This Weekend: A Film Composer's Debut, a Contemporary Blitz, and John Waite at the Mahaiwe
It is the kind of Berkshires stretch that makes a critic's calendar look like a ransom note. Between now and next weekend the county serves up an anime-scoring legend making his orchestral debut, a five-day festival of brand-new music, and an '80s hitmaker in a jewel-box theater. Here is how to spend it.
Tonight, Thursday, July 16 — John Waite at the Mahaiwe (Great Barrington). The man behind "Missing You" and, before that, the Babys and Bad English, brings his voice to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center's 8 p.m. stage. Waite has aged into a rangy, blues-inflected performer who treats the hits as starting points rather than museum pieces. The Mahaiwe's restored 1905 room — intimate, warm, unforgiving in the best way — is exactly where you want to hear a singer who has nothing left to prove.
Saturday, July 18 — Joe Hisaishi's BSO debut at Tanglewood (Lenox). This is the ticket of the week. Hisaishi — the composer behind Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," "Princess Mononoke," and "Ponyo" — makes his Boston Symphony Orchestra conducting debut, leading a program of his own music including a suite from "Princess Mononoke," with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet along for the ride. Expect a Shed full of people who have never bought a classical ticket in their lives and will leave converts. Studio Ghibli scores played by a great orchestra under the man who wrote them is not a novelty; it is one of the summer's genuine events.
July 23–27 — Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood. Esa-Pekka Salonen curates five programs of new and recent music with the Tanglewood Music Center's fearless young players. This is the festival-within-the-festival where the BSO's future gets rehearsed in public, and where the adventurous listener finds the summer's most surprising afternoons. Salonen then conducts the BSO proper on July 31.
Why bother widening the aperture past Tanglewood's marquee names? Because a scene is only as deep as its second and third tiers, and the Berkshires' are stacked. The Mahaiwe books rock acts the Shed would never touch; the Contemporary Music festival takes risks the subscription season can't. Toggle between them and you get the whole organism, not just its most photographed limb.
A programming note for planners: MASS MoCA's courtyard heats up next week too, with Lucy Dacus in North Adams — more on that in a separate dispatch. For now, three nights, three completely different rooms. Go greedy.
Sources: Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center — 2026 events (Songkick); Boston Symphony Orchestra unveils ambitious 2026 Tanglewood season — The Berkshire Edge; BSO — 2026 Tanglewood Season