[1][2] Walter Pierce graduated from Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1947 and from Boston University in 1952.
[5] While with Max Eisen, Pierce promoted Broadway and off-Broadway shows, including Yiddish Theatre productions, and the summer tent productions of St. John Terrell who conceived ‘Broadway under the big top,’ the presentation of musical theatre in the round under a circus tent, also known as Music Circus.
[7] During Cohasset’s off-season, he free-lanced as a publicist promoting the Boston premiere of Federico Fellini’s film La Strada, writing for the exhibitors’ trade magazine Motion Picture Herald and managing the opening of a foreign films theater in Milton, Massachusetts,[8] before returning the following summer to the South Shore Music Circus.
[9] During his second season at the South Shore Music Circus, Pierce was introduced to Boston impresario Aaron Richmond, who offered him a position with the Boston University Celebrity Series that Pierce accepted, working summers at the Music Circus and at the Celebrity Series the balance of the year.
[24] When Pierce retired in 1996, Martha H. Jones was appointed Executive Director of the Celebrity Series of Boston.
A distinguished array of performing artists participated in the tribute concert including pianist Emanuel Ax, William Bolcom and Joan Morris, Natasha Thomas-Schmitt of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Juilliard String Quartet, Robert Mann, Yo-Yo Ma, flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, Isaac Stern, and p isnist Dubravka Tomsic.
Among those in attendance at Symphony Hall and the gala dinner following the performance were famed soprano Leontyne Price and Judith Jamison, Executive Director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.