Tanglewood Learning Institute Announces Additions to Spring Schedule

The Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) continues its most ambitious year-round season yet this spring, with over a dozen remaining programs that welcome both exciting new artists and popular returning performers to Tanglewood’s Linde Center for Music and Learning. 

Newly added are three TLI Cinematics screenings, bringing The Mission (March 14), The Music of Strangers—Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (April 11), and Koyaanisqatsi (April 26) to Tanglewood in collaboration with The Triplex Cinema and Berkshire International Film Festival. Also new is a Community Yom HaShoah Commemoration featuring Mark Ludwig and musicians from the Terezín Music Foundation Ensemble (April 12) and a chamber recital TLI Presents: The Birch Festival—Where Voices Meet with Llewellyn Sanchez Werner, Yevgeny Kutik, and the Borromeo String Quartet (May 9). Tickets for the new events are now on sale at tli.org.  

This season’s inaugural TLI Jazz series continues with pianist Sullivan Fortner (March 20), saxophonist Nick Hempton (April 10), and trumpeter Jumanne Smith (May 8). Irish music quintet Goitse (March 15), the Arcis Saxophone Quartet (March 22), and Hub New Music (May 1) appear as part of the TLI Presents series, which also features a back-to-back set of programs inspired by Schubert’s Winterreise (“A Winter’s Journey”) (Apr. 24 & 25). Also upcoming are the final installments of the TLI Chamber Concert series (March 8), Berkshire Bach Portals (a screening of In the Key of Bach, March 21) and TLI for Families (Magic Piano & The Chopin Shorts, April 12).  

Tickets are currently on sale for all spring 2026 TLI programs at tli.org, as well as summer 2026 TLI programs, detailed in the 2026 Tanglewood season announcement. To increase access and promote music education, TLI now offers $10 tickets for students to most programs.  

Newly Announced Spring Programs

Three TLI Cinematics programs are now scheduled for this spring, bringing captivating film screenings and enriching talkbacks to Studio E at Tanglewood’s Linde Center. Screenings are offered in collaboration with The Triplex Cinema and Berkshire International Film Festival. 

• March 14: The Mission, a 1986 drama starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons as Jesuit missionaries attempting to protect the Guaraní people from the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers (talkback hosted by local religious leaders including Pastor Erik Karas from Christ Trinity Church in Sheffield)
• April 11: The Music of Strangers—Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a 2015 documentary about members of the groundbreaking global music group, directed by Oscar-winning Morgan Neville (talkback with tabla virtuoso Sandeep Das, an original member of the Silk Road Ensemble)
• April 26: Koyaanisqatsi, a pioneering 1982 non-narrative documentary built around footage of both natural and urban landscapes, scored by Philip Glass (talkback with environmental speakers) 

In partnership with the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, TLI offers a Community Commemoration of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day (April 12). Terezín Music Foundation Director Mark Ludwig, violinist Gregory Vitale, violist Jesse Holstein, and cellist Jing Li present a program inspired by the “gray zone,” Holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s term for the complex relationship between victimhood and complicity among prisoners at concentration camps. A memorial candle lighting, prayers, and a moment of silence in memory of those murdered in the Holocaust will follow the program. Register for free tickets at the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires’ website. 

Closing out TLI’s spring season is The Birch Festival—When Voices Meet, an afternoon of music that celebrates differences not as division, but as the raw material of community (May 9). Pianist Llewellyn Sanchez Werner, violinist Yevgeny Kutik, and the Borromeo String Quartet perform Florence Price’s Five Folk Songs in Counterpoint, Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s The Banjo, and Ernest Chausson’s monumental Concerto in D for violin, piano and string quartet. Also on the program is the Massachusetts premiere of a new work by Jonathan Leshnoff for violin and piano, inspired by George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport. In addition to the 3 p.m. concert, a limited number of free tickets are available at tli.org for a 10:30 a.m. open dress rehearsal. 

Previously Announced Spring Programs

The final installment of this season’s TLI Chamber Concert series, which brings small ensembles of BSO musicians to the Linde Center, features Nielsen’s Serenata in vano and Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat, Op. 20 (March 8). TLI highlights Literacy Network as part of In Concert with Community, an initiative celebrating local causes and building harmony beyond the stage by honoring a local service organization at each TLI Chamber Concert. 

