Aspen Music Festival and School

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Benedict Music Tent - Aspen Music Festival

Founded in 1949, the Aspen Music Festival and School is regarded as one of the top classical music festivals in the United States, noted both for its concert programming and its musical training of mostly young-adult music students.[1][2] The typical eight-week summer season includes more than 300 classical music events—including concerts by five orchestras, solo and chamber music performances, fully staged opera productions, master classes, lectures, and children’s programming—and brings in 70,000 audience members.[3] In the winter, the AMFS presents a small series of recitals and Metropolitan Opera Live in HD screenings.[4]

As a training ground for young-adult classical musicians, the AMFS draws more than 600 students from 40-plus countries, with an average age of 23.[3][5] While in Aspen, students participate in lessons, coaching, and public performances in orchestras, operas, and chamber music, sometimes playing side-by-side with AMFS artist-faculty.[6]

The organization is currently led by President and CEO Alan Fletcher and Music Director Robert Spano.[6]

History

The Aspen Music Festival and School was originally founded in 1949 by Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke and Elizabeth Paepcke as a two-week bicentennial celebration of the 18th-century German writer Johann Wolgang von Goethe. The event, which included both intellectual forums and musical performances, was such a success that it led to the formation of both the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Music Festival and School.[7]

In the summers that followed, the participating musicians returned, bringing their music students, and the foundation was set for the AMFS as it is known today. In 1951, the School enrolled its first official class, with 183 music students.[8] That same year, Igor Stravinsky became the first conductor to present his own works with the Festival.[9]

Early founding musicians included baritone Mack Harrell (father of cellist Lynn Harrell) and violinist Roman Totenberg (father of NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg). Early performance highlights include then-student James Levine conducted the Benjamin Britten opera Albert Herring in 1964, coinciding with Britten’s visit to Aspen that summer to accept an award from the Aspen Institute.[10] In 1965, Duke Ellington and his orchestra came to the AMFS to perform a benefit concert.[11] In 1971, Dorothy DeLay joined the AMFS strings artist-faculty[12] and attracted more than 200 students a summer to her program. In 1975, Aaron Copland came to Aspen as a composer-in-residence[13] on the occasion of his 75th birthday. In 1980, John Denver performed with the Aspen Festival Orchestra for his TV special Music and the Mountains, which aired the following year on ABC.[14] Multiple artist-faculty members have also recorded albums while in Aspen, including the Emerson String Quartet, which recorded the Shostakovich: The String Quartets 5-disc set from AMFS venue Harris Concert Hall[15] and won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album.[16]

Music Directors

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Educational Programs

The Aspen Music Festival and School offers young musicians a choice of twelve programs of study: Orchestra, Brass Quintet Studies, the Finckel-Wu Han Chamber Music Studio, Solo Piano, Collaborative Piano, Opera Coaching, the Aspen Opera Theater Center, the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, the Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, and Classical Guitar.[23]

Facilities

The Benedict Music Tent, which opened in 2000, is the Festival’s primary concert venue and seats 2050.[24] The tent replaced an earlier tent designed by Herbert Bayer, which in 1965 replaced the original smaller tent designed by Eero Saarinen.[25] Concerts are held in the Benedict Music Tent on a nearly daily basis during the summer, and seating on the lawn just outside the Tent, where many choose to picnic during events, is always free.[26] The design has open sides; the curving roof is made of Teflon-coated fiberglass, a hard material also used by the Denver International Airport.

The 500-seat Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall is located next door to the Benedict Music Tent, and was opened in 1993 at a cost of $7 million.[27] The Wheeler Opera House—a Victorian-era venue owned by the City of Aspen—is the home to Aspen Opera Theater Center productions in the summer and the AMFS’s Metropolitan Opera Live in HD screenings in the winter.[28]

In 2013, the AMFS completed the first phase of construction for its new, $70 million, 105,000-square-foot Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus.[29] The Campus, located two miles from downtown Aspen, sits on a 38-acre site that is shared between the AMFS in the summer and Aspen Country Day School during the academic year.[30] Designed by architect Harry Teague, who also designed Harris Concert Hall and the Benedict Music Tent, the new additions to the Bucksbaum Campus include two rehearsal halls, teaching studios, practice rooms, and a percussion building. The Campus was designed with Aspen’s natural setting in mind, creating building roof lines that mirror the shapes of the surrounding mountainside, and creating rows of practice rooms that also serve as retaining walls to guard against mudslides.[30] In addition to student facilities, the Bucksbaum Campus is also the year-round home to AMFS administrative staff. The next phase of construction will be completed in summer 2016.[29]

Alumni

Alumni of the AMFS fill important professional music positions around the world, performing in top-tier orchestras, opera houses, and teaching on music school faculties. Notable alumni include:

Violinists Joshua Bell, David Chan, Sarah Chang, Ray Chen, Robert Chen, Karen Gomyo, Midori Goto, David Halen, Sirena Huang, Cho-Liang Lin, Robert McDuffie, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gil Shaham, Elena Urioste, Andrew Wan; Pianists Jeremy Denk, Ingrid Fliter, Kevin Kwan Loucks, Orli Shaham, Conrad Tao, Yuja Wang, Wu Han, Joyce Yang; Conductors Marin Alsop, Mei-Ann Chen, James Conlon, Bradley Ellingboe, James Feddeck, James Gaffigan, James Levine, Tomas Netopil, Peter Oundjian, Larry Rachleff, Leonard Slatkin, Joshua Weilerstein, Hugh Wolff; Composers Andy Akiho, Mason Bates, William Bolcom, Philip Glass, David Lang, Hannah Lash, Eric Nathan, Clint Needham, Andrew Norman, Augusta Read Thomas, Adam Schoenberg, Bright Sheng, Sean Sheperd, Joan Tower; Vocalists Jamie Barton, Liam Bonner, Danielle de Niese, Sasha Cooke, Ying Fang, Renée Fleming, Haeran Hong, Isabel Leonard, Ryan McKinny, Russell Thomas, Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Zetlan; Ensembles Calder Quartet, Escher String Quartet, Jupiter String Quartet, Pacifica Quartet, Ying Quartet; Cellists Lynn Harrell, David Requiro, Joshua Roman, Alisa Weilerstein; Guitarist Sharon Isbin; Performer Peter Schickele; and Bassist Edgar Meyer

2015 Season

Summer 2015 will be the Aspen Music Festival and School’s 67th season. The lineup includes performances by Joshua Bell, Alisa Weilerstein, Sarah Chang, Joyce Yang, Gil Shaham, Edgar Meyer, Robert McDuffie, Sharon Isbin, David Finckel and Wu Han, Takács Quartet, Emerson String Quartet, Conrad Tao, and other soloists and ensembles. Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, presented by the AMFS in association with Jazz Aspen Snowmass, is also scheduled to perform.[31][32]

The 2015 season will also include a semi-staged and three fully staged performances of operas including one directed by Aspen Opera Theater Center Director Edward Berkeley. The Opera Theater Center schedule for the summer includes fully staged productions of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, as well as a double bill of Christopher Theofanidis’s and William Hoffman’s The Cows of Apollo or The Invention of Music with Steven Stucky’s and Jeremy Denk’s The Classical Style, in its world stage premiere. The AOTC is directed by Edward Berkeley, with Elizabeth Buccheri serving as head of music.

See also

References

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  5. ↑ Rita Mead, "Aspen Music Festival and School" New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. 2001 p.115
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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