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.

Sheffield Craftsman Offering Workshops on Windsor Chairs

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
10:30AM / Sunday, March 29, 2026

Andrew Jack uses hand tools in his wood working shop. 

SHEFFIELD, Mass. — A new workshop is bringing woodworking classes and handmade items.

Andrew Jack specializes in Windsor chairs and has been making them for almost 20 years.

He recently opened a workshop at 292 South Main St. as a space for people to see his work and learn how to do it.

"This is sort of the next, or latest iteration of a business that I've kind of been limping along for a little while," he said. "I make Windsor chairs from scratch, and this is an effort to have a little bit more of a public-facing space, where people can see the chairs, talk about options, talking about commissions.

"I also am using it as a space to teach workshops, which for the last 10 years or so I've been trying to do out of my own personal workshop at home."

Jack graduated in 2008 from State University of New York at Purchase, and later met woodworker Curtis Buchanan, who inspired him.

"Right after I finished there, I was feeling a little lost. I wasn't sure how to make the next steps and afford a workspace. And the machine tooling that I was used to using in school." he said, "Right after I graduated, I crossed paths with a guy named Curtis Buchanan, and he was demonstrating making really refined Windsor chairs with not much more than some some flea market tools, and I saw that as a great, low overhead way to keep working with wood."

Jack moved into his workshop last month with help from his wife. He is renting the space from the owners of Magic Flute, who he says have been wonderful to work with.

"My wife actually noticed the 'for rent' sign out by the road, and she made the initial call to just see if we get some more information," he said. "It wasn't on my radar, because it felt like kind of a big leap, and sometimes that's how it's been in my life, where I just need other people to believe in me more than I do to, you know, really pull the trigger."

Jack does commissions and while most of his work is Windsor chairs, he also builds desks and tables, and does spoon carving. 

Windsor chairs are different because of the way their backs are attached into the seat instead of being a continuous leg and back frame.

"A lot of the designs that I make are on the traditional side, but I do some contemporary stuff as well. And so usually the legs are turned on a lathe and they have sort of a fancy baluster look to them, or they could be much more simple," he said. "But the solid seat that separates the undercarriage from the backrest and the arms and stuff is sort of one of the defining characteristics of a Windsor."

He hopes to help people learn the craft and says it's rewarding to see the finished product. In the future, he also hopes to host other instructors and add more designs for the workshop.

"The prime impact for the workshops is to give close instruction to people that are interested in working wood with hand tools or developing a new skill. Or seeing what's possible with proper guidance," Jack said. "Chairs are often considered some of the more difficult or complex woodworking endeavors, and maybe less so Windsor chairs, but there is a lot that goes into them, and being able to kind of demystify that, or guide people through the process is quite rewarding."

People can sign up for classes on his website; some classes are over a couple and others a couple of weekends.

"I offer a three-day class for, a much, much more simple, like perch, kind of stool, where most of the parts are kind of pre-made, and students can focus on the joinery that goes into it and the carving of the seat, again, all with hand tools. And then students will leave with their own chair," he said.

"The longer classes run similarly, although there's quite a bit more labor that goes into those. So I provide all the turned parts, legs and stretchers and posts and things, but students will do all the joinery and all the seat carving the assembly. And they'll split and shave and shape their own spindles, and any of the bent parts that go into the chair."

His gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday 10 a.m to 2 p.m., and Monday and Tuesday by appointment.