Fireworks will once more light up the Boston skies on the Fourth of July—but it won’t be the same.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that this year, there will be big adjustments made to its annual Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. For starters, the concert will be taking place at Tanglewood, the BSO’s summer home in the Berkshires, rather than at The Esplanade’s Hatch Shell.
And as far as the pyrotechnics goes, you can expect a dazzling display—just over Boston Common instead of the Charles River. The two events will run completely independently of each other; Common-goers won’t be seeing any stream of the Pops’ live performance, nor will there be so much as a sparkler happening at Tanglewood.
The BSO, who had to cancel its spectacular in 2020 altogether due to the COVID-19 pandemic, says they plan to return to normal Independence Day programming next year. This time around, though, there simply wasn’t enough lead time to navigate all of the necessary red tape before the Fourth.
Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart explains in a statement: “Though health concerns related to the pandemic have abated over the last few weeks, after careful consideration we determined there wasn’t enough time to organize the many forces needed to safely return to the Esplanade and present what is considered one of the largest concert events in the world.”