Berkshire Festival Tour

August 19 - 23, 2007
Sponsored by TDF




Don't miss out on the 6th Annual trip to the Birkshires!  This trip includes roundtrip coach transportation, 4 night accomodations, breakfast daily, 2 dinners, 2 lunches, admissions to 5 performances and 6 museums and an escort throughout the trip.



tdf Travel invites you to join our sixth annual cultural excursion to the beautiful Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, where reserved seats await us at five distinguished venues:  Tanglewood, Jacob's Pillow, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Berkshire Theatre Festival and The Barrington Stage Company.  We visit the picture-perfect towns of Williamstown, Lenox, and Stockbridge, and see a broad scope of the works of great American artists, from the Norman Rockwell Museum to the Clark Institute, where the summer exhibition is The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings.  Featuring over ninety works, this is the first exhibition ever organized on the subject of Monet's drawings and pastels.  Each day is paced to include a morning cultural activity, time to refresh at the hotel, and then a featured evening performance in one of the Berkshire's charming towns.  Our hotel, the Williams Inn, where we spend four nights, is in the heart of picturesque Williamstown.  A New England treasure, the Williams Inn has colonial charm and a full spectrum of modern amenities such as an indoor heated swimming pool, sauna, and spa.






1.  Sunday, August 19     Tanglewood/Williamstown
We meet our guide at our central midtown Manhattan location (30th Street @ 7th Avenue) at 9:00am and depart, traveling aboard a comfortable private motor coach for the 3-hour trip to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  The 250+ acre property includes the Tanglewood Music Center, the Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Leonard Bernstein Campus, and a number of smaller studios, classrooms, and performance spaces.  After our picnic lunch (included) on the grounds, Rafael Fruhbeck conducts the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  Following the concert, we travel to Williamstown where we check in at the Williams Inn.  Surrounded by scenic mountains and farmlands, picturesque Williamstown is the quintessential Berkshire village, a wonderful blend of natural beauty, small town charm, and heightened cultural awareness.  It's no wonder that Williamstown is called "the Village Beautiful."  It is the home of venerable Williams College, one of the nation's best liberal arts colleges, and the town offers much to refresh the mind, renew the soul and stir the imagination.  This evening our welcome dinner is at our hotel.  (Lunch) (Dinner)  



2.  Monday, August 20     Williamstown/Stockbridge
After breakfast at our hotel we visit the renowned Clark Institute, founded by Robert Sterling Clark, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, and his wife Francine.  Though probably best known for the many examples of Renoir, Monet, Degas, and French 19th century works, the collection, which spans the Renaissance through the late-nineteenth century, continues to grow by purchase and gift.  American artists, including Frederick Remington and Winslow Homer, are also well represented.  We see the exceptional summer exhibit: The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings.  Featuring over ninety works, this is the first exhibition ever organized on the subject of Monet's drawings and pastels.  With commitments from an international roster of museums and private collectors, The Unknown Monet promises to be a truly groundbreaking event that will make a definitive contribution to our understanding of the œuvre of Monet.  
 
Following the tour there is time for lunch on your own in Williamstown and the opportunity to relax before the afternoon's activities.  This afternoon we travel to Stockbridge to visit the Norman Rockwell Studio and Museum.  Unquestionably one of America's most beloved and successful illustrators, Norman Rockwell took care to ensure that his work and legacy are well remembered at this 36-acre site, just minutes from lovely downtown Stockbridge.  Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of a visit to this Museum is the 19th-century carriage house, which was Rockwell's actual studio.  It was transplanted from the village to these grounds in 1986 and offers an intimate glimpse into the world of the artist.  It is furnished exactly as Rockwell had it, and gives one the strange feeling that the artist has simply stepped out for a moment, and may pop back in at any time.    
 
Next, we continue to Chesterwood, the early 20th century country home of sculptor Daniel Chester French.  In 1875, at the mere age of 25, he was commissioned to sculpt the celebrated The Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts.  In 1922, right here in the Glendale section of Stockbridge, he sculpted the extraordinary seated Statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, first creating smaller models and then graduating to the imposing work we know today.  French's genius transformed Chesterwood from a traditional New England farm to both a celebration and devotional workshop of art.  Over 500 pieces of sculpture are collected at Chesterwood and French's original studio.    
 
