Aspen Music Festival and School - Festival Focus July 8, 2024

FESTIVALFOCUS

Starry Alumni Return for Unforgettable Performances

BY CINDY HIRSCHFELD

Attending the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) is an unforgettable experience for a developing musician.

This week, three notable alumni whose careers were shaped by their time at the AMFS—violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Jeremy Denk—return to Aspen for two appealing programs: an all-Fauré evening at Harris Concert Hall on July 13, and with the Aspen Festival Orchestra under the baton of conductor Jane Glover for Beethoven’s “Triple” Concerto on July 14 at the Klein Music Tent.

As a young teen visiting Aspen every summer from New Mexico with his family (his dad attended an annual conference in Snowmass Village), Denk would head to the AMFS, attending concerts and recitals, master classes by renowned faculty like Dorothy DeLay, and even a performance by a very young Sarah Chang. Now a celebrated pianist, Denk calls that experience

a “formative exposure to great musicians.”

In 1989 he came to Aspen as a music student himself, fresh from his junior year at Oberlin College and trying to recover from a hand injury suffered while playing Bartók. He spent the summer practicing Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto—a welcome period of uninterrupted focus and self-healing—and studying with John and Antoinette Perry, whose classes he remembers as “very intense, a mixture of

“[Beethoven’s ‘Triple’] feels more like a party than an imposing concerto, and it thrives off each artist bringing their personality to the table.”

Jeremy Denk Pianist and AMFS alumnus

wonder and terror.” It was also one of the first times he had the opportunity to hang out with a group of other pianists. Hand injury on the mend, Denk returned to college in the fall and would later win a MacArthur fellowship en route to becoming one of the world’s top pianists.

Bell spent the summers of 1983 and 1984 at AMFS. He recalls getting into trouble for staying out past curfew the first year,

when he was 15 and living on campus. “I’d been such a goody-goody kid up until that point,” he says, adding that he made lifelong friends at the Festival.

Like many Aspen students, Bell busked around town with other musicians, playing outside and in restaurants like the late Golden Horn. One time a listener dropped $100 in their tip jar: “the biggest thrill of the summer,” Bell says. (By comparison, Bell collected just $52.17 when he played incognito in a Washington, D.C., metro station in 2007.)

Aspen was also the site of Bell’s first time playing in—rather than as a soloist with—a full orchestra, as Leonard Slatkin (another AMFS alumnus) conducted Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. “The orchestral experience was really valuable,” he says. In addition to Slatkin, Bell remembers playing under Jerzy Semkow, James DePreist, and Sergiu Comissiona as a student (all with whom he’d later play as a soloist). And, he had the opportunity to take a few lessons

with DeLay, who was still on the faculty when Bell made his debut as a guest artist in 1999.

Sometimes the Aspen dream is short lived. Isserlis’s tenure at the AMFS in the late 1970s lasted a mere ten days when he got an offer he couldn’t refuse: to play at violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin’s

See One Heck of a Party, Festival Focus page 3

Tao Celebrates Centennial of Rhapsody in Blue

BY DAVID HOYT

Almost everyone has heard George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The piece, celebrating its centennial this year, is performed often and has been used in countless film and TV sound tracks. But on July 15, Rhapsody in Blue gets a unique spin in a performance featuring AMFS alumnus Conrad Tao.

“It’s a piece that surrounds us all the time, and I have somehow never gotten sick of it,” said Tao, who first heard Rhapsody in Blue while watching Disney’s Fantasia 2000 as a child and later spent six summers in Aspen studying violin, piano, and composition. As piano soloist, he will be backed not by the massive symphony orchestra audiences are used to hearing in performances of Rhapsody ; rather, a jazz band of AMFS musicians will bring to life the smaller, original orchestration of the piece as it was first heard in 1924.

“We’ve got three saxophones bleating away, you’ve got a banjo, you’ve got a trap set working overtime, and so it has this almost punk-ish quality,” Tao said. “That gives the piece a slightly different edge, because the more conventionally well-known version is super lushly orchestrated, and the strings have a lot of beauty and it’s very rounded. This version is a little bit more scraggly.”

Tao will also show off his compositional skills in this concert, premiering a new piece co-commissioned by the AMFS, titled Flung Out, which both references and responds to Gershwin’s composition.

