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Koussevitzky Music Shed
Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the Tanglewood Music Center, Days in the Arts and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Besides classical music, Tanglewood hosts the Festival of Contemporary Music, jazz and popular artists, concerts, and frequent appearances by James Taylor, John Williams, and the Boston Pops. First seasons, 1934 and 1935 The history of Tanglewood begins with a series of concerts held on August 23, 25 and 26, 1934 at the Interlaken estate of Daniel Hanna, about a mile from today’s festival site. A few months earlier, composer and conductor Henry Kimball Hadley had scouted the Berkshires for a site and support for his dream of establishing a seasonal classical music festival. He found an enthusiastic and capable patron in Gertrude Robinson Smith. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lenox, Massachusetts
Lenox is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. The town is based in Western Massachusetts and part of the Pittsfield Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 5,095 at the 2020 census. Lenox is the site of Shakespeare & Company and Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Lenox includes the villages of New Lenox and Lenoxdale, and is a tourist destination during the summer. History The area was inhabited by Mahicans, Algonquian speakers who largely lived along the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers. Hostilities during the French and Indian Wars discouraged settlement by European colonial settlers until 1750, when Jonathan and Sarah Hinsdale from Hartford, Connecticut, established a small inn and general store. The Province of Massachusetts Bay thereupon auctioned large tracts of land for 10 townships in Berkshire County, set off in 1761 from Hampshire County. For 2,250 pounds Josiah Dean purchased Lot Number 8, which included present-day Lenox and Ric ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gertrude Robinson Smith
Gertrude Robinson Smith (July 13, 1881 – October 22, 1963) was an arts patron, philanthropist and a founder of the Berkshire Symphonic Festival, which came to be known as Tanglewood. At the height of the Great Depression, Smith gathered the human resources and secured the financial backing that supported the festival's early success. Her leadership from the first concerts in August 1934 through the mid-1950s has been recognized as foundational to assuring the success of one of the world's most celebrated seasonal music festivals. Early life Gertrude Robinson Smith was the daughter of Charles Robinson Smith and Jeannie Porter Steele. She was born in New York City on July 13, 1881. Her father was a prosperous corporate lawyer and director of Allied Chemical. Her father was an active member of the New York Bar Association and was active in helping to write what is today's corporate law. After World War I, Charles Robinson Smith wrote many articles advocating the forgiveness of wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monument Mountain (reservation)
Monument Mountain is the name of a popular open space reservation located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on the southeast side of Monument Mountain. The reservation is centered on the subordinate summit of ''Peeskawso Peak.'' It is managed by The Trustees of Reservations, a non-profit conservation organization and is notable for its expansive views of the Housatonic River Valley, The Berkshires, the Taconic Mountains, and the Catskill Mountains of New York from the knife-edge summit of Peeskawso Peak. Monument Mountain, composed of erosion resistant quartzite, is of The Berkshires geology. The reservation receives more than 20,000 visitors a year. The mountain was logged for charcoal to fuel a furnace in Vandusenville at the corner of Division St and Rt 41 in Great Barrington , not the for-mentioned furnaces of Falls Village etc Remnants of the furnace can be seen if one stands on the Rt41 bridge and looks upstream on the Williams River History Monument Mountain was a sacr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stockbridge Bowl
Stockbridge Bowl, also known as Lake Mahkeenac, is a artificially impounded body of water that is 4 km (2.5 mi) north of the village of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Above the lake's north side with sweeping views to the south is Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Geography The Bowl is situated among sloping hills of the Taconic Range to the west and north and the Berkshire Hills to the east. From the north there is an impressive view over the lake and Housatonic River plain to Monument Mountain seven miles to the south. The portion of the Taconic Range bordering the lake is known as Yokun Ridge. The lake is 1 miles long, about miles wide, and its shoreline totals approximately six miles (10 km). The primary inflow into the Bowl is from the northeast through Lily Brook. The drainage is from the southwest by Larrywaug Brook, which is a tributary to the Housatonic River. At its deepest, the lake is 48 feet deep. The lake is artifici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eliel Saarinen
Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1873 – July 1, 1950) was a Finnish-American Architecture, architect known for his work with art nouveau buildings in the early years of the 20th century. He was also the father of famed architect Eero Saarinen. Life and work in Finland Saarinen was educated in Helsinki at the Helsinki University of Technology. From 1896 to 1905 he worked as a partner with Herman Gesellius and Armas Lindgren at the firm Gesellius, Lindgren, Saarinen. His first major work with the firm, the Finnish pavilion at the Exposition Universelle (1900), Paris 1900 World Fair, exhibited an extraordinary convergence of stylistic influences: Finnish wooden architecture, the British Gothic Revival, and the Jugendstil. Saarinen's early manner was later christened the Finnish National Romantic Style, National Romanticism and culminated in the Helsinki Central railway station (designed 1904, constructed 1910–14). From 1910 to 1915 he worked on the extensive city- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily newspaper in Boston. Founded in 1872, the paper was mainly controlled by Irish Catholic interests before being sold to Charles H. Taylor and his family. After being privately held until 1973, it was sold to ''The New York Times'' in 1993 for $1.1billion, making it one of the most expensive print purchases in U.S. history. The newspaper was purchased in 2013 by Boston Red Sox and Liverpool owner John W. Henry for $70million from The New York Times Company, having lost over 90% of its value in 20 years. The newspaper has been noted as "one of the nation's most prestigious papers." In 1967, ''The Boston Globe'' became the first major paper in the U.S. to come out against the Vietnam War. The paper's 2002 c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ride Of The Valkyries
The "Ride of the Valkyries" (german: Walkürenritt Ritt der Walküren, links=no) refers to the beginning of act 3 of ''Die Walküre'', the second of the four operas constituting Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen''. As a separate piece, the "Ride" is often heard in a purely instrumental version, which may be as short as three minutes. Together with the "Bridal Chorus" from ''Lohengrin'', the "Ride of the Valkyries" is one of Wagner's best-known pieces. Context The main theme of the "Ride", the leitmotif labelled , was first written down by the composer on 23 July 1851. The preliminary draft for the "Ride" was composed in 1854 as part of the composition of the entire opera, which was fully orchestrated by the end of March 1856. In the ''Walküre'' opera, the "Ride", which takes around eight minutes, begins in the prelude to the third act, building up successive layers of accompaniment until the curtain rises to reveal a mountain peak where four of the eight Valkyrie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel '' Fanshawe''; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as ''Twice-Told Tales''. The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. ''The Scarlet Letter'' was published in 1850, followed by a suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanglewood Tales
''Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls'' (1853) is a book by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a sequel to ''A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys''. It is a re-writing of well-known Greek myths in a volume for children. Overview The book includes the myths of: * Theseus and the Minotaur (Chapter: "The Minotaur") * Antaeus and the Pygmies (Chapter: "The Pygmies") * Dragon's Teeth (Chapter: "The Dragon's Teeth") * Circe's Palace (Chapter: "Circe's Palace") * Proserpina, Ceres, Pluto, and the Pomegranate Seed (Chapter: "The Pomegranate Seed") * Jason and the Golden Fleece (Chapter: "The Golden Fleece") Hawthorne wrote an introduction, titled "The Wayside", referring to The Wayside in Concord, where he lived from 1852 until his death. In the introduction, Hawthorne writes about a visit from his young friend Eustace Bright, who requested a sequel to ''A Wonder-Book'', which impelled him to write the ''Tales''. Although Hawthorne informs us in the introduction that these stories were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caroline Sturgis Tappan
Caroline Sturgis Tappan (August 30, 1818 – October 20, 1888), commonly known as Caroline Sturgis, or "Cary" Sturgis, was an American Transcendentalist poet and artist. She is particularly known for her friendships and frequent correspondences with prominent American Transcendentalists, such as Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sturgis published 25 poems in four different volumes of ''The Dial'', a Transcendental periodical. She also wrote and illustrated two books for children, ''Rainbows for Children'' (1847) and ''The Magician’s Show Box, and Other Stories'' (1856). Biography Caroline Sturgis was born in Boston, Massachusetts to the former Elizabeth Marsten Davis Sturgis, the second daughter of John Davis, a U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts, and William Sturgis, a former sea captain who rose to become one of the wealthiest and most successful merchants in Boston. Caroline Sturgis was a middle child among six children, including William Watson (181 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt
Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Sr. (October 20, 1877 – May 7, 1915) was a wealthy American businessman, and a member of the Vanderbilt family. A sportsman, he participated in and pioneered a number of related endeavors. He died in the sinking of the RMS ''Lusitania''. Early life Vanderbilt was born in New York City, the third son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843–1899) and Alice Claypoole Gwynne (1845–1934). His siblings were Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt (1869-1874), William Henry Vanderbilt II (1870–1892), Cornelius "Neily" Vanderbilt III (1873–1942), Gertrude Vanderbilt (1875–1942), Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880–1925) and Gladys Moore Vanderbilt (1886–1965). Alfred Vanderbilt attended the St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and Yale University (Class of 1899), where he was a member of Skull and Bones. Soon after graduation, Vanderbilt, with a party of friends, started on a tour of the world which was to have lasted two years. When the group reached ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
