The shuttering of the Northeast tradition seems to represent the end of live performance in America this summer.
Summer after summer, the Boston Symphony Orchestra retreats to its seasonal home: Tanglewood, a bucolic and beloved outdoor destination for music, tucked away in the Berkshires. New England’s vacationers and classical buffs follow by the hundreds of thousands.
But this year, for the first time since the Second World War, Tanglewood’s season, a staple of summer in the Northeast, has been canceled because of the continued threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Wednesday, the Hollywood Bowl, where the Los Angeles Philharmonic has spent its summers for nearly a century, also canceled its season. Together, the closures, announced on both coasts in such close succession, seem to cement a new reality: the end of live performance in America for the summer.
The Boston Symphony’s season at Tanglewood, where it started summering in 1937, is a huge draw for visitors across the Northeast. More than 340,000 people attended events at the festival last summer, The Berkshire Eagle reported, when Tanglewood added lectures and master classes to its slate of programming and opened the Linde Center for Music and Learning.
