Music, Music, Music

There's music in the air ... there's music in the hills ... there's music by the river ... there's music in the air-conditioned library. As a matter of fact, the interested Summer School student, whether his preference lies with J.S. Bach, with D. Brubeck, or simly with moonlight and grass, can hardly fail to find the musical interludes he is looking for during the months ahead.

Most easily accessible is the music sponsored by the Summer School itself. This will include the mixed Summer School Chorus under the direction of Professor Harold Schmidt of Stanford University, the record selections that will be presented in the Lamont Library Forum Room every Friday at 4 p.m., and the periodic free concerts that will take place in Paine Hall, the music building. The first of these concerts, a song recital, is scheduled for Tuesday, July 17.

In addition, there may also be a Summer School Orchestra this year, if enough student instrumentalists make themselves available. All men and women who would be interested in joining it are asked to leave their names with the secretary in Paine Hall.

And for musical ears that still want more, the Summer School's regular music courses are available on either a credit or audited basis.

Somewhat more exotic--and definitely more avant garde--is the full-dress Jazz Festival that will take place on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week (July 5-7) at Newport, Rhode Island, about a two-hour drive to the south. The Festival consists of concerts, seminars, workshops, and the like, and annually attracts a host of jazz celebrities in addition to thousands of enthusiastic fans.

The Newport event this year will feature, besides its pure-bred jazz performers, the music of a new convert named Friedrich Gulda. Gulda is a classical pianist from Austria--about the best Beethoven pianist now extant--who has decided to devote half of his musical time to jazz, and who will introduce some of his own jazz compositions at the Festival.

Back nearer to home, meanwhile, the famous Esplanade Concerts by what amounts to the Boston Pops Orchestra will be sending rhythmic ripples out over the moonlit waters of our own Charles River. The concerts, which are "half-classical," will take place every evening starting tonight (July 2) and lasting until July 14, with the exception of Saturday, July 7. The site is the Hatch Memorial Shell just off Boston's Storrow Drive, and the price, happily enough, is nothing. Just get on the subway and bring a blanket.

For the more Broadway-minded music lovers, a number of summer theatres in the Boston area will be presenting musical comedies at various times during the season. Indeed, the Music Theatre on the top floor of Boston's air-conditioned John Hancock Building will be presenting one all the time, starting this week with "Annie Get Your Gun."

But the real music lovers' mecca, the piece de resistance of the whole summer's entertainment schedule, will be the annual Berkshire Festival at Tanglewood, in the picturesque Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. Here symphony, choral and chamber music concerts will be given for six weeks, July 4 (this Wednesday) to August 12, on what the press agent calls "the spacious pine-clad estate where a century ago Nathaniel Hawthorne was a guest and told his 'Tanglewood Tales'."

Many Summer School students will be taking to the Berkshires on their own each weekend, but for those without cars or with an especially gregarious spirit, the School will arrange a special group trip to Tanglewood on August 3, 4 and 5. Tickets for the trip, which can be purchased at the Yard, provide for bus transportation, comfortable lodgings, and concert tickets for the whole weekend, and cost $25.