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BSO announces Tanglewood summer in full swing, with COVID safety measures pending

The Lawn at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Hilary Scott
/
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Lawn at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Even with the omicron variant causing disruptions across the music world, the Boston Symphony Orchestra this week announced its Tanglewood schedule. For the first time in two years, the BSO is planning a full season at its summer home in the Berkshires.

Perhaps fittingly on opening night in Lenox, the BSO will perform Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety."

While concerts and programs are booked in the famous Koussevitzky Music Shed, Seiji Ozawa Hall and the newer Linde Center for Music and Learning, the number of tickets to be sold is still in question, along with other COVID safety protocols.

No one can predict how the pandemic will play out, said Anthony Fogg, the symphony's vice president for artistic planning. But announcing the Tanglewood season now gives people something to look forward to.

"Music is about nourishing the soul, about rejuvenation of the spirits, about reconnecting with our fellow human beings," Fogg said.

For that, the 2022 season will feature all five Beethoven piano concertos, American premieres of new compositions and the BSO's alter ego, as Fogg called them, the Boston Pops.

In popular music, for the first time ever, Tanglewood will feature a former Beatle. Ringo Starr will perform in June with his All Starr Band.

Jill Kaufman has been a reporter and host at NEPM since 2005. Before that she spent 10 years at WBUR in Boston, producing "The Connection" with Christopher Lydon and on "Morning Edition" reporting and hosting. She's also hosted NHPR's daily talk show "The Exhange" and was an editor at PRX's "The World."