Tanglewood: A Group Memoir

The story of Tanglewood – the summer home of the Boston Symphony since 1935 – as told in first-person accounts by such Tanglewood luminaries as Leonard Bernstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Aaron Copland, Erich Leinsdorf, Phyllis Curtin, Seiji Ozawa, Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, John Harbison, James Levine, and many of the leading musicians, critics, and music professionals who consider Tanglewood a second home.

A “documentary” coffee-table book including letters, speeches, interviews, vintage newspaper articles, and a treasure trove of photographs from the BSO's archvies, woven together by a narrative thread and commented on by the author.

Among the dozens of stories included:

• Student Lenny Bernstein writes the folks back home about “Koussie” and the “Boiks”; ten years later, conductor Leonard Bernstein inspires the students with his own brand of oratory

• Boris Goldovsky reminisces about the glory days of the Tanglewood Opera Department where he discovered Leontyne Price, Sherrill Milnes, and an amazing number of soon-to-become-famous young American singers

• Gunther Schuller's 1979 Tanglewood manifesto is the talk of the music world

• Oliver Knussen relates how Rostopovich told the Shed audience of the death of Shostakovich after conducting the composer's Fifth Symphony

• Seiji Ozawa remembers his student trip to Tanglewood on a Bonanza bus with only a few phrases of English at his command and very few dollars in his pocket

• The transformation of Tanglewood under the orchestra's new Music Director, James Levine