AMFS-25_Festival Focus Week 8_20250818

FESTIVALFOCUS

Broadway’s Patti LuPone Sings Her Life in Notes

BY CINDY HIRSHFELD Festival Focus writer

We all know how certain songs can instantly transport us back in time, evoking memories of childhood or first love or simply driving on a summer night with the windows down—the soundtrack of a life. Legendary singer and actor Patti LuPone used this universal experience to create her newest one-woman show, Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes, which she brings to the Klein Music Tent on August 22.

Unlike other cabaret-style concerts

the three-time Tony Award winner has given, this one is purely autobiographical, following the arc of her personal experiences and celebrated career.

Childhood crushes, leaving home, the tumult of the 1960s, attending Juilliard, and eventually becoming a Broadway icon—these defining moments and more are given exquisite musical expression, interspersed with storytelling.

“I wanted to sing the songs I basically grew up with,” says LuPone, 76, who was raised on New York’s Long Island (in Northport). “There was always music in the house.” Her father loved jazz, she recalls, while her introduction to musicals came via a series of Broadway show recordings. “There was a thing, Ed Sullivan Presents, and you could buy the albums for $1 at the A&P [grocery store],” she recalls. A young LuPone would drop the needle on the turntable and sing along as she did her chores.

In other words, Aspen listeners will be treated to a wide variety of music during the concert, from “Ebb Tide” (a hit for the Righteous Brothers) and “I Wish It So” (from the 1959 musical Juno) to the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

“It’s a departure from what people know me for. There’s a lot of stuff people will not have expected me to sing.”

Patti LuPone

Three-time Tony Award winner and actor

“It’s a departure from what people know me for,” LuPone says.

“There’s a lot of stuff people will not have expected me to sing.”

For example, “Lilac Wine” (notably covered by Nina Simone) is a number LuPone says she’s always wanted to perform. “I heard that song in an apartment in Manhattan [when she was 19], and I was falling in love at the time,” she explains.

R.E.M.’S MIKE MILLS JOINS ROBERT MCDUFFIE FOR HIS CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN, ROCK BAND, AND STRINGS

Wednesday, August 20

Harris Concert Hall

Award-winning violinist and AMFS alum Robert McDuffie returns for a genre-bending night you won’t forget! From the lyrical beauty of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 to the electrifying Concerto for Violin, Rock Band, and Strings—written just for McDuffie by R.E.M. bass guitarist Mike Mills who joins him on Wednesday night—this is classical music turned up to 11.

As a teenager in the 1960s, she absorbed other musical influences, too.

“I’m a child of rock and roll, and that whole era of rebellion,” says LuPone. She remembers listening to iconic DJs like Wolfman Jack and Alison Steele on her transistor radio during that time.

Of course, she’ll demonstrate the mastery for which she’s most acclaimed with a few of her signature Broadway numbers, including “I Dreamed a Dream” ( Les Misérables) and, yes, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” ( Evita). “The shows in there are touchstones—they changed my life,” says LuPone, who otherwise wanted to steer clear of focusing solely on Broadway hits. Accompanying her will be her longtime music director, Joseph Thalken, on piano, as well as noted musician Brad Phillips on five different string instruments.

See LuPone, Festival Focus page 3

Puccini’s La bohème with Renowned Tenor, Conductor

BY SAMANTHA JOHNSTON Festival Focus Writer

Puccini’s La bohème is one of opera’s most enduring and beloved works, telling the story of a group of young artists struggling to live, love, and create in 19th-century Paris. At its heart is the poignant romance between Rodolfo, a poet, and Mimì, a seamstress, whose love is tested by poverty and illness.

Unforgettable music, emotionally rich storytelling, and themes of youth, friendship, and loss have made La bohème a powerful, relatable story that lends itself to adaptation, maybe most notably in the Broadway show Rent. Audiences will have a chance to experience the classic opera at 7:30 p.m. on

August 19 at the Klein Music Tent.

With award-winning director Katherine M. Carter at the helm, Aspen’s production features internationally acclaimed tenor Matthew Polenzani as Rodolfo singing alongside the young artists of the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS program. Conductor Enrique Mazzola makes his Aspen début with this opera—a work that has shaped his personal and artistic life since childhood.

Mazzola is no stranger to the world’s most prestigious stages: the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and Deutsche Oper Berlin, to name a few. Known for his dynamic artistry and deep command of both bel canto and contemporary repertoire, Mazzola brings

“ . . . I’ve entered a period of my life where I feel that it’s important—almost a necessity—to transmit my experience to young artists.”

Spano, Bronfman,The Planets Promise Finale with Fireworks

BY JESSICA MOORE

Senior Director of Marketing and Global Communications

The Aspen Music Festival and School closes its 2025 summer season with a concert that soars from the heart of human creativity to the farthest reaches of the cosmos.

On Sunday, August 24, the AMFS stages a grand conclusion to a season themed Concerning the Spiritual in Art, pairing works of radiant beauty, towering heroism, and celestial imagination.

“This program for Final Sunday is full of brilliant fireworks for orchestra. All the works are real show pieces for orchestral playing,” says AMFS Munroe President and CEO Alan Fletcher.

Where the 2025 season opened with the more mystical prelude from Wagner’s Parsifal, it will now close with Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg “the louder, most confident, assertive of all of Wagner’s orchestral works,” says Fletcher. Notably, for this work AMFS Music Director Robert Spano will hand over the baton to AMFS alumnus and Aspen Conducting Academy Prize winner Paul-Boris Kertsman in what Spano defines a “quintessentially AMFS opportunity.”

