The Boston Symphony Orchestra has announced a major new investment in the future of Tanglewood that will broaden its reputation as one of the premier festivals in the world and the famed summer home of the BSO and its acclaimed summer music academy, the Tanglewood Music Center.

Launching a new chapter in the illustrious festival’s 80-year history, Tanglewood has announced plans for the construction of a new multi-use, multi-season four-building complex designed to support the performance and rehearsal activities of the Tanglewood Music Center. This complex will also be home of a new initiative, the Tanglewood Learning Institute, offering wide-ranging education and enrichment programs designed to enhance the patron experience.

The Tanglewood Music Center (TMC) is unique. No other academy for advanced musical study in the world is run by, and an essential part of the mission of, a major symphony orchestra. However, as the program has grown and evolved since it was established by the BSO in 1940, the facilities that serve it have struggled to keep pace.

To make the TMC experience commensurate with the talents of its Fellows, the BSO will create a new complex on the Tanglewood campus, located where the Hawthorne Tent now stands, providing three new rehearsal and performance studio spaces, nearly doubling the amount of available rehearsal space. Scheduled to open in 2019, the facility will also include a café to offer additional dining options for Fellows and patrons and cutting-edge technology to enable recording and online distribution of performance activities. This new facility will not only allow the TMC to have much-needed space for its operations, it will also provide the BSO and Tanglewood with the opportunity to create a new and innovative program for adult learning—the Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI).

The TLI will offer patrons several new and distinctive education and enrichment offerings, including a variety of learning and appreciation programs featuring seminars and panel discussions, film presentations, conversations with artists, and special access to concerts and master classes. A keynote lecture series will spotlight highly sought-after speakers to give presentations on subjects related directly and indirectly to each Tanglewood season. It will also develop a unique and focused set of special offerings attractive to the festival’s local concertgoers, as well as to visitors from across the United States and abroad. This program will include an all-inclusive “passport program,” whereby participants are given access to BSO and TMC closed rehearsals, TMC master classes, and backstage visits with BSO and TMC musicians, guest artists, and conductors, among other activities. The Tanglewood Learning Institute will also have a distance-learning component featuring inline viewing of many of the TLI sessions, as well as of select Tanglewood Music Center master classes and rehearsals. Specific details of the first session of the inaugural 2019 Tanglewood Learning Institute season will be announced in the fall of 2018.

“Tanglewood’s new building complex represents a major milestone for the BSO as it furthers its commitment to the Tanglewood Music Center by providing a new state-of-the-art facility to match the extraordinary level of talent exhibited by the Fellows each summer,” said Eunice and Julian Cohen Managing Director Mark Volpe. “In addition, the Tanglewood Learning Institute will introduce an exciting new venture by offering patrons an entirely new paradigm of education and enrichment programs, sure to expand the reach of the festival and bring welcome newcomers to the BSO’s famed summer home.”

Scheduled to open in summer 2019, the new building complex will be designed by William Rawn Associates, Architects, led by William Rawn and Cliff Gayley, and will be the largest building project at Tanglewood since the construction of Ozawa Hall (1994), also designed by William Rawn Associates. Reed Hilderbrand will serve as the project’s landscape architects.

In addition to the new building project, Tanglewood will enhance the patron experience in the area surrounding Ozawa Hall, which draws more than 50,000 people annually. Building on the success of Ozawa Hall as one of the leading venues of its kind in the country, and in expectation of increased traffic to the Bernstein Campus as a result of the new construction and programs, the proposed changes will include renovation and relocation of the Ozawa Hall Gate, to better integrate it into the expanded Tanglewood Music Center campus. Additional changes will include an upgrade to the Ozawa Hall Gate box office and improved patron amenities, including upgrades to the restroom facilities.

The transformative potential of this ambitious project is considerable, not only for the BSO and Tanglewood, but also for the Berkshires community. The new facilities are designed to be used year-round and will be available for not only BSO off-season events, but for performances and other events by community and cultural partners in the Berkshires. In this way, the new facilities will become a hub of engagement, interaction, and learning throughout the year for Berkshire neighbors and visitors to the area, creating a thriving center for community activity.