Tanglewood Program Highlights, August 2025

The 2025 summer season is underway at Tanglewood—the famed music and learning campus and summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, situated in the beautiful Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts.  

The festival continues through August with a wide variety of concerts, speakers, and events including: 

• Past, Present, and Future: What Is Music For?, a humanities series created in partnership with Yo-Yo Ma, encompassing four talks and four musical performances: a special Shed event with pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, and violist Antoine Tamestit (Aug. 3); a Prelude Concert of French chamber music featuring Ma and members of the BSO (Aug. 8); Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto No. 1 with Ma and the BSO led by Assistant Conductor Samy Rachid (Aug. 10); and Ma’s guest appearance with the innovative string quartet Brooklyn Rider in their Ozawa Hall recital debut (Aug. 13). 
• The returns of favorite BSO guest soloists including violinists Leonidas Kavakos (Aug. 2), Joshua Bell (Aug. 8), and Augustin Hadelich (Aug. 16), and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Aug. 17)
• The Tanglewood conducting debuts of Elim Chan (Aug. 2) and Andrés Orozco-Estrada (Aug. 8), the BSO debut of Assistant Conductor Anna Handler (Aug. 16), and the Tanglewood debut of the world-renowned choral ensemble The Sixteen led by Harry Christophers in an Ozawa Hall recital (Aug. 14) and Prelude Concert (Aug. 16)
• The TLI Spotlight Speaker Series, with talks by Yo-Yo Ma and Heather Cox Richardson (Aug. 2), Sebastian Smee, Sam Amidon, and Shahzad Ismaily (Aug. 9), and Vijay Gupta, Steve Lopez, and Lesley Rosenthal (Aug. 23)
• Continuing the season-long celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, TMC Conducting Fellows, and TMC Vocal fellows presenting the composer’s opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges in Ozawa Hall (Aug. 4)
• The annual Tanglewood on Parade, offering a full day of music and activities for all ages, culminating with a Shed concert showcasing the best of the BSO, Boston Pops, and TMCO led by Keith Lockhart, Elim Chan, Thomas Wilkins, Samy Rachid, and Na’Zir McFadden and featuring historian Heather Cox Richardson as narrator in Copland’s Lincoln Portrait (Aug. 5)
• Music for New Bodies, a provocative and moving new theatrical concert-opera composed and conducted by Matthew Aucoin, staged by Peter Sellars in his Tanglewood debut, and performed by members of the American Modern Opera Company (Aug. 7)
• The ever-popular John Williams' Film Night curated by Pops Conductor Laureate John Williams and conducted by Keith Lockhart (Aug. 9)
• Tasting Notes: The Tanglewood Food and Wine Festival, offering refreshing wine samples and scrumptious morsels from the best local vendors. This special afternoon event takes place under the tent on the Highwood Manor House lawn (Aug. 16).
• A must-see Keith Lockhart 30th Anniversary Celebration with a lineup of favorite Pops guest artists including Ben Folds, Lynn Ahrens, Bernadette Peters, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Time for Three, Mandy Gonzalez, Guster’s Ryan Miller, and Jason Danieley turning out to honor Keith’s extraordinary impact and revisit highlights of his tenure (Aug. 22)
• The world premiere of Words and Prayers of My Fathers, a BSO-commissioned choral work for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus by Composer Chair Carlos Simon led by James Burton in a BSO program with the celebrated Zubin Mehta conducting Beethoven’s Ninth in his BSO debut with soloists Federica Lombardi, Isabel Signoret, Pene Pati, and Ryan Speedo Green (Aug. 24)
• The addition of award-winning actor Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers, Sideways, Cinderella Man, John Adams) as celebrity guest on NPR’s Wait, Wait... Don’t Tell Me! with Peter Sagal and Bill Kurtis (Aug. 28)
• The final musical performances of the 2025 Popular Artist series: rock and roll powerhouse Lynyrd Skynyrd (Aug. 30) and 2024 Kennedy Center Honoree and 13-time GRAMMY winner Bonnie Raitt (Aug. 31)
• Prelude Concerts performed by members of the BSO, TMC fellows, and special guests at 6 p.m. on Fridays (in Ozawa Hall) and Saturdays (in Studio E of the Linde Center), with general admission indoor and outdoor seating, free for ticketholders to that evening’s 8 p.m. Shed performance 
• A robust calendar of interdisciplinary humanities-focused programs through the Tanglewood Learning Institute complementing performances on stage, including TLI Presents, Talks and Walks, and Meet the Makers