“I was really excited to offer my perspective on the piece, and the way I approached my piece was to pick a few salient features of the Gershwin to then offer my gloss on,” Tao said. “I was inspired by the idea of Rhapsody in Blue as a New York piece, as an evocation of an urban

See Clubbing with Gershwin, Festival Focus page 3

Media Partnership with medici.tv Reignited for Anniversary

BY JESSICA MOORE

Called “the closest thing to a classical Netflix,” by The New York Times, medici.tv is the world’s premier resource for classical music programming, broadcasting stunning live events from the most prestigious halls around the globe. Watched by millions on five continents, their catalogue encompasses classical music, opera, ballet, and soon, a slice of life from the 75th anniversary season of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS).

Making its return to Aspen for the first time since 2008, the medici.tv team will be on site to livestream five concerts, July 10-14, from intimate recitals to the spectacle of a Sunday Aspen Festival Orchestra concert with AMFS alumni including violinist Joshua Bell.

The AMFS will have esteemed company on the platform which regularly partners with storied festivals and institutions like the Verbier Festival, the Vienna Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, and the London Philharmonic.

“medici.tv truly only works with the best of the best and their production value is the highest,” says Laura Smith, AMFS vice president for marketing and communications.

“Joining the medici.tv network is a real acknowledgment of the level of work that goes on at the AMFS and how important it is to the world of music. Particularly special is that some of the very top performers we are featuring are our former students, which brings an element of extra depth to these streams.”

“medici.tv officially launched in 2008, and we went live from the Aspen Music Festival and School that same year,” says Manon Simonin, partnership manager for medici.tv.

“Returning to Aspen years later is a return to our roots and a continued fulfillment of our mission to bring the best of classical music worldwide to music lovers everywhere, with this top American festival joining our lineup of European events,” she continues.

The Aspen streaming line-up features a snapshot of the AMFS’s 75th anniversary season, welcoming back a cast of

In addition to five livestreams by medici.tv, the AMFS will also present seven more free livestreams this summer.

starry Festival alumni performing a variety of repertoire on both the Harris Concert Hall and Klein Music Tent stages.

On July 10, watch AMFS alum Jeremy Denk playing piano sonatas by Beethoven and Charles Ives juxtaposed with jazz-inspired works by American composers. Then take a trip back in time on July 11 for an evening of Baroque music conducted by Nicholas McGegan featuring cellist

Steven Isserlis in Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C.

The Aspen Chamber Symphony led by Robert Spano performs on July 12 with AMFS alumna and pianist Joyce Yang in Falla’s quasi-concerto Noches en los jardines de España and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor singing Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs. Denk and Isserlis are joined by violinist Joshua Bell for an all-Fauré recital on July 13 followed by a Festival Orchestra program conducted by Jane Glover on July 14 where the same three soloists will bring to life Beethoven’s “Triple” Concerto.

Following the live webcasts, the performances will be available to view on medici.tv for a year, allowing audiences around the globe to experience the glorious atmosphere of a summer in Aspen.

In addition to the five livestreams, Simonin says, “we look forward to sharing a priceless glimpse behind the scenes at Aspen through five medici.tv-produced featurettes that will highlight some of the festival’s most unique aspects.” These videos will also be available to view on the medici.tv platform.

The Aspen Festival Orchestra performance on July 14 will also be broadcast live to the Denver Art Museum’s Sharp Auditorium where it can be viewed by Denver audiences on a large screen—a feat made possible in partnership with CPR Classical.

Says Smith: “This anniversary has given us an opportunity to forge larger partnerships that bring the AMFS onto the world stage. It is an honor to share more widely the beautiful, vulnerable, deeply personal, and creative performances that we create here.”

GET MORE MUSIC FOR LESS WITH A SEASON PASS! AVAILABLE ALL SUMMER

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

AMFS Engages Valley Youth with Free Family Concert

BY SAMANTHA JOHNSTON

There is no better way to introduce children to the magic of classical music than through the art of storytelling and the Aspen Music Festival and School’s annual Family Concert is an ideal entry point. This year’s concert, Prokofiev’s delightful Peter and the Wolf, will take place at 10 am on Saturday, July 13 at the Klein Music Tent.

“These concerts are designed specifically with families in mind and an understanding that a child might make noise mid-performance,” says AMFS Vice President of Education and Community Programs Heather Kendrick-Stanton.

“We want families to feel like we’ve removed the barriers to access, and they are in a welcoming atmosphere with a real sense of belonging.”

Families are encouraged to arrive at 9:15 am to partake in pre-concert activities including an Instrument Petting Zoo, storytelling narrated by local actor Graham Northrup, creating and crafting masks, and book cover creation stations. Additional activities will immediately follow the lively 30-minute concert.

