<![CDATA[Summer entertainment: time to make a choice]]>Today I got my annual envelope from the BSO inviting me to pre-order tickets for the upcoming Tanglewood season. I’ve never had any interest in classical music, but every year since 2007 I’ve gone for the “Prairie Home Companion” live broadcast which takes place on the last weekend in June (before the Tanglewood season proper begins). The first year I went alone; the second year I had along some friends, and since then it’s been a family tradition. At some point they started sending these preorder booklets, with the whole summer schedule, but they don’t seem to help much when it comes to getting the best seats.

This year, my parents are moving away, and all of the NPR listeners I know who actually live in the area, and might otherwise be persuaded to go, absolutely despise Garrison Keillor. For me it’s always been a fun time, and even the parts of the show that I find teeth-grindingly annoying on the radio are entertaining when shared with a crowd of a thousand. But I’m not sure I care to go alone this time. I have only a few days to decide, if I want to get good seats, as they go on pre-sale next Tuesday at 10 AM.

I’d actually like to go to more live performance events, but usually I don’t find out about the ones I’d be interested in until they are already sold out. Following people on Twitter doesn’t really help, since I follow far too many chatty Twitter accounts to actually read more than a fraction of the tweets (and in any case, far too many musicians’ accounts are either roboposters originating on Facebook or roboposters run out of some publicist’s office somewhere — I generally don’t care to follow the accounts of people who just spew advertising without ever interacting with the actual humans who follow them.)

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