The Tanglewood Picnic: Music and Outdoor Feasts in the Berkshires

The Tanglewood Picnic: Music and Outdoor Feasts in the Berkshires by Gina Hyams celebrates the eight-decade tradition of picnicking on the lawn at Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts. This gift book includes 150 photos of Tanglewood picnickers from the 1940s through the present from the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives and audience members' family scrapbooks; a dozen classic picnic recipes (summer corn pudding, lobster sliders, brownies...); the ultimate Tanglewood picnic checklist; and foreword by best-selling cookbook author Alana Chernila.

When you ask people to describe Tanglewood picnics, more often than not, the first word they say is magic. The experience of picnicking on the lawn clearly adds up to something that's greater than the sum of its parts.

To picnic at Tanglewood is to participate in a grand tradition. Since 1937, music lovers have there to picnic during concerts. The 526-acre campus is a picnicker's paradise of sweeping lawns, woods, and a formal garden. Both the Koussevitzky Music Shed (a.k.a. the Shed ) and Seiji Ozawa Hall are open sided, designed so that the music pours out of the concert halls to be shared with patrons sitting in the cheap seats on the grass.

The place is imbued with a brilliant sense of artistic history and, for many, a poignant feeling of personal legacy. The tradition of picnicking at Tanglewood is passed down through generations like a beloved family heirloom. There's a profound sense of tranquility on the Tanglewood lawn. You might battle a little traffic to get there, but once you get situated on your picnic blanket, everything seems right with the world. You slow down and connect with your companions or, as the case may be, with the New York Times crossword puzzle, surrounded by the bucolic Berkshire landscape and breathing in the fresh country air.

Tanglewood picnics celebrate artistry both on stage and off. The joyful spectacle of picnics scattered across the lawn is dazzling. In addition to the glorious music, the grounds hum with the creative energy of audience members drawing and painting, knitting, reading, and playing all sorts of games. Tanglewood picnickers have a certain joie de vivre about the weather, too -- be it basking in sunshine or huddling together under tarps to picnic in the rain. And, well, there's a lot of sleeping. What could be more relaxing than napping outdoors while the world's greatest musicians serenade your dreams?

The Tanglewood Picnic: Music and Outdoor Feasts in the Berkshires is a collective love letter to a beloved tradition. It serves as both a tribute to past picnics and as inspiration for future ones.

The Tanglewood Picnic was named a finalist in the 2015 USA Best Book Awards Cookbooks: Regional category and Christopher Hixson won the Graphic Design USA 2015 Book Design Award for his work on the book.