On behalf of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s Board of Trustees, welcome to our 2025 season of music! Last year we celebrated our 75th anniversary by reflecting on the visionary promise of our founding event in 1949, when the Paepcke family and friends convened an international festival to reimagine humanism in the postwar age. