POSTCARD FROM LENOX, MASS.: The Music of Tanglewood

LENOX, Mass.—I came to Tanglewood this summer expecting to find Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mozart. Instead, my everyday life has revolved around the guitar-driven sounds of Styx, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Tanglewood, summer home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is a haven where classical music lovers can enjoy the symphony and the fresh air of the Berkshires at the same time. And classic rock just doesn’t seem to fit.

Five days out of seven I wake up, roll out of bed in what my mother has labeled the scullery maid’s quarters and then plod down the skinny back stairs to the industrial kitchen where classic rock has become king—and not just any classic rock, but “WPBH: Puuuuuhhhkipsie.” (Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for the uninitiated.) I spend the day cooking, chopping untold amounts of everything and anything, washing dishes, wiping tables and setting up the “front” or serving.

Our dining hall is peopled by the next generation of classical musicians. The average Boston University Tanglewood Institute student rolls out of bed in his dorm-style room at around 8 a.m. and bumbles in with his cello to eat the breakfast that someone has been up since 6 a.m. cooking. Scrambling eggs, frying hash browns, flipping pancakes and baking muffins, among other things, for 150 people is not an easy task. While tackling such a task, some form of aural distraction is needed.

WPBH’s morning talk show has been the wake-up call some mornings, Tupac the mornings when Terrance, our former dishwasher, was here, and Limp Bizkit the mornings when our manager Chip is awakened at 5:30 a.m. by a call from John, the breakfast cook, saying that he can’t make it. It’s the music that keeps everyone going in the morning, and the kitchen is never silent.

The dining staff is composed of college students and regular dining hall workers from BU, plus a few local residents. We’re here for the good pay, the free room and board and the summer away from Boston, but also for the music. Some of us are musicians, some tone-deaf. The chorus of Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” is never very melodious, but is belted out with a fair amount of gusto and no thought for intonation. And though we can now all sing along to at least a good portion of “Killer Queen,” a random survey of the staff would probably not yield the answer to the question, “Is this Holst or Shostakovich?”

For at least one of our staff, though, the music is the only reason he is here. Terry is here to take lessons with his voice teacher; working in dining staff is simply convenient. With aspirations of singing at the Met someday, he enjoys letting the rest of the staff in on his love of opera. I highly doubt that anywhere else the indoor cleaning staff would be vacuuming the dining hall to Kathy Battle singing a selection of Mozart arias.

We all realize how much this music means to the students we serve, though. Periodically, instead of awakening to alarm clocks or trucks on the loading dock, we are awakened by Robert, the French horn player, who likes to warm up out on the front lawn at about 7:45 in the morning. And we are all thankful that the small building across from our windows is home to the bassists and not the trumpet players, because they are outside practicing all the time. The lawns and small practice sheds here are constantly full of music. These high school kids are the next generation of orchestra musicians and vocalists, and they already realize the sway that music holds over them.

Our two camps, dining staff and students, do a fair amount of complaining about each other. At least I imagine that they complain about us, because we sure do enough talking about the “Frying Pan Girls” and “Can-I-Have-a-Roll Boy.” (It takes a special student to acquire one of our nicknames, or at least an act of exquisite stupidity.) We must be the more misunderstood of the two groups, the students never suspecting that we are intelligent human beings who might know a thing or two about music. All they hear coming out of the kitchen is “Come Sail Away,” which never fails to be on at dinner time.

But even with all our differences, music still affects us in the same way. We need it to survive. In the kitchen, it keeps us sane, a rhythm in the dishroom. The students need it to fulfill their creative desires; Mahler is an essential part of their diet. Tanglewood has been infiltrated by classic rock lovers, but it’s all in the name of loving music.

Jessica S. Zdeb ’04, a Crimson editor, is a history concentrator in Adams House. This summer she is slaving away in a hot kitchen for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute while trying to become the world’s first human classic rock jukebox.