The Classical Beat: Tanglewood Showcases Innovative Musical Forms; Sevenars Presents an Emerging Piano Virtuoso

Taiwanese pianist Ching-Yi Lin at SEVENARS CONCERTS Sunday afternoon

Tanglewood this week will be very rewarding and diverse, with innovative musical riches across genres, representing the progressive continuum of today's evolving musical styles: in one instance, music that crosses boundaries - part music theatre and song cycle, and everything in-between; in another, a musical biography via a poetical setting that explores the life of a beloved grandmother. What's going on? Composers are probing and inventing uniquely creative ways to communicate their personal histories, and in the process, are reaching out to audiences universally. Attend and participate in these imaginative musical explorations.

Tanglewood also continues its traditional orchestral programming, featuring a lineup of audience-favorite symphonic works performed by the Boston Symphony and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. The "heavy hitters" are: Dvorak (the powerful and melodic Ninth Symphony -'from the New World',) Prokofiev's delightful and exuberant 'Classical' Symphony No. 1, Modest Mussorgsky's rousing "Pictures at an Exhibition" (in the great orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel,) the picturesque 'Scottish' Third Symphony of Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens' lushly rhapsodic Cello Concerto No. 1, performed by the magnificent cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

• Thursday, August 7, 8:00 p.m. in Ozawa Hall: Familiar to Boston audiences for his recent opera "Eurydice," which was performed at Boston Lyric Opera in 2024, composer and MacArthur Grant Fellow Matthew Aucoin has a new staged song cycle, "Music for New Bodies," which receives its first Tanglewood performance following American Modern Opera Company's summer residency at Lincoln Center. Based on poetry by Jorie Graham, the work is a meditation on our times as seen from the perspective of a cancer patient. Staged in collaboration with groundbreaking director Peter Sellars and the American Modern Opera Company, the cast includes soprano Meryl Dominguez, mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven, and tenor Paul Appleby. This production marks the Tanglewood debuts of Aucoin, Sellars, Dominguez, and Raven. Tickets to the opera include free admission to a 6:00 p.m. "Meet the Makers" session in Ozawa Hall.

• Friday, August 8, 8:00 p.m. in the Shed: Colombian conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada, principal conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Italy, conducts the BSO in performances of Dvorak's much-beloved Symphony No. 9, ('from the New World') in his Tanglewood debut. The inimitable Joshua Bell joins to play Lalo's vivacious "Symphonie espagnole, continuing the violinist's long history of summer appearances at Tanglewood, having performed here each year since 1989.

• Saturday, August 9, 8 00 p.m. in the Shed: The 6:00 p.m. Prelude Concert for Film Night, presents "Sextet for Strings," Op. 10 by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose film scores influenced the youthful Mr. Williams, performed by TMC Fellows; also on the program is Joan Tower's "Into the Night." At 8:00 p.m., the ever-popular "John Williams' Film Night," curated by Maestro Williams and performed by the Boston Pops led by Keith Lockhart, presents selected film clips by Korngold and several other Hollywood master composers.

• Sunday, August 10, 2:30 p.m. in the Shed: Following his highly acclaimed Tanglewood debut last summer, BSO Assistant Conductor Samy Rachid conducts a crowd-pleasing program featuring the American premiere of French composer Camille Pepin's "Un Monde nouveau," Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3, ('Scottish,') and Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto No. 1 with the spectacular soloist Yo-Yo Ma. It will be the first time at Tanglewood that Mr. Ma will have performed this Concerto - the work he first performed with the Boston Pops – since his 1971 Boston Symphony Hall debut as a 15-year-old prodigy.

• Monday, August 11, 8:00 p.m. in Ozawa Hall: Maestro Orozco-Estrada conducts the TMC Orchestra in a program of Carlos Simon's "Four Black American Dances," Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1, ('Classical,') and Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" (orchestrated by Ravel,) together with the TMC Conducting Fellows in Ozawa Hall.

Sevenars Music Festival

• Sunday, August 10, 4 :00 p.m.: Sevenars is delighted to present as a so- designated 'Young Artist to Watch 2025,' the outstanding young Taiwanese pianist Ching-Yi Lin, in a program that continues Ravel's 150th celebration with the composer's delightful "Tombeau de Couperin" and the little-known "La parade" (first published in 2008), in addition to masterpieces of Bach (the English Suite No. 2 in A minor) and Schumann ("Arabesque".) Mr. Lin is a major prizewinner in several international piano competitions. He completed the Bachelor of Music degree at Soochow University in Taiwan and received his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the Peabody Institute as recipient of the Richard Franko Goldman Prize in Performance under the tutelage of mentor Alexander Shtarkman.