We then have free time for dinner on our own before our second included performance of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession at the Berkshire Theatre Festival.  At 78 years old, the Berkshire Theatre Festival has the unique distinction of being the longest running cultural organization in Berkshire County and one of the first established regional theatres in the United States.  (B)



3.  Tuesday, August 21     Bennington/Lenox/Williamstown
This morning, after breakfast, we venture north to Bennington, Vermont to visit the Bennington Museum, one of the finest regional history and art museums in New England.  The museum houses the largest public collection of Grandma Moses paintings and memorabilia, along with the Grandma Moses Schoolhouse she attended as a child.  The museum has an unsurpassed collection of Bennington pottery, an extensive array of American glass from the 19th to the early 20th century, American paintings and sculpture, and American furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries.  We return to Williamstown for lunch (on own) and time to refresh.    
 
In the afternoon we visit Lenox, described by LIFE Magazine recently as "Currier and Ives lovely." A century ago, many of America's wealthiest families were attracted to Lenox by the clear air and commanding vistas.  They built magnificent summer mansions and called them cottages.  At Edith Wharton's Berkshire home, "The Mount," we see a fine example.  The Edith Wharton Restoration was founded in 1980, and was established to return the estate to its former grandeur reflecting the life, times, art and ideas of Edith Wharton.  Our tour combines literary, historical, biographical, and design aspects of Edith Wharton's life and writings.  As part of the current restoration visitors will see Edith Wharton's bedroom suite, the "Private Sanctum" where she wrote some of her most important works.    
 
We return to Williamstown where you have time for dinner (on you own).  This evening, we see our third included performance at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (tba).  The first season in 1955, performed at the Adams Memorial Theatre at Williams College, was an immediate success, playing nightly to packed houses.  Since then, it has met with non-stop critical acclaim.  Rex Reed described one production as "The most electrifying theatrical event of the summer." (B)  



4.  Wednesday, August 22     Pittsfield/Lenox
This morning we visit the Colonial Theatre, an architectural icon of another age.  Located in downtown Pittsfield, the Colonial Theatre is a Gilded Age architectural gem brought back to life as a performing arts center in the "heart of the Berkshires".  Kept safe behind the temporary wall and ceiling partitions of a retail store for more than 50 years, the ornately appointed and now fully restored Colonial emerged in August, 2006 as a cultural and economic development force in the Berkshires.    
 
We have a talk by a member of the artistic staff at The Barrington Stage Company.  The company has had an amazing twelve years, beginning with winning the Elliot Norton/Boston Theatre Critics Award in its very first year for The Diary of Anne Frank.  In its third year, BSC won two Elliot Norton/Boston Theatre Critics Awards and four Outer Critics Awards and from 2003-2005 BSC produced three world premieres including the acclaimed musical hit The 25th Annual Putnam Valley Spelling Bee.  We see a matinee performance of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece, Uncle Vanya, set in turn-of-the-century Russia.  An aging professor brings his beautiful young wife to his country estate, and disrupts forever the quiet lives of all who live there.  Filled with passion, both comic and tragic, Uncle Vanya is an exquisite exploration of the human condition.  
 
After the performance we travel to Lenox for our farewell dinner prior to our final performance of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at one of America’s premier dance facilities, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.  (B) (D)  



5.  Thursday, August 23     Hancock Shaker Village
We check out of the hotel and spend the morning at Hancock Shaker Village, an outdoor history museum of Shaker life on 1200 acres in the scenic Berkshire Hills.  The Shakers were founded in England in 1747.  Their frenzied religious dancing inspired their somewhat pejoratively applied nickname.  The twenty restored historical buildings in the Hancock Shaker Village are a vital link to the past of America's most successful communitarian society, showing their practiced harmony with the land and their passionate dedication to producing simple yet elegant furniture and dwellings.  After the visit we begin our journey back to New York, stopping for lunch (included).  We anticipate arriving in New York at approximately 6:00pm.  (B) (L)  





This engaging experience includes:

  • Round trip private coach transportation from New York
  • Private motor coach throughout tour
  • 4 nights' accommodations
  • Breakfast daily; 2 dinners; 2 lunches
  • Tickets for five performances
  • Admissions to 6 museums
  • Escort throughout tour
PROGRAM PRICES  
Per person (double occupancy) from New York: $1,599.00  
Single Supplement: $265.00