A $1 million gift will strengthen the Boston University Tanglewood Institute in Lenox, Mass., and its ties to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. William Peltz-Smalley (CFA’22) rehearsing with the BUTI Young Artists Orchestra in Lenox in 2018. Photo by Cydney Scott
This article was first published in BU Today on March 1, 2021. By Joel Brown
If the Douglass family was a piece of music, Tanglewood would be a central motif. Now the Douglasses are adding a fortissimo climax.
Chair of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Advisory Council, Chester “Chet” W. Douglass and his wife, Joy, have pledged $1 million to launch the Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Fund, the largest gift in the 54-year history of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI).
BUTI is a summer training program for promising musicians, singers, and composers 14 to 20 years old, on its own 64-acre campus in Lenox, Mass. The new fund, created to strengthen the more than five-decade partnership between the Institute and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, marks a significant investment in the training of young artists through a continuum of music education connecting BUTI and Tanglewood, the BSO’s summer home, just down the street.
“It strengthens the core DNA of the program, which is the relationship started in 1966 between these two powerful arts and educational organizations,” says Hilary Field Respass, BUTI executive director. “By joining together they create something for young artists from across the country and around the world that really doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Many students begin at BUTI as high school students, later become fellows at Tanglewood Music Center (TMC), and go on to professional careers with the BSO and other orchestras around the country. More than a dozen BUTI alums have been members of the BSO during the past decade. But even for students who don’t make a career of it, the experience enriches their lives.
“Before BUTI, 9 out of 10 have never been in an orchestra where everybody else can play the right notes, and they start playing together and feeling it, and they just bloom,” Chet Douglass says. “It becomes a life-changing moment.”
The fund will support BUTI student activities at Tanglewood Music Center, from the lawn passes and special access to the BSO’s daily concerts they enjoy every summer to practice sessions at the rehearsal spaces and from master classes with Tanglewood guest artists like Yo Yo Ma to performing their own concerts at Ozawa Hall.
“It includes a lot of the things that make BUTI what it is, this quintessential connection between BUTI students and the Tanglewood Music Center,” says Respass.
“For over a half-century, the BU Tanglewood Institute has provided a vital and enriching training experience for young musicians, as unique for its rigor and professional standards as for its unrivaled setting,” says Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer. “We are grateful for this generous gift that enables the Institute to continue its important work and further Boston University’s commitment to supporting artistic and creative excellence.”