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FESTIVALFOCUS

Global Piano Phenomenon Lang Lang Returns to Aspen

BY JESSICA MOORE

Senior Director of Marketing and Global Communications

One doesn’t become a superstar overnight. Behind sold-out performances, global fan bases, major sponsorships, appearances alongside pop and rock icons, and even a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame lies a lifetime of dedication to a craft. It also takes once-in-ageneration talent—and a lucky break.

Chinese pianist Lang Lang embodies

all of that and more. On August 5, he returns to the Aspen Music Festival and School after nearly two decades, performing a rare solo recital in the Klein Music Tent—a venue more commonly associated with large orchestral performances than with soloists.

“For all of its large scale, the Tent is really an intimate venue,” says Patrick Chamberlain, AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration. “I’m always struck by how artists invite audiences into the space.”

And who better to fill that space than Lang Lang, an artist Chamberlain describes as having a “generosity of spirit,” adding that “he brings his incredibly engaging personality into everything he does—he’s just as at home appearing in a Disney project as he is playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations.”

Lang Lang’s program promises to delight piano lovers: Fauré’s Pavane in F-sharp minor, Schumann’s Kreisleriana, and seven Chopin mazurkas—repertoire that showcases both poetic sensitivity and technical brilliance. Chopin, in particular, resonates deeply with Lang Lang.

“Arguably, Chopin is the most pianistic of all composers,” says AMFS Munroe President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “Chopin changed what it means to play the piano in a really important way—and that’s also at the heart of Lang Lang’s very romantic public personality.”

But Lang Lang’s ties to Aspen go beyond the concert stage. Through the Lang Lang International Music

Foundation, which supports elite young pianists through its Young Scholars program, he has partnered with the AMFS to send some of the world’s most promising students to Aspen each summer with all expenses covered by the foundation.

“It’s wonderful when an artist of [Lang Lang’s] renown and stature is willing to give back and take time to engage with what makes Aspen special as an educational institution.”

Patrick Chamberlain Vice President of Artistic Administration, Aspen Music Festival and School

This will be the first summer since beginning the partnership in 2022 that Lang Lang will come visit the students in person here in Aspen, during which time he will give a class and get to know the Lang Lang scholars.

“It’s so wonderful when an artist of his renown and stature is willing to give back and take time to engage with what makes Aspen special as an educational

Streams AMFS to the World

Featuring Hadelich in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto

AUGUST 7–10

The world’s premier purveyor of classical music returns to Aspen to share the AMFS with a global audience over four days of free livestreams. Tune in to medici.tv to watch Van Cliburn Competition winner Aristo Sham in recital, Jane Glover conducting Jeremy Denk and the Aspen Chamber Symphony, AMFS Artist-Faculty Chamber Music, and Davóne Tines’s powerful MASS project. The series culminates August 10 with Augustin Hadelich performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Aspen Festival Orchestra—also screening live at the Denver Art Museum in collaboration with CPR Classical.

Glover Leads First Full Messiah in AMFS History

BY DAVID HOYT Festival Focus Writer

The Aspen Music Festival and School’s 2025 season theme, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” provides the opportunity for the first full performance in the Festival’s 76 years of one of the most iconic works in all of music: Handel’s Messiah

On Wednesday, August 6, Dame Jane Glover will conduct Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS (AOTVA) soloists Jennifer Robinson, Ashlyn Brown, Jonghyun Park, and Jared Werlein alongside Chicago’s Music of the Baroque Chorus in this nearly three-hour-long grand tale of Christ’s birth, passion, and resurrection.

Despite Messiah’s global popularity, it is often only programmed during the

Christmas and Easter periods, leading to its long absence at one of the world’s premier summer music festivals. But besides providing partial snapshots of these wellknown holiday stories, Messiah is an ode to the power of divine redemption, reflecting Handel’s own strong Christian faith. It is for this reason that Glover, who has led more than 120 performances of the epic oratorio, thinks it fits in every season.

“It belongs everywhere at every time of the year; it’s an utterly universal piece,” she said. “It always comes up fresh as paint, I have to say; every time you do it you’ve got different forces, and I’ve done big ones and small ones, I’ve done period orchestra ones and symphony orchestra ones, and choirs of sixteen or choirs of several hundred. And

In addition to Handel’s Messiah on August 6, Dame Jane

the

I’ve done it in cathedrals and concert halls and smaller venues. Harris Concert Hall is one of the smaller places where I will have done it, and we have a wonderful chamber choir, my own lot from Chicago; I’m thrilled they’re coming to join me.”

Glover first heard Messiah at England’s Lincoln Cathedral when she was nine years old and describes the experience as a pivotal moment that set her on the path to a long and distinguished career in music. She aims to bring that same spirit of new discovery to every performance.

“There is always somebody in the audience who is going to be hearing that piece for the first time whether it’s a 9-year-old or an 89-year-old,” Glover said. “It’s got

See Glover, Festival Focus page 3

Tines, Bitoy MASS Delivers Reckoning and Renewal

BY SAMANTHA JOHNSTON

Festival Focus Writer

Bass-baritone Davóne Tines and pianist John Bitoy will deliver a transformational concert experience exploring identity, ritual, and the power of honest expression at 7:30 p.m. on August 9 at Harris Concert Hall.

With Recital No. 1: MASS, Tines constructed a program that is both deeply personal and profoundly universal, reimagining the traditional Catholic Mass as a journey through spirituality, justice, and selfhood.

Tines describes the journey as “hearing centuries of harmonic tradition filtered through a different cultural, rhythmic, and emotional lens.”

“Gospel takes the same foundation as classical music and amplifies it: emotionally, spiritually, and sonically. Mozart and gospel music live on the same street,” Tines says.

about what’s going on in your life while you hear the music and your own personal experience will become married to what the music is expressing.”

Often described as an artist who is challenging the conventions of classical music, Tines is clear about how he wants to show up as an artist. “You can’t access the idea of your own soul or your own spirituality unless you are honest with yourself and you take off the masks you present to yourself and to others,” he says.

“Mozart and gospel music live on the same street.”

The structure of Tines’s recital as a mass isn’t meant to be denominational, but rather an intentionally nondenominational ritual of walking through curiosity, asking for help, and being thankful that help has come.

“I have tried to make the program as open and inviting as possible, because there is music from a wide range of traditions, genres, and aesthetics,” Tines says. “Even if you don’t have a musical aptitude or appetite, you can think

“And oddly enough, that can be seen as revolutionary. In classical music, there are a lot of facades.”

The recital will demand vulnerability— from both performer and audience alike.

Tines is joined by John Bitoy, a Chicago-based composer and pianist known for his improvisational artistry and deep engagement with the Black music tradition. Their dynamic is both intimate and spontaneous.

Whether channeling Bach’s driving counterpoint or the raw emotionality of gospel, Tines uses music as a conduit for something larger: truth, connection, and the struggle for liberation.

“An underpinning within MASS is understanding darkness and trouble and reflecting on that to move to a place of joy or change,” Tines says.

“Davóne is such an improviser,” Bitoy says. “He’ll change a chord or voicing and I get to respond to it in the moment; and there are times when we will rehearse something, but I want to try something different, and I’ll wait until I get on stage to experiment and see how Davóne reacts. No two shows are ever exactly the same.”

Audience members are encouraged to bring their full selves—beliefs, questions, vulnerabilities—to the recital. Each musical section is paired with a question, inviting listeners to contemplate their own inner world alongside music.

Through music drawn from traditions across centuries and cultures, Recital No. 1: MASS becomes more than a concert—it is a ritual of reckoning and renewal. It is a space for belonging. It is a reminder that within the formal architecture of classical music, there is room—indeed, necessity—for radical presence and personal truth. For audience members, Bitoy encourages everyone to come to the concert with a personal problem and be present enough to let the music do the healing.

NEW THIS SEASON: FREE FRIDAYS FOR YOUNG ADULTS, 19-35!

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Cliburn Gold Medal Winner Comes to Aspen

BY EMMA KIRBY Marketing Manager

Every four years, a new piano sensation is crowned at the world’s most prestigious competition. In May, 29-yearold Aristo Sham joined that elite list of pianists, winning the gold medal at the 17th Annual Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

On Thursday, August 7, Sham gives his first full recital since the win, performing a program that shows why he took home the gold with music equal parts technically dazzling and emotionally profound; music that he says evokes the “overwhelming feeling that everything will be all right in the world.”

“I think Aristo was clearly a leader all the way through,” says AMFS Munroe President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “He’s a very deep thinker, and also a very great colorist,” saying that Sham has the chance to be his generation’s “poet-philosopher of the piano.”

