“Give the Aspen Music Festival and School full points for resilience,” writes James Oestreich in Tuesday’s (7/30) New York Times. “In 2010 the institution was just emerging from several years of turmoil.… Today, insofar as an outsider could quickly determine over the weekend, peace seems to reign. And as a potent symbol of the dawning of a new era, the school this year unveiled a campus wildly transformed,” encompassing upgraded rehearsal spaces, studios for private instruction, and a new orchestral rehearsal hall and administration building. “The phase of construction already completed, the first of three, represents about 60 percent of a $65 million project to be completed in 2016, carried out in partnership with the Aspen Country Day School. The school, which occupies the campus during the academic year, is shouldering $30 million of the cost…. Also representing the new era is the conductor Robert Spano, who became music director of the festival and school and director of the conducting academy last year. Mr. Spano … is also the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra…. The centerpiece of the season came on Saturday evening: a superb semi-staged version of Britten’s great opera Peter Grimes in the music tent, with the Aspen Festival Orchestra and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus.”
Posted July 30, 2013
