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
Harold Farberman "The Great American Cowboy"; and music for dance companies. Harold Farberman Harold Farberman (November 2, 1929 – November 24, 2018) was an American conductor, composer and percussionist. Farberman studied percussion at Juilliard, and composition at the New England Conservatory and at Tanglewood with Aaron Copland. In 1951, he joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as the youngest player ever to become a full-time member of the orchestra. Farberman's conducting positions included principal guest conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra in 1963, and music director and conductor of the Colorado Springs Orchestra from 1967 to 1970, and the Oakland Symphony Orchestra (later