Pianist Anthony de Mare has been a champion of contemporary music of many sorts. Yet his trademark is the amazing things he can do at the piano besides play the keys, namely talking. The pinnacle of his accomplishments, in what might be considered a new genre of works, is Frederic Rzewski’s “De Profundis,” an amazing setting of portions of Oscar Wilde’s letter from prison that de Mare commissioned and...

With his solo rendition of “Beowulf,” coming up on Wednesday at Ozawa Hall, Benjamin Bagby may be the only musician during the Tanglewood season who will perform an entire evening without any written music. It’s not that he’s memorized a composition and left the sheet music at home. Yet the essence of his material is more than 1,000 years old. “Nothing that I’m performing is notated. I’m...

It was in the basement of a Seattle church in the early 1970s that Pleasant DeSpain knew for sure his commitment to becoming a professional storyteller was going to work out. “I had my hat by the door, and I told stories for two hours,” he says. “At the end of that night, there was $27.68 in that hat. And rent for a decent apartment was $100 back then. I knew then that there was no turning back.” DeSpain has been telling...