Classical music needs more supporters. Tanglewood’s new buildings are there to create them | Music - The Washington Post

Anne Midgette, Classical music critic summarizes, With its new learning institute, a venerable organization seeks to broaden its reach.

The interior of the Linde Center borrows from Scandinavian design principles.
Photo: Robert Benson

Walking through the main entrance of Tanglewood, the legendary summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in western Massachusetts, you pass a bust of the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, a founder of this festival and training ground for generations of musical talent. The sculpture, an homage to tradition, is new this year.

Diagonally across the 524-acre campus from that bust is another recent Tanglewood addition. A brand new entrance to the grounds leads up to the Linde Center, a quartet of buildings made of strawberry-blond wood, glass and metal, which are the first new constructions at Tanglewood since Ozawa Hall, built for chamber music, opened 25 years ago.

Built at a cost of $32 million, the Linde Center is home to the new Tanglewood Learning Institute, created to bring in new audiences through programs of lectures and panels, master classes and films, art classes, even informal meals with artists. TLI aims to give Tanglewood a year-round presence in the Berkshires, providing an additional revenue stream that helps expand its reach.

How do you address and appeal to new generations?...

At TLI, Elliott has developed programs that collaborate with other local institutions, including weekend art classes with IS183 Art School of the Berkshires and films in conjunction with the Berkshire International Film Festival, as well as activities based on Tanglewood’s existing programming. Rather than high-tech bells and whistles (she has gently dissuaded her bosses from focusing on online learning, which, she says, is very expensive to do properly), she is creating activities that emphasize the music, and the personal.

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Source: The Washington Post