Foxfan

I’m at the Tanglewood cafe right now for those already here. I’ll go to the main gate gift shop (there’s a place for drinks next to it too) for 7:30.

I’d love to meet up! How about outside the main gate gift shop (there are two) for 7:30 before the show?

I'm coming on Saturday the 24th! A new batch of tickets went on sale last Sunday, for those now looking to attend. As mentioned, there is a cafeteria on the Tanglewood grounds, though a favourite place of mine is a seafood restaurant called the Salmon Run in Lee, MA. I might go there for dinner or lunch - I haven't decided yet if I'm attending the Beethoven's 9th rehearsal in the morning. I'd love a JWFAN meetup! How many are coming in total?

That's what I'm thinking. Or he knew ahead of time he would be away on the 23rd and gave it all on the 7th to make up for it. Shame the BSO didn't announce it ahead of time... there's even a Boston Pops Facebook post on July 9th that still listed Williams as a conductor for the 23rd. Now I'll try to exchange my ticket for August 24 if one becomes available.

Actually, no. Back in January/February he was listed as "host" or "special guest" for July 7 and August 24, and "conductor" for July 23rd only, which is why I picked that date to go.

Bad news... looks like John Williams has been taken off the roster for Tanglewood on Parade July 23rd. https://www.bso.org/Performance/Detail/100171?fbclid=IwAR3TPKQYd1L03T1AZzdFslyLjlvzEfK8ogATbJsirKSk2vkS952UDYuzrAs It was the only concert I was scheduled to attend this year, not expecting him to conduct on July 7th or August 24. I now regret not going last Sunday!

Albany, NY is the closest city to Tanglewood, with regular Greyhound bus and Amtrak rail service to New York City. If you have a driving license, you can rent a car in Albany for just one day to get to Tanglewood and back (hotels are also much cheaper there than in the Berkshires as well).

The program is not complete yet. There are some Pops selections as well (one year KL conducted the JFK suite), and the concert ends with both the TMC (student) orchestra joining forces with the BSO for a supersized rendition of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, with live canons on the lawn.

The CETK concert arrangement features an organ part near the beginning. I'm also hoping he'll use organ (and choir) for an epic, final sendoff at the end of the Star Wars Episode 9 End Credits, like David Arnold did for the end of Independence Day!

Yep.. I saw this just in time for the Tanglewood on sale date yesterday. Got my ticket for Tanglewood on Parade, the only concert of 2019 where Maestro Williams is confirmed to conduct at least one or two pieces. Wishing him all the best for his recovery, and Star Wars 9!

I used a Canadian contactless visa to pay in the US last summer and the clerk looked at me like "woah!! I didn’t know you could do that!". 😮 So yeah it’s coming but not quite there yet. Australia and Canada have some of the highest contactless usage. Also from the TFL website: MasterCard Nearly all MasterCard and Maestro contactless payment cards issued outside the UK are accepted. Some cards issued in the USA, Canada and the Netherlands are not accepted. If your card is rejected on our services, please contact your card issuer. AmEx, on the other hand, has the same proprietary closed-loop system worldwide, so the country of issuance is less of an issue if you have one. So try first and see if it opens the gates. If it works great, if not get an Oyster, but I’m a huge fan of the contactless system in London. Wish every city in the world would adopt it. Reloadable cards aren’t refundable if lost, and the queues to reload them at certain stations in London can be painstakingly long! Note that your card having a chip doesn’t mean it’s contactless-enabled. Not all chip cards are contactless. It should have a little "wi-fi" symbol printed on it, meaning it’s got a wire circuitry embedded all around the card that’s tuned to a specific frequency linked to your credit card number when read at close range.

Indeed! Though having seen it live, he did conduct most of it in 2 (every second beat), rather than every beat in 4/4 like on the "behind the scenes" DVD extra of the original recording. Still amazing though! Another slight disappointment about the BUTI young artists chorus... there way too many girls compared to boys (I figure it must have been about 80/20). Sad that so many boys lost interest in singing that most orchestras outside Vienna can't get a gender-balanced chorus. I noticed the same thing even in Amsterdam with a performance of Mahler 3 at the Concertgebouw in 2015.

It's those darn clips of film montages with too many cuts. The conductors are glued to the screen with the "streamers" and sync points. Even Andris Nelsons isn't his enthusiastic self when having to follow the screen in front of him. Last year's performance of Tintin had the opposite effect (too slow). I would have imagined an even quicker pace coming from him if it wasn't for the "swashbuckling" montage. Call of the Champions must have started behind as the beginning was performed extremely fast to catch up. That led to a few false notes from the orchestra, as with Duel of the Fates. If they're illustrating film scoring like "Indy's First Adventure" and the final real from "E.T." they have a purpose, but having a montage for every second piece throughout the night is way too much. The music would sound so much better if they didn't have to be distracted with the clips. It's why E.T. was recut to begin with! "Dry Your Tears, Afrika" was one of the evening's best performances. Williams gave it 110%, moved as though he was 20 years younger and even sang/mouthed the words along with the chorus. Hoping a video clip of that will get released some day. I wish Andris Nelsons could have come back onstage with his trumpet for "The Long Road to Justice". Williams' giving the backstory to Amistad (how the words were translated from a French poem to English and back to Mende) was quite informative as well, minus the guy in the back of the shed who cheered "Woohoo" when the maestro pointed out that the Portuguese ship carrying slaves arrived somewhere in Connecticut, thinking it should be a source of pride. 🙄

Tony, it depends what kind of ticket you requested at checkout. Print at home should work on your phone with the barcode. If it’s a ticket to hold at the box office, it’ll be available there, and if my any chance you had original tickets that you lost or no longer have access to, the box office should be able to reprint duplicates if they were purchased in your name and you have ID. As for the program, looks good. My only hope is that Andris Nelsons will be invited back onstage to play the trumpet solo in "The Long Road to Justice" from Amistad after ´Dry your Tears, Afrika!´ His surprise performance of Lincoln was the highlight of the evening last year!