Competitors at the Cliburn choose their own repertoire—a hallmark of the competition that gives a rare level of freedom. For Sham, this was essential: “I wanted for each round to showcase a different side of my artistry and personality. I love pieces that are intellectually interesting, but the most important thing is that there’s [also] huge emotional impact,” he says.

On Thursday, Sham performs four works that he

presented at the Cliburn, opening with Rachmaninoff’s rarely-performed arrangement of Bach’s Partita No. 3 for Unaccompanied Violin in E major—a notoriously difficult piece. Calling it a “tongue-twister for the piano,” Sham says it’s like “playing four Bach pieces at the same time.” Despite the difficulty, he wanted to take it on because it’s “really [Rachmaninoff] at his finest,” describing the work as “very festive” and celebratory.

The Busoni transcription of Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 that follows is “the opposite of that,” says

Lang Lang: Piano Ambassador

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institution,” says Chamberlain.

Fletcher notes that opportunities like this are “significant for Aspen and significant for those young artists as well,” as it gives them “a chance to see the world’s greatest performing artists at work in a sustained way, not just go to a concert and see them play.” This hands-on access to some of the world’s greatest artists—consider also AMFS alumni such as Joshua Bell and Renée Fleming—is often what alumni cite as one of the most valuable components of their time studying in Aspen.

Lang Lang’s own piano journey started at the young age of three in his native China where he eventually entered Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory at the age of nine. His first major award came at age 13 when he won First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians. But his lucky break came a few years later when, at age

17, Lang Lang filled in for the renowned André Watts who had fallen ill, playing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a major gala event. From there, the invitations came pouring in and one could say the rest is history.

Fletcher recalls first hearing about Lang Lang during the pianist’s student years at the Curtis Institute of Music: “He was a phenomenon. It started with his extraordinary technique, which is really once in a lifetime. But then, through sheer force of personality, he became one of the most recognized musicians in the world—and that’s another kind of phenomenon.”

“He has truly ‘made it’ in terms of a career,” Chamberlain says. “There are very few classical artists who transcend the genre and become superstars. I’m thrilled Aspen audiences will have the chance to see Lang Lang at work.”

Sham. Believed to be a eulogy that Bach wrote following the death of his second wife, the Chaconne is “a very deeply felt and touching piece.”

To close the first half, Sham takes on Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, widely known as one of the most difficult in the standard repertoire. “It stands alone. There’s nothing quite like it,” says Sham. It’s a display both of genius storytelling and use of the instrument.”

The evening concludes with Beethoven’s towering Hammerklavier, Piano Sonata No. 29—the piece that Sham used to secure his place in the Semifinal Round of the Cliburn. This was an obvious choice for Sham: “The Hammerklavier is a piece where it leaves nothing to be said afterwards. For me, it’s the kind of piece that’s the entire universe and more. So that has to go at the end.”

Though coming off the most triumphant performances of his career, Sham sees the Cliburn as just the beginning. “In a way, the real work begins now,” he says. “That was the fun part. Now we do what we set out and have wanted to do for a really long time.”

“I still hope that every performance is better than the last. I want to push the limits of what I can do with music and what music can do for audiences,” he says.

Don’t miss your chance to be among the first to hear Sham at the start of what promises to be a remarkable international career.

Glover: In Aspen

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something for everybody. Every number is a show stopper.”

AMFS Munroe President and CEO Alan Fletcher is excited to finally present what he calls a cornerstone of the classical repertoire. “Because of our season theme, we wanted a mix of overtly spiritual, religious works and also things like Holst’s The Planets or Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration that are a little more tangential,” he said. “But we thought, ‘well, if we’re going to go big, let’s go biggest and do Messiah.”

“And of course, Jane is just superb for this repertoire,” says Fletcher. “It’s fantastic for these young singers to work with Jane; they will learn so much about ornamentation and about the whole Handel style, which is crucial.”

A frequent presence at the AMFS, Glover keeps coming back to Aspen for the unique opportunity to work with stellar young talents and to experience music in a heightened way when paired with the stunning natural beauty of the Roaring Fork Valley.

“I’ve been coming for several years now, and the joy is working with incredibly gifted young people, whether they’re instrumentalists or singers,” she says. “I know that [AOTVA co-artistic directors] Renée [Fleming] and Patrick [Summers] will have chosen people very well for what we’re going to be doing, and I can’t wait to work with them.”

“Plus of course it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet,” she continues. “I don’t have much free time, but I intend to get out my hiking boots a little; even if it’s six o’clock in the morning, I’ll be out there just reveling in this wonderful, wonderful place.”