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
Tanglewood Festival Chorus Classical Album in the nominations announced on December 2, 2009, and won the award for Best Orchestral Performance on January 31, 2010. In 2010, BSO Classics released "Tanglewood Festival Chorus: 40th Anniversary", a collection of the group's unaccompanied recordings from its Tanglewood Prelude performances between 1998 and 2005. Tanglewood Festival Chorus The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, directed by James Burton, is a chorus which performs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops in major choral works. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus (TFC) was organized in the spring of 1970, when founding conductor John Oliver became director of vocal and choral activities