood.

Brian McCreath And one of those artists of our time that, if we only look at the BSO schedule, it might be a little deceptive because Carlos Simon has one piece on a BSO program, which is a brand-new piece, a choral piece that will precede Beethoven Nine [August 24]. That'll be exciting in and of itself, but a reminder to audiences to go deeper than the BSO schedule, because Carlos is doing a bunch of things at Tanglewood this summer. And one of the things that, I don't know how much detail there is to share with it yet, is the TLI presentation of "African Queens," [July 27] which sounds totally exciting, several different composers involved in a storytelling exercise. But also, a Boston Symphony Chamber Players recital as well [July 10]. It's mostly his music, but he's curating more of it beyond that.

Chad Smith And the program is still coming together, but it's going to have music of Jessie Montgomery, one of the great, great young composers, but also pieces of Carlos's, a piece of solo flute, a solo cello piece, a wind quintet. Carlos became the Composer Chair of the Boston Symphony this season, and it is more than being a composer in residence. It's leaning on Carlos to help us expand the way that we think about presenting music and the way that we connect with artists and audiences. And so, even just this year in the winter season, he's curated a chamber music program that we took out into a historically black church in the South End, we've done a new piece of his on our opening night gala, next season there are some very exciting premieres that we will be having and we'll probably be talking about that in a few weeks. But also, he's a great teacher. And he is really kind of embedding himself in the Tanglewood Music Center as well. So, with our Chamber Players, with our students, with his foot in the humanities, too, and leaning into programs that he's helping us curate at the Tanglewood Learning Institute. So, he is really changing the DNA of the Boston Symphony in such a positive way.

Brian McCreath That's so good to hear. And what an amazing, charismatic person. I mean, when you say that sometimes you do run into these people around the grounds at Tanglewood, I hope people will run into Carlos. When people meet him, he is the warmest, most generous, interesting person to talk to just in the moment, right? So, it's a great opportunity.

It's a Ravel anniversary year and so there are several things happening. You mentioned before when we were talking through Andris's programs Seong-Jin Cho, who's going to do both piano concertos by Ravel with the BSO [July 12]. And then a complete evening of the solo piano music in Ozawa Hall [July 16]. All of which is a little bit in line with what he's done here at the hall with the BSO. But tell me more about the Ravel celebrations that are going on.

Chad Smith One of the biggest things that we're going to be doing to celebrate Ravel is, later in the season with the Tanglewood Music Center vocal Fellows, under the guidance of Dawn Upshaw, we're going to be doing the Ravel opera L'enfant et les sortilèges, a wonderful, wonderful story [August 4]. And it really allows us to showcase the wonderful talents of our young vocal soloists. So that's going to be a big part of the Ravel celebration.

Brian McCreath And I remember when we talked before that Dawn Upshaw is one of those icons in your own personal mind when it comes to Tanglewood. So, it's kind of exciting.

Chad Smith [Laughs] She's tired of me saying that she's my hero. But she is my hero. But she's like, "You've got to stop saying that." And it's honestly because I think the way that she has thought about building a career is in so many ways truly inspiring. She is as committed to the core repertoire, but she has this expansive approach to what she does, whether it's early music or whether it is the newest of new music or whether it is Mozart, and she's a friend to composers and she's a true friend of chamber musicians. And that is something, again, that we hope to embody in our work at Tanglewood, that it's a place where our vocal Fellows hopefully get to experience what life as a singing professional is going to be like, that it's chamber music, it's recitals, it's opera, it is oratorio, it's work with the orchestra. So, the Ravel opera this summer is an example of how we continue to think about their training and their future.

Brian McCreath Not to mention the fact that it's an unbelievably gorgeous piece of music, just sonically, it's this amazing piece of beauty that you just sort of soak in. It's one of my favorite operas. And then, you know, one more piece of that Ravel story for the summer is the Parker Quartet working, again, with Bill Barclay on a program that's going to illuminate... This is called "Letters to a to a Young Poet," which sounds totally fascinating. [August 2]

Chad Smith And we can do this at Tanglewood, right? We can tell deeper, longer stories at Tanglewood. In many ways, it's a lot easier than what we could do in the winter season because we do have these spaces where we can do chamber music and we can do choral works and we can do recitals, we can do lectures, we can do all sorts of humanities explorations. And again, it is a weekend of exploration. So, I encourage audiences as they come to Tanglewood to think about lingering as a concept. Linger on the campus. You will be surprised what you hear and what you learn.

Brian McCreath And what you might run into is a TLI program, Tanglewood Learning Institute. The TLI includes a series called Meet the Makers, which includes Bill Barclay [July 9] and Keith Lockhart [July 17] and Matthew Aucoin, the composer [August 7].

Chad Smith And that's going to be there with one of his pieces, Music for New Bodies. It's a compelling piece of contemporary work. It defies categorization. Maybe it's a symphonic cycle, maybe it's an opera, maybe it's an oratorio. But it really looks at the human experience as one approaches the end of life and contemplates the world that is leaving behind. These are ideas, these are huge, huge topics to be addressed. And I think no one can address these existential topics better than [opera/theater director] Peter Sellars. And so, for us to be able to have Peter Sellars come back, it's remarkable to have him on campus with our students.

Brian McCreath We haven't even gotten to things like Tanglewood on Parade [August 5], which will be spectacular, and the Popular Artist series. Bonnie Raitt is coming [August 31].

Chad Smith And I just have to say, James Taylor. The fact that James Taylor is on campus July 3rd and July 4th is a gift. We are so lucky to be able to kind of bask in the generosity of his music making.

Brian McCreath Well, Chad, I am lucky that you've spent this time with me because I love talking about everything that's coming. It gets me very excited for the Tanglewood season and I think a lot of our audience as well. So, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Chad Smith My pleasure.