The Tanglewood Festival in western Massachusetts and the Oregon Bach Festival, based in Eugene, have each broken sales records for events this summer. Tanglewood’s 75th-anniversary gala concert party on July 14 set a festival record for the amount raised from a single concert, at $1.42 million. Attendance was 16,831 for that event, which featured the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center orchestras; performers also included the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and soloist such as Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Emanuel Ax. The Oregon Bach Festival had a third straight year of record-setting box-office sales, with $550,000 in total sales for this year’s festival at the University of Oregon from June 27 to July 15. It was the 42nd festival led by Helmuth Rilling, OBF’s founding artistic director, who will turn 80 in 2013, his final season with the festival. The British conductor and keyboard player Matthew Halls will take the helm as artistic director in 2014, following Rilling’s retirement.
Posted July 24, 2012
