Andris Nelsons, the orchestra’s musical director, is regularly on stage. John Williams, who turns 90 this year and was the director of the Boston Pops, will have a gala performance on August 20. Garrick Ohlsson plays Brahms’ complete works for solo piano in four programs; Paul Lewis joins the orchestra for all five of Beethoven’s piano concertos. There will be a lot of free concerts with the young guys from the Tanglewood Music Center.
Famous guests such as Emanuel Axe, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma and Michael Tilson Thomas are joined by debut artists such as conductors JoAnn Falletta, Cristian Macelaru and Earl Lee, pianist Alexander Malofeev and viola player Antoine Tamestit. Classics by Rachmaninoff and Ravel are served alongside new music by composers such as Helen Grime, Fazil Say, Richard Danielpour, Jessie Montgomery, Julia Adolphe, Caroline Shaw and Elizabeth Ogonek.
Beginning June 17 with Ringo Starr and ending September 3 with Judy Collins, pop artists return for the first time since 2019 – including Tanglewood favorite James Taylor, Brandi Carlile and Earth, Wind & Fire.
The absence of Tanglewood, a regional staple and huge moneymaker for the Boston Symphony, which has summered there since 1937, was keenly felt in 2020, even by an orchestra with secure finances and the largest endowment in its field.
The thinned out 2021 season drew a respectable attendance of 148,000, up from more than 340,000 in 2019. But it’s hoped that the rural campus will be all the more vibrant this year. Ozawa Hall reopens to join the main concert space, the Shed. So is the Linde Center, inaugurated in 2019 as a venue for masterclasses, lectures, rehearsals and recitals – including this summer pianist Stephen Drury playing the mighty array of variations on “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” by Frederic Rzewski, who died in June.