Tanglewood Music Festival, formerly the Berkshire Festival (until 1984), summer music festival held since 1937 at „Tanglewood,” a former estate in the adjoining towns of Stockbridge and Lenox, Mass. The Berkshire Festival was begun in 1934 at a farm in Stockbridge. Henry Hadley conducted an orchestra composed largely of members of the New York Philharmonic for two summers.
In 1936, Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra took over the Tanglewood Music Festival, which became its summer home. Charles Munch began as musical director of the festival in 1951 and was followed by William Steinberg, who conducted there through the summer of 1969. From 1974 to 2002, Seiji Ozawa was the artistic director, and James Levine has directed the festival since 2004. In 1940 a summer school, the Berkshire (now Tanglewood) Music Center, was begun in combination with the festival. Today it is one of the world’s preeminent training grounds for composers, conductors, instrumentalists, and vocalists.