Says Stanton, “We really think about how the Tent can be a place to create family memories; and a place that upholds the Aspen idea of focusing on the integration of mind, body, and spirit to promote personal growth and societal betterment.”

Family concerts are just one facet of the AMFS’s Education and Community Programs, which bring music to kids through thousands of group and individual lessons and year-round programming. During the school year, the AMFS’s 25 teaching artists work with over 520 students in almost every school from Aspen to Glenwood Springs.

“So often, unless you are a parent with a child in a school program, you have no idea that there is programming for youth and families,” Stanton said. “This programming is rooted in our sense of community and our mission to be valley-centric and to think critically about how we engage with young people.”

Stanton explains that the summer educational programming strives to provide opportunities for families to create wonderful memories: “One of the best things about our community programs is that there is something really beautiful about participating in a shared experience and the joy that comes from being part of a beautiful art form.”

Tunes and Tales—a longtime collaboration between AMFS and the Pitkin County and Basalt Regional Libraries—is one such program, using music to amplify story telling in easily digestible 30-minute sessions.

“We want the music to ignite that sense of imagination in not only what is being read and the lessons and themes of the books, but also to gain an appreciation or how music helps the story come to life,” Stanton says.

Tunes & Tales events are at 10:30 am through July on Wednesdays at the Basalt Regional Library and on Thursdays at the Pitkin County Library through July.

“So much of popular music is rooted in classical music and Western classical traditions, so it’s a wonderful foundation for children.”

Alumni: One heck of a party

festival in Gstaad, Switzerland. Yet Isserlis spent enough time in Aspen to form happy memories of studying with cellist Claus Adam.

While the three artists never overlapped during their studies at the AMFS, this week’s programs offer two opportunities to catch them together on the Aspen stages. In honor of the hundredth anniversary of Gabriel Fauré’s death, these celebrated alumni who frequently play together will perform three pieces by the French composer from different phases of his career.

Says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration

Patrick Chamberlain, “Steven, Joshua, and Jeremy are really taking this as an opportunity to share this music with a broader audience and offer a chance to hear these glorious pieces of chamber music.” Additionally, the three musicians are slated to record a collection of Fauré’s works next year, so they’re using performances in Aspen and elsewhere this summer to “inhabit it together,” says Denk.

Isserlis, a renowned Fauré interpreter, is so passionate about the composer that he named his son after him and

calls the Piano Trio in D Minor, which will come in the middle of Saturday’s performance, perhaps his favorite of Fauré’s works. “It’s one of the most ecstatic pieces of music I’ve ever known,” he adds.

The program begins with the Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor, a piece that Fauré wrote as modernism took hold and “he began to tear at the boundaries of his style,” observes Denk. “His later music can be a little more out there,” agrees Bell. But the two have relied on their cellist to navigate it. “Learning these pieces with Steven has been wonderful,” Bell says, while Denk notes, “Steven knows how to parse late Fauré. He can lead you through the labyrinth.”

The program closes with the Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, which “has one of the great slow movements,” says Denk. “You keep hearing these gorgeous ideas drifting in ways with a lot of different, mysterious possibilities.”

Sunday at the Tent will be the three musicians’ first time performing Beethoven’s “Triple” together—a work that Bell calls celebratory and underrated—but their longtime collaboration will lend itself well to the concerto. “It needs artists who know and understand each other and play together often for it to be a success,” says Chamberlain, adding that with virtuosos like Bell, Denk, and Isserlis, “the piece is really chamber music that is happening in front of an orchestra.”

Says Denk of the work, “It feels more like a party than an imposing concerto, and it thrives off each artist bringing their personality to the table.” With Bell, Denk, and Isserlis at that table, get ready for one heck of a party.

Tao: Clubbing with Gershwin

environment there are all sorts of sounds that emerge out of the crash-bang of living in the city,” including a musical evocation of the high-pitched whine emitted by a departing subway train.

“I was also thinking about my own experiences of clubbing in New York and experiencing dance music,” Tao added, noting that a dance floor is both a place to share “a space with others all moving to the same pulse [and] space for you as an individual to be flung out into your own reverie.”

Tao is excited to return to his Aspen roots this summer as AMFS celebrates its 75th anniversary season with the theme “Becoming Who You Are,” reflecting that late nights practicing piano in Aspen made him realize how music and nature are intertwined. “The moths are gathering at the door, and Castle Creek is rushing in the distance, and I was playing one of the most beautiful pieces in the repertoire . It was this early experience of hearing the totality of the sound around me as part of the music…and expanded my listening and how I related to what we do and how I thought about what we do.”