St. Patrick’s Day weekend brings multi-award-winning Irish music quintet Goitse, performing age-old traditional tunes interspersed with their own compositions (March 15). Formed in Limerick’s Irish World Academy, the band has been named Live Ireland’s “Traditional Group of the Year” and maintains a year-round touring schedule that includes performances throughout Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the United States. Cindy’s Café will offer a special St. Patrick’s Day-inspired feast before the performance, including corned beef brisket, peppered salmon, potatoes colcannon, braised cabbage, and more (advanced reservations required). 

GRAMMY award-winning pianist, composer, and band leader Sullivan Fortner and his Trio (with Tyrone Allen and Kayvon Gordon) make their Tanglewood debut on March 20. Fortner is the recipient of The Gilmore’s inaugural Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Award of $300,000, marking the largest single gift ever dedicated solely to a jazz artist. His trio won the 2024 DownBeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Jazz Group. 

Following a highly successful debut last fall, the second installation of TLI Presents: Berkshire Bach Portals offers a film screening of the 2021 biopic In the Key of Bach by filmmaker Hilan Warshaw. Beginning with Berkshire Bach Society Artistic Director Eugene Drucker playing selections from Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B minor for solo violin, the event also includes a post-screening conversation. Fittingly, the program takes place on March 21, Bach’s birthday.  

Continuing the celebration of Bach’s birthday weekend, Arcis Saxophone Quartet returns to the Linde Center to present JSB:48 (March 22). The program intersperses saxophone arrangements of the fugues from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier with new preludes written by contemporary composers, plus selections by Nikolai Kapustin, Leonhard Kuhn, and Dmitri Shostakovich. 

Saxophonist Nick Hempton makes his Tanglewood debut as a bandleader presenting A Night of Soul Jazz from NYC (Apr. 10). Fronting a classic Hammond organ band, Hempton will present tunes from his acclaimed original albums, as well as classics of the organ jazz repertoire. Joining Hempton is the all-star rhythm team of Kyle Koehler at the organ, Charlie Sigler on guitar, and Fukushi Tainaka at the drums. 

Combining enchanting visuals with live piano accompaniment by Derek Wang, the final TLI for Families program of the season pairs two short films (Magic Piano and The Chopin Shorts) with some of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin’s most famous works for solo piano (Apr. 12). 

A pair of programs shortly after Earth Day this April examine Franz Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, which portrays a grief-stricken man wandering through wintery landscapes. Based on poems by Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827)—whose texts Schubert had set for his great 1823 cycle Die schöne Müllerin—Winterreise was one of Schubert’s final works, and like his late chamber music, solo piano works, and symphonies, is an innovative and powerful example of Romanticism. Bass Andrew Munn and pianist Elenora Pertz perform the cycle on April 24; the following day, they reappear for postWinterreise,  a new work that transforms Schubert's song cycle to now confront the loss of winter in a changing climate, utilizing sound art and re-composition rooted in glacial data to transform the original.

On May 1, Hub New Music performs Daniel Wohl’s UFO-inspired piece, Mirage. Noted as one of his generation's most “imaginative, skillful creators” (New York Times), Wohl asks in Mirage, “Are UFOs just products of our imagination, projections of our hopes, or something truly alien?” One movement specifically recalls the famous 1969 Berkshire UFO Incident, an encounter that lives on in public memory. Wohl will also join Hub New Music on piano and electronics for the premiere performance of specially made arrangements from his 2019 album, État. Following the performance, and weather permitting, local amateur astronomer Rick Costello will lead a stargazing session encouraging guests to look up and think about the night sky. 

Trumpeter Jumanne Smith and his band return to the Linde Center for a program entitled Sweet Baby!, combining blues, funk, jazz, shuffles, boogaloo, and New Orleans style street beats (May 8). The GRAMMY award-winner Smith has spent the last 18 years touring and recording with Michael Bublé as lead trumpeter, vocalist, and featured soloist, and has toured with his own band to such world-class venues as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland Jazz Club, and Vail Jazz Festival. While at Tanglewood, he will work with music students from Lee Middle and High School.