For decades, they’ve been trading their free time for free music
Since 1980, couple has been showing people to their seats and taking in the sights and sounds as Tanglewood volunteers
LENOX — During the shutdown summer of 2020, Tanglewood ushers Lynne and Dave Harding didn’t try especially hard to stay busy. Mornings barely changed for Lynne, an avid birder; the only change the pandemic brought was more people on the trails. They met up with friends outdoors, when the weather allowed, and picnicked together. In the evenings, they watched concerts online.
But there was no pretending everything was normal. For the Hardings, who have been married for 57 years, summer has been synonymous with Tanglewood for decades. They can be found at almost every Boston Symphony Orchestra and Pops concert in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, as well as some events at Ozawa Hall — and they haven’t paid to get themselves in since 1979, when a season lawn pass cost $40.
How’d they manage that? “We went to a walk-and-talk presentation by Harry Steadman, who was the first head usher,” Lynne said over coffee in nearby West Stockbridge, recounting their first summer in the Berkshires. “He said if anyone would like to volunteer, come and see him.”
The Hardings lived in Braintree at the time but had recently bought a second home in Egremont. (They now live in Pittsfield.) They had no children, and being schoolteachers, they had summers off: Dave taught math at Milton High School, and Lynne taught French and history at Randolph High School, where her students included former “All Things Considered” host Audie Cornish. So after that presentation, they did go see Steadman. They started volunteering the next summer and haven’t stopped trading their free time for free music and the enduring community that comes with volunteering. Name any BSO or Tanglewood Music Center event that occurred on the Lenox campus between 1980 and the present day, and there’s a good chance they were there.
Whether based in the Berkshires or Boston, all members of the Boston Symphony Association of Volunteers must work for at least 20 hours per season, said director of volunteer services Erin Asbury. At Tanglewood, which draws roughly 500 volunteers each year, most of them retirees, the average is about 40. “Dave and Lynne easily log over 100, so I would say they’re outliers,” she said.
Lynne, 78, has been a volunteer since 1980. For more than 30 years (she estimated), she has been stationed between sections 1 and 3 in the Shed, stage right at the front: the domain of donors, press, and anyone willing to pony up for a plum seat. “When the patrons come in, I know who they are. We’ve been together through their personal losses and happinesses,” she said. “You build a relationship when they’re there that many times.”
Dave, 82, officially joined the Tanglewood payroll in 1984 when the newly appointed head usher, Bruce Callahan, asked Dave to take over his old job as assistant head usher. “They needed someone with a strong back and a weak mind,” Dave joked. (The job’s responsibilities included frequent lifting of heavy benches.) Dave ascended to the head usher job (by then called “front of house manager”) in 1999, the same year he retired from teaching.
Finally, he retired from his Tanglewood job in 2015, and now he’s a volunteer again: he’ll be eligible for a 10-year pin next summer. “I can sit there now and when something happens, I can think about the poor front of house manager now having to deal with it,” he said wryly.
As of this summer, the Hardings have been present for half of Tanglewood’s existence, forged several lasting friendships with their fellow volunteers, helped raise money to sponsor two Tanglewood Music Center fellowships, and witnessed a changing of the guard as the festival’s founding generation passed on and a new generation has risen to take its place. Some memories endure more than others.
“When Bernstein would come, it was frenetic on campus,” Lynne said. “Everything was sold out. The traffic was heavier. He just had this electricity about him.” She framed the program from his final concert at Tanglewood, which was also the last concert he ever conducted, and she remembered the date by heart: Aug. 19, 1990. “We knew he wasn’t well,” she said. “Towards the end of the concert, he wasn’t conducting at all: he was leaning on the back [of the podium], his head was moving, and the orchestra was playing, and we were all crying.” Bernstein died in October of the same year.
They were there when conductor Eugene Ormandy and pianist Rudolf Serkin, two titans of the mid-20th century classical music world, appeared together with the BSO during the final years of their lives. “Two very elderly gentlemen came tottering onto the stage, working their way to the podium and the piano. Everyone’s holding their breath, saying, ‘Hope they make it,’” Dave said. “Then the downbeat — and ... it was like they were kids again.”
Then there was Aaron Copland’s 85th birthday celebration with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra: “I don’t remember what Copland did during the concert, but at the end, he came up and got the longest and loudest ovation I’ve ever heard in 43 years at Tanglewood,” Dave said.
Concert garb has become much more comfortable since their first days. Nowadays, volunteers wear slacks and an eye-catching bright blue polo shirt, which sports the Tanglewood logo and “VOLUNTEER” stitched in white. But when Lynne started volunteering as a host — then called “a programmer” because they handed out concert programs — the women’s uniform included a white blouse, long black skirt, black jacket, and nylon stockings. And before she could take her post, she said, she had to submit for inspection.
“Try doing that on a day like today,” Dave hooted. (It was at least 90 degrees the day we talked.)
But it could have been worse, Lynne said. “Before I came, they had to wear white gloves.” When pants for women were allowed in the mid-’80s, Lynne said, she was immensely relieved.
Ushers don’t usually interact with Tanglewood’s special guests, with a few notable exceptions. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax barely count as guests, in Lynne’s opinion — they’re firmly part of the community. Dave recalled seeing Ax standing unobtrusively in the back of Ozawa Hall several times when either Ma or another pianist was playing. He’d ask Ax if he wanted a seat, and his response was always, “No, no, no, I’m fine.”
More often, they’ve seen musicians on the way up. Because the couple has been responsible for seating Tanglewood Music Center fellows and Boston University Tanglewood Institute stu
‘When the patrons come in, I know who they are. We’ve been together through their personal losses and happinesses. You build a relationship when they’re there that many times.’
LYNNE HARDING,
near left with her husband, Dave
dents, who were in the past given whatever seats were available right before a concert started, they’ve crossed paths with several who went on to illustrious careers, including singers Sondra Radvanovsky and Stephanie Blythe.
One year, “we had this BUTI kid who wanted to watch the pianists, watch their pedaling,” Dave said. Several times, Dave found this student on the opposite side of the Shed from his fellow BUTI campers, hoping for a better view. “I kept sending him back to the other side,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I had to.”
Several years later, the Hardings attended the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Michigan, where that same determined BUTI student — Kirill Gerstein — was given the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award. “Dan Gustin was running the festival, and he was at Tanglewood for a number of years,” said Dave. “So I told him the story, and he took us to meet Kirill. Fortunately he said he didn’t remember.”
“Or else he was being polite!” said Lynne.
No matter how much she’s enjoying a concert, Lynne says she’s always looking out to see if anything needs her attention: someone who needs a mobility aid, someone needing emergency medical attention, or someone covertly filming. “I don’t fully relax. We’re not supposed to,” she said. For that, the Hardings go to the South Mountain concert series in the early fall, or the Florida Orchestra when they’re in their winter digs in St. Petersburg, Fla. “I went out of teaching when kids said I could still do my job,” said Lynne. And she said she will do the same for ushering — but she and Dave don’t anticipate hanging up their blue shirts in the near future.
Having been at Tanglewood for so long, they’re virtually immune to being starstruck. Take last weekend, when John Williams’s 90th birthday party drew a sold-out crowd and kept the Hardings on their feet: “When you looked at the lawn, you couldn’t see any lawn. We didn’t start till 8:20 and we were seating latecomers up through intermission,” Dave said.
The two knew that even the backroads route home would be almost impassable, and they took decisive action. “We started walking out, and almost immediately after the last piece ended, Ken-David Masur started the encore,” he said. “Everybody else stopped and waited. But we kept walking. We turned on the radio and listened to them on the way home.”