Composed during the Napoleonic Wars, Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto sits at the pinnacle of the piano repertoire, radiating nobility and lyrical beauty. “It is so supreme. It is a summation of all of his writing for piano,” says Fletcher. Who better than pianist Yefim Bronfman, renowned worldwide for his technical mastery and deep musical insight, to bring Beethoven’s sublime work to life for the

last concert of the season. “Bronfman is the master of the whole piano literature, but I think Beethoven is really where you see him totally take your breath away,” says Patrick Chamberlain, Vice President of Artistic Administration. “He understands intimately the structure, the rhetoric of that music, and its power and poetry.”

World-renowned pianist Yefim Bronfman (pictured with concertmaster David Halen) performs Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with Music Director Robert Spano and the Aspen Festival Orchestra on Final Sunday at 4 p.m., August 24. Also on the program is Holst’s The Planets.

Holst’s The Planets closes the program—and the season—with a voyage through our solar system’s mythic and emotional landscapes. From the relentless drive of

“Mars, the Bringer of War” to the serene glow of “Venus, the Bringer of Peace,” the jubilant sweep of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” and the mysterious fade of “Neptune, the Mystic,” the score offers a portrait of the gods that are embodied in the planets.

While not intentionally designed with a programmatic arc, Chamberlain sees a connection from Wagner to Holst. “Holst is building on Wagner’s extraordinary capability to unleash the power of an orchestra in the service of an emotional goal,” he explains.

“Since time immemorial, humankind has looked heavenward in awe of the exquisite beauty and majesty of the cosmos,” Spano reflects. “In The Planets, Holst artfully captures in sound the archetypal characters that have been attributed to them over the millennia. It seems a fitting end to a summer devoted to the spiritual in art.”

Reflecting on a jam-packed eight weeks of intense study and music-making, Fletcher says that in this summer’s student class he has seen a real sense of “looking forward and having confidence. In all my encounters with students this summer, I’ve just felt a renewal of joy in making music and joy in being together and that’s what we hope for.”

As the final, ghostly echoes of Neptune dissolve into silence, the applause will be as much for the summer itself as for this single performance—a season of extraordinary artistry, profound connections, and music that has reached, like Holst’s planets, for something beyond the horizon.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THE 2026 SEASON: JULY 1—AUGUST 23

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

A Photographic Look Back on the 2025 Season

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Woodwind Competition Winner Jazmin Pascual Flores (with Conducting fellow Ken Yanagisawa) performed Copland’s Clarinet Concerto with the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra on August 6.  Renowned violinist Augustin Hadelich performed Tchaikovsky’s sublime Violin Concerto with the Aspen Festival Orchestra and conductor Stéphane Denève on August 10.   A world premiere 20 years in the making, Siddhartha, She brought an ambitious fusion of voice, movement, and storytelling to the Klein

a global perspective and a collaborative spirit to the podium, which will serve him well here in Aspen as he brings together professional artists with the students of the AMFS’s opera and orchestra programs.

Despite his global credentials, La bohème holds a particularly personal place in his heart. Mazzola grew up singing in the children’s chorus at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he performed in La bohème many times. “There are special emotions and special memories that I bring with me when I raise my baton and start to conduct, because I was there,” he says. “I can now pass these memories and experiences down to another generation of young singers.”

That sense of artistic legacy is central to Mazzola’s presence in Aspen, where the AMFS fosters young musicians from around the world. Beginning his conducting career at 25, he was often the youngest in the group and spent his days absorbing everything he could from his mentors.

“There is always a moment of connection between a director and conductor in which we agree on how we want to present the show,” he says. “It is often the hidden work because the audience enjoys the final product. But there are days, weeks, months of preparation for this.”

For Mazzola, conducting is far more than a job—it is a mission to make audiences feel, reflect, and ultimately connect more deeply with the world around them. “The beauty of attending operas like this is that you get to see something and feel something that you have lived in your life, and it’s beautiful to see it translated through music,” he says.

LuPone: A Vocal Memoir

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Additionally, two of LuPone’s closest colleagues collaborated with her on A Life in Notes : Scott Wittman conceived and directed the show, while Jeffrey Richman wrote the dialogue between her songs. “I started listening to music online from the 1950s and ’60s to the 2000s to trigger memories, and then I compiled a list of songs that I wanted to sing,” LuPone says about the potentially overwhelming process of honing this vocal memoir.

Wittman and Thalken then shaped the raw material into a tightened yet comprehensive set list that has been resonating with audiences around the country. Notes LuPone, “Scott Wittman is brilliant at being able to line up shows that are emotional and also make intellectual sense.”

“It is beautiful to say that now I am on the other side of the spectrum, and I’ve entered a period of my life where I feel that it’s important—almost a necessity—to transmit my experience to young artists.”

Behind the scenes, La bohème has been shaped through careful collaboration with director Carter—a process Mazzola sees as essential to any opera’s success.

“Of course I am very happy to simply entertain audiences,” Mazzola adds. “But the main function of every performance is to trigger thoughts on different human conditions and situations. There are a lot of people living in difficult conditions, and if I can trigger the start of a thought that encourages the world’s citizens to think about other people and our society, then I have done my job.”

For those considering the opera, Mazzola recommends that you “buy the ticket, sit down, and let your soul absorb the emotion. There is nobody better than Puccini to convey the message of how easy it is to enter the world of opera and feel something even if you don’t understand the language.”

Must one already be an ardent fan to enjoy this very personal show? “No,” emphasizes LuPone. “You just have to like music and humor. You do not have to be my fan.”

Chances are good, however, that after attending a production that reviews have called “transcendent,” “a beautiful tapestry of music,” and “dazzling,” fanhood will be almost guaranteed.