Listed here are the Boston Symphony’s weekend and Popular Artist concert schedule for the 2026 season at Tanglewood (BSO weekend concerts in bold). Besides these concerts in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, and the winter and spring Tanglewood Learning Institute programs, there are concerts, recitals and other music-related programs throughout the Tanglewood campus: Full Tanglewood schedula and ticket info..

June 2026 at Tanglewood

• Jon Stewart, w/ Church and State – June 20, 7 pm
• Yacht Rock Revue – June 21, 2:30 pm
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis – June 26, 7 pm
• Paul Simon – June 27, 7:30 pm
• Paul Simon – June 28, 7:30 pm
• Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration, Boston Pops w/ Keith Lockhart – June 30, 7 pm

July 2026 at Tanglewood

• Boston Pops – American Titans: Bernstein and Sondheim – July 2, 8pm
• James Taylor and All-Star Band – July 3, 8 pm
• James Taylor and All-Star Band – July 4, 8 pm
• Philip Glass, Symphony No. 15, Lincoln – July 5, 2:30
• 7/10, 8pm – Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with Seong-Jin Cho and Excerpts from Swan Lake
• 7/11, 8pm – Mahler Symphony No. 4 and Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 with Emanuel Ax
• 7/12, 2:30 – Brahms Symphony No. 2 and Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2 with Eric Lu
• Ziggy Marley and Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue – July 14, 7 pm
• 7/17, 8pm – Simon, Barber, and Excerpts from Nixon in China with Renée Fleming
• 7/18, 8pm – Hisaishi conducts Hisaishi and Ravel with Jean-Yves Thibaudet
• 7/19, 2:30 – Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 with Daniil Trifonov
• Weird Al Yankovic – July 21, 7pm
• 7/24, 8pm – Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 3, Polish and Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 with Augustin Hadelich
• 7/25, 8pm – Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 and Paul Lewis Plays Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27
• 7/26, 2:30 – Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 and Mozart Violin Concerto No. 1 with Himari
• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, w/ Patty Griffin – July 28, 7pm
• 7/31, 8mp – Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Wagner, Sibelius, and Beethoven with Yefim Bronfman

August 2026 at Tanglewood

• 8/1, 8pm – The Marriage of Figaro
• 8/2, 2:30 – Joshua Bell performs Bruch Scottish Fantasy
• 8/7, 8pm – Yo-Yo Ma and Renaud Capuçon perform Brahms and Fauré
• 8/8, 8pm – The Many Voices of American Music with Yo-Yo Ma
• 8/9, 2:30 – Yo-Yo Ma, Arooj Aftab, Karen Ouzounian, and Christine Lee perform Tavener, Kalhor, and Golijov
• Hugh Jackman with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, Aug. 11, 8pm
• 8/14, 8pm – Copland Appalachian Spring, Beethoven Symphony No. 7, and Rountree For Martha (Variations on a Theme of Leonard Bernstein)
• 8/15, 8pm – Maestro of the Movies: A Tribute to John Williams
• 8/16, 2:30 – Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra with Marin Alsop, conductor, and Ray Chen, violin
• Brandi Carlile, Aug. 18, 8pm
• Cynthia Erivo with the Boston Pops, Aug. 21, 8pm
• 8/22, 8pm – Dvorák Symphony No. 8 and Bernstein Chichester Psalms
• 8/23, 2:30 – Beethoven Symphony No. 9, Ode to Joy
• Carrie Underwood, Aug. 29, 7pm
• Judy Collins, w/ Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rosanne Cash, Aug. 30, 2:30

September 2026 at Tanglewood

• Tedeschi Trucks Band, w/ Lukas Nelson, Sept.2, 7pm
• Alabamna Shakes, w/ Mavis Staples, Sept. 5, 7pm
• John Fogerty and Steve Winwood, Sept. 6, 7pm

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read – Since the expansion of Tanglewood to include the Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) in 2019, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) now offers concerts and music-related entertainment throughout the year – well beyond the orchestra’s familiar 8-week residency during July and August.

Tanglewood Learning Institute 2026 calendar of events

All performances are in Studio E, The Linde Center – get tickets here.

February 2026

• TLI Jazz: Tammy McCann – Feb. 14, 7pm
• TLI Jazz: Tammy McCann – Feb. 15, 1pm
• TLI Chamber Concert – Feb. 22, 3pm

March 2026

• TLI Chamber Concert – March 8, 3pm
• TLI Presents: Goitse – March 15, 3pm
• TLI Jazz: Sullivan Fortner Trio – March 20, 3pm
• TLI Presents: Berkshire Bach Portals—In the Key of Bach – March 21, 3pm
• TLI Presents: Arcis Saxophone Quartet—JSB:48 – March 22, 3pm

April 2026

• TLI Jazz: Nick Hempton—A Night of Soul Jazz From NYC – April 10, 7pm
• TLI for Families: Magic Piano & The Chopin Shorts with Derek Wang, piano – April 12, 10:30am
• TLI Presents: Winterreise – April 24, 7pm
• TLI Presents: postWinterreise – April 25, 7pm

May 2026

• TLI Presents: Mirage with Hub New Music and Daniel Wohl – May 1, 7pm
• TLI Jazz: Jumaane Smith – Sweet Baby! – May 8, 7pm

Berkshire Links -

Because fickle fate never takes a day off, the incompetence of traffic cops had us stuck in jam for nearly an hour, costing us all but twenty minutes of Jimmy Vaughn’s opening set. The loss is more sorely felt because that twenty minutes is on par with any twenty minutes ever spent at the Blues trough.

For all the majestic beauty of the guitar when played by musicians as great as Vaughn and Raitt, twenty minutes within earshot Jimmy Vaughn and the Tilt-a-Whirl Band will make you wonder why every guitar slinger doesn’t buttress the manipulation of guitar strings with a dollop of ballsy brass!

The piece he ended his set with reminded me of a concerto, the guitar in conversation with the brass section, such is the way one perceives musical performance, in the aftermath of an eight week series of symphony concerts!

One of the most attractive features of the blues is that, as a discrete genre, it is as firmly rooted in tradition as it is determined to propel the tradition into the future. The way that happens is on the stage through performance, not in the studio or via digital editing.

Cover and tribute bands do the opposite because their audience are on nostalgia trips, and want only to hear tunes played exactly the way they were back in the day. They ain’t interested in progress, they’re regressive, like republicans.

By way of an encore, Ms. Raitt called her colleagues back to the stage for a tasty jam session, which worked such magic on me that I forgave the knuckleheads responsible for the traffic jam on the way home. Can’t wait to see who our friends at the BSO bring into the Shed next summer. Bonnie Raitt’s band included Duke Levine, guitar, vocals, James “Hutch” Hutchinson, bass, Ricky Fataar, drums, and Glenn Patscha, keyboard, vocals. Accompanying Jimmie Vaughan were Billy Pitman, Rhythm Guitar, Jason Corbiere, Drums, Billy Horton, Bass/Vox, and the Texas Horns: Al Gomez, Trumpet, Kaz Kazanoff, Tenor Sax, John Mills, Baritone Sax.

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read, August 30, 2025 performance – All I knew about Lynyrd Skynyrd, besides the unavoidable party anthems Freebird and Sweet Home Alabama, was that the musical wizard Al Kooper had “discovered” them. Anybody audacious enough to insinuate himself into Bob Dylan’s career, and play a key role in shaping the greatest song in rock n’ roll history – Like a Rolling Stone, is somebody I’m going to pay attention to.

Here is Al Kooper describing how he “discovered” Lynyrd Skynyrd.

And so, I was excited to attend my first Lynyrd Skynyrd show, even if none of the musicians Kooper produced are alive. It was fun enough to hear their renditions of the two anthems, but it was sad to hear them do their other big hit, What’s My Name, and sad to see the audience so eager to boogie along. The song is an anthem to people who like ’em young, like Jeffrey Epstein, Matt Gaetz, and the ogre from MarALago.

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read, August 14, 2025 performance – Tonight’s concert was the sort of program Ozawa Hall was designed to accommodate at Tanglewood, which is to say amplify and transmit into the countryside, for a further blending of human voices with the natural setting that enfolds them.

The Sixteen are a choral ensemble founded in 1979 by Harry Christophers, who conducted tonight’s performance. The choral group includes six sopranos, and four each of alto, tenor, and bass.

No less a span of seventeen centuries is represented in tonight’s repertoire, which consisted of lyrics and music composed by Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Arvo Part (b. 1935), William Byrd (1540-1623), and St. Patrick (372-466).

At the risk of seeming profane, one needn’t be a subscriber to any of the represented religious sects in order to be delighted by tonight’s concert. Love of music would suffice; special devotion to the music of artfully-trained voices is rewarded especially.

Except to the adept, the program wouldn’t appear to be very dynamic, nor even captivating – but, that is exactly what it was. From the first note to the last, The Sixteen and Maestro Christophers commanded the audience’s rapt attention. And certain pieces required certain placement of singers; that alone shows a fascinating aspect of choral music.

My own attention was such that I thought I could discern individual, discrete voices, even as they weave themselves into a single, rich tarton of delicate tone. It’s neat that ten days after this evening of choral art, Tanglewood presents the annual choral-orchestral extravaganza, Beethoven’s Ninth, and so transports us from the sublime to the spectacular.

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read, August 8, 2025 performance – Tonight’s performance at Tanglewood of Symphonie espagnole in D minor, for violin and orchestra by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andres Orozoco-Estrada with violin soloist Joshua Bell brought the composer, Edouard Lalo (1823-92), up from the depths of my musical ignorance to the first echelon of favorite composers.

The five-movement piece, written for a Spanish virtuoso friend of the composer, put both Mr. Bell and the BSO on full display of their own virtuosity. From the audience, one got a virtual workout merely following the sound around the orchestra as first this section then that one was emphasized.

I think there’s a tendency for a casual fine arts consumer such as myself to pay undue obeisance to subtlety and understatement. That stance was upset immediately tonight by the almost cartoonish open in Lalo’s symphony. It felt to me as if the composer wished to remind audiences that forthwith comes a big bright orchestra in concert with a spectacular violinist. Having gotten our attention in no uncertain tones, the orchestra and Mr. Bell carry us along for an exciting exploration of musical vertuosity.

After intermission, Maestro Orozoco-Estrada was vigorous in the orchestra’s thoroughly satisfying performance of Antonin Dvorak’s familiar Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World. Written during the Czech composer’s New York sojourn at the National Conservatory of Music, the piece is informed by Dvorak’s affection for both native and African American music. His reputation for weaving motifs and themes from folk lore into his compositions led to the New York job, hoping to add American works to the orchestral canon.

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read, July 29, 2025 performance – Emmylou Harris and Graham Nash delivered a wonderfully entertaining evening of music in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood, a venue they each first played fifty years ago. It was a treat to see and hear such seasoned performers in full command of the musical artistry that carried them to fame in the ’60s and ’70s.

Nash performed seated because of a recent fall in NYC – “but, I didn’t fall on my voice,” he said before leading his band through a set of fourteen songs, with an emphasis on his time with Crosby Stills and Nash + Young. Unlike so many aged performers whose insecurity spoils their stagecraft, Nash interspersed songs with amusing anecdotes. His band included the multi-instrumentalists Adam Minkoff and Zach Djanikian, and keyboardist Todd Caldwell.

If the performance of Mr. Nash and band was primarily a welcome and vigorous visit to earlier decades, Ms. Emmylou Harris’s set showed us that time has a way of standing still, as it appears to have for her. Wrapped in a cloud of white locks, she remains a presence as she did when introduced to the ages in the closing segment of The Last Waltz, singing Evangeline with The Band. Accompanied by her Red Dirt Band, which now includes John Prine’s bassist, Ms. Harris treated the audience to a survey of her diverse repertoire.

And she is an engaging hostess, telling of an early interest in theatre that involved Tanglewood and also referencing the Down East humor of Marshall Dodge, which got no reaction, sadly, because, among other reasons, the Berkshires ain’t quite Down East.

Graham Nash and Emmylou Harris at Tanglewood setlists, July 29, 2025.

Graham Nash
Wasted on the Way
Marrakesh Express
Military Madness
I Used to Be a King
Simple Man
Immigration Man
Love the One You’re With
Better Days
Bus Stop
Just a Song Before I Go
Our House
Encores: Teach Your Children, Woodstock,Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

Emmylou Harris

Birds – with Graham Nash
Easy from Now On
Orphan Girl
Making Believe
Red Dirt Girl
Gulf Coast Highway
One of These Days
Kern River
Right Now
Wheels
Ooh Las Vegas
Prayer in Open D
Michelangelo
Goin’ Back to Harlan
Together Again
Save the Last Dance for Me
Rose of Cimarron
Encore: Boulder to Birmingham

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read, July 26, 2025 performance – Already in its tenth decade, Tanglewood (est. 1937) has amassed no mean amount of lore and highlights, even if it has yet to erect a hall of fame. Whenever it does, there’ll be ample space in it for John Williams, whose contributions to the success and popularity of Tanglewood are both various and singular.

The highlight of tonight’s program was his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, dedicated to local favorite Emanuel Ax, who performed the world premier tonight, along with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of music director Andris Nelsons. As an indication of the breadth and fluidity of the composer’s imagination, the three movements of the concerto are inspired by the careers of three jazz pianists – Art Tatum, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson, each markedly distinct from the other! What looks on paper like a crazy idea, turns out to be a beautiful piece of music.

Yo-yo Ma premiered his Concerto for Cello at the opening of Ozawa Hall in 1994, and for Tanglewood’s 75th anniversary, in 2012, he composed Just Down West Street – on the left.

Sharing the bill tonight was Gustav Mahler, whose Symphony No. 1 in D was given a refulgent reading by the energized orchestra. It is a might work, with room for every sort of musical sound to be plumbed and made responsive to every other one. Maestro Nelsons, already in the second decade of his Tanglewood tenure, seems to be aging in reverse. We heard that he attributes a noticeable recent weight loss to Taekwando training; but together with such a martial bearing, there were stretches of tonight’s performance where it looked like he was leading a tai chi session!

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read, July 25, 2025 performance – There was a broad breadth of music on offer at Tanglewood tonight, extending from the seventeenth/eightteenth century Johann Sebastian Bach, through nineteenth century Felix Mendelssohn, to the nineteenth/twentieth century Gustav Mahler. It was a beautiful survey, under the leadership of music director Andris Nelsons, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with violin soloist Maria Duenas.

Brief as it was, one almost feels relief listening to an air by Bach, as if, since still we know how to please ourselves, soon enough we’ll remember how to govern ourselves. For many Shed veterans, listening to Bach reminds of a time when politicians spoke in complete sentences, respected the rule of law, and the separation of powers. The sprightliness of the Bach was followed by the substance of the Mahler. There’s an economy to Bach, with a small range of sounds in repetition; in Mahler, there’s a broad survey of sounds, many of which are full of nuance.

Premature applause by the Tanglewood audience has always been a source of amusement – it seems to lessen as the season progresses, which re-enforces my faith in my fellow music consumer; it’s usually less evident the more obscure and soloist-free the program. Since composers were bothered enough by unwanted mid-performance applause to seek its mitigation in the composition, perhaps the BSO would append an applause admonition to their pre-concert spiel about “the unlikely event of inclement weather…?”

Berkshire Links -

By Dave Read, July 20, 2025 performance – Energy can be released in an explosive, spectacular fashion, and it can be released in a stalwart, rhythmic manner. Tonight, the Tanglewood audience saw both as pianist Yuja Wang performed the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of music director Andris Nelsons.

Ms. Wang bounded onto the stage in a sparkling, skimpy, silver costume while Maestro Nelsons strode to the podium in black slacks and black short sleeve shirt, looking like a priest without the roman collar. In appearance, the two principles for tonight’s program in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, were opposites.

In performance, they united to produce a spectacular and thrilling performance of the piece that the composer himself premiered in Paris in 1924, under the direction of Serge Koussevitsky. The first quarter of the 20th century was every bit as culturally tumultuous as today is; with artists in all disciplines being pulled into and kicked out of real and imagined “schools.” Fauvism, Dada, cubism, surrealism…

And a fake ethos of “social realism” was being imposed on Prokofiev’s Russia, which resembles the sort of state-mandated mannerism that burdens arts and entertainment in America today. Politicians wield purse strings to make grant-dependent artists and arts organizations dance to tunes of their own tin-eared design and composition.

But artists of the stature of Prokofiev, Koussevitsk, Nelsons, the BSO, and Wang operate at a level secure from the prying paws of politicians. Early 20th century music is made brand new again one hundred years later and 3,500 miles to the west, even as our safety net is being dismantled systematically by artless actors enabled by an art-starved electorate.

After intermission, the orchestra performed the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique. Some two-thirds of the was through a beautiful, engrossing performance, we noticed Tanglewood personnel talking into their palms, the way Secret Service agents do. Their mission was to hurry lawn patrons to the safety of the Shed, because big rain was on the way. An unfortunate finale for an afternoon of brilliant performance in the Berkshires, where mother nature has been good to us all summer.

Berkshire Links -