Tanglewood Festival Chorus performing in Boston, New York and Tanglewood. In 1970, John Oliver proposed to the management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra that he would create a permanent chorus for the orchestra, which had relied on various area choruses for much of its history. In Oliver's words, "To my utter amazement now--I wasn't amazed then, because I was just a brash young man--they said, 'Go! Form a chorus.'" The TFC's first concert was a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Symphony Hall in April 1970 when Leonard Bernstein substituted for William Steinberg who had fallen ill. Bernstein had been engaged to conduct
James Burton (conductor) James Burton (conductor) James Burton (born 1974) is a British conductor and composer. He is the conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the choral director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Burton was born in London and was educated at Westminster Abbey Choir School (where he was Head Chorister in 1987) and Radley College. He read music at St John's College Cambridge where he was a Choral Scholar, and he completed a master's degree in Orchestral Conducting at the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Frederik Prausnitz and Gustav Meier. He has been engaged as a music director, conductor and