PREVIEW: Berkshire Lyric Goes Big With Bach at Tanglewood
05/31 @ Tanglewood, Lenox MA
Photo provided by Berkshire Lyric
“It’s really the most complicated, demanding thing you can possibly do as a community chorus.”
The sound echoing through Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood on May 31 is set to feel enormous in every sense of the word. Nearly 100 voices, a double orchestra, internationally acclaimed soloists, and one of the most revered works ever written in classical music will come together as Berkshire Lyric presents “Saint Matthew Passion” in what promises to be one of the orchestra’s most ambitious performances to date.
For longtime Artistic Director Jack Brown, the production is both a celebration of how far Berkshire Lyric has come and another fearless leap forward in a nearly 60-year tradition of going big. Calling the production ambitious almost undersells it.
“It’s really the most complicated, demanding thing you can possibly do as a community chorus,” Brown admits. And somehow, that challenge seems to energize him even more. “We’re not shy,” he laughs. “We try to really do a good job on this and punch a little bit above our weight.”
That philosophy has quietly shaped Berkshire Lyric into one of the region’s most impressive cultural forces. What began decades ago as a grassroots choral organization has evolved into a multi-generational musical community with over 130 singers across several ensembles and tuition free educational programs for younger students.
“It’s very much a grassroots thing as far as our funding and participation,” Brown explains. That grassroots identity matters to him. Especially in a rural area where creating art on this scale requires deep commitment from local people who rehearse week after week simply because they love it.
“This is something we have to do on our own every Monday night right into January,” he says. The result is a performance that feels uniquely tied to the community surrounding it. Brown points out that Berkshire Lyric audiences are often among the youngest and most local crowds to enter Ozawa Hall all year. Some are longtime classical music lovers. Others are stepping inside the hall for the very first time after only knowing Tanglewood through summer pop concerts.
“They’re amazed to see the inside of the place and then to hear this great music,” Brown says. That sense of discovery becomes even more powerful with a work like “Saint Matthew Passion,” which unfolds almost like an opera in scale and emotion. Brown describes it as a constantly shifting emotional landscape. There are narrators, intimate solos, thunderous choral moments, and scenes where the chorus itself becomes part of the biblical drama. “There’s an enormous palette of different kinds of music stretched out over this long series,” he says.
Making their Berkshire Lyric debuts are soprano Clara Rottsolk and baritone Jesse Blumberg, joining returning soloists Dann Coakwell, Adriana Zabala, Sam Krausz, and Douglas Williams. Together with the orchestra and chorus, the production aims not just to perform Bach’s masterpiece, but to immerse audiences inside it.
For Brown, the emotional core of the piece feels especially timely. “It’s a shared experience,” he says. “I think people are looking for authentic shared experiences.” That line lingers because it gets at something larger than music itself. In a moment where isolation and shortened attention spans increasingly define daily life, Brown sees gatherings like this as essential acts of connection.
“It’s critical for me that as human beings we stay engaged as much as we can on some fairly difficult, serious adventures that can be really rewarding,” he says. Perhaps that is why Berkshire Lyric continues to grow after all these years. Not simply because it performs beautiful music, but because it reminds audiences what it feels like to experience something together in real time.
On May 31, Bach’s “Saint Matthew Passion” will fill Ozawa Hall with grief, reflection, beauty, and ultimately love. But beneath all of that, another story quietly unfolds too. A local chorus daring to keep going big.
For more information or to buy tickets, please visit www.berkshirelyric.org.