• Sevenars tickets, and general contact information: Founded in 1968, Sevenars Concerts is celebrating its 57^th season of six summer concerts, held at the Academy, a building designated "an acoustic gem in an idyllic setting," located in the  historic village of South Worthington, 15 Ireland Street, off MA Route 112.

Concerts are presented on consecutive Sundays at 4:00 p.m. until August 18. Phone: (413) 238-5854 (please leave a message for a return call.) Online: www.sevenars.org. Email: Sevenars@aol.com. Admission is by donation at the door (suggested $20.) Refreshments will be available.

Becket Looks to Wind Power for Energy Savings

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
05:17AM / Tuesday, October 20, 2026

The single turbine is a low maintenance and has a 50-year life. The town went with wind power after finding a solar installation would be too difficult. 

BECKET, Mass. — The town unveiled a wind turbine Monday that will reduce electricity costs and show the benefits of renewable energy produced by wind.

Residents, town and state officials gathered outside the Town Hall for the ribbon cutting on a project first conceived nearly a dozen years ago.

The wind turbine stands 100-feet tall next to Town Hall and is from Oklahoma manufacturer Bergey Wind Power. It has a 50-year life and is a direct-drive permanent-magnet design, meaning it has no gearbox, making it low maintenance.

According to Garth Klimchuk, chair of the Becket Energy Committee, the town started discussions about a wind turbine in 2014. The turbine is expected to generate about 36,000 kilowatt-hours. Klimchuk said Town Hall uses about 24,000 kilowatt-hours, with excess power expected to go to the Highway Department. This is expected to save $9,000 annually from the electricity cost.

"This turbine is just going to be such a good thing for the town. It is really incredible. Zero-cost electricity. Zero cost to the town. Carbon free. Just a huge, huge milestone for us," he said.

The town received a grant from the state Department of Energy Resources totaling $139,500. The remaining funding for the project will come from a direct-pay investment tax credit under the federal Inflation Reduction Act. If the town does not receive the funding, voters at the annual town allocated $100,000 just in case, but Klimchuk said the town will only need about $60,000 to $70,000 if necessary.

"It's going to help the community. Hopefully, it'll lower our tax bills. And as we look at everything going around around the world right now, energy volatility has been with us for a long time. It's going to stay with us for a long time," said state Sen. Paul Mark. "So any move we can make as a community, whether as Becket specifically, as Berkshire County as a whole, but anything we can do to bring some of the reliability into our own hands, to produce a bit on our own, and just guarantee that in a renewable, safe way moving into the future, I think is going to pay off dividends."

The town has spent more than a decade reducing municipal energy consumption in a variety of ways including HVAC upgrades and LED street light conversions, bringing it to a Level 2 Green Community status.

While solar had been considered, interconnection constraints and limited grant opportunities made it harder to achieve. But the high elevation of Town Hall and a Small Wind Site evaluation done in 2023 and 2024 found the site was perfect for a turbine with favorably high winds.

State Rep. Leigh Davis praised the project as an example of a small town addressing a larger energy challenge through persistence and collaboration. She stressed that the single turbine represents a practical step toward reducing reliance on fossil fuels and said Becket's effort could serve as a model for communities across the commonwealth. 

"You hear about all these kind of big wind farms and solar farms and all these ways that we're gonna you know create green energy, but at the same time what we're not being sensitive to the landscape, and what I appreciate about this is that this is it's a single turbine, but it represents so much more," she said. "You're right. It's really adding to the ability for this town to contribute to green energy and to bringing our reliance on gasoline fuels back down to solving big problems."

Mark Rabinsky, deputy director of DOER's Green Communities Division, said the state supports municipalities with technical assistance and grants, and that reducing municipal energy costs can leave more resources for other local priorities. He presented the turbine as an example of state support working alongside local knowledge and decision-making. 

"I think that this is a really a great example of what green communities can do," he said. "I'm obviously a really big fan of the green communities program, but I think that connection between the state, what we're doing at the state, and that local level, and relying on the local knowledge here with Becket is a true testament to what we're doing."

Select Board Chair William Elovirta thanked everyone for being here and shared his memories of first coming tp Becket in 1946 before utility electricity arrived. His family and neighbors used small 32-volt generating plants and batteries. He recalled utility workers installing poles and wires by hand around 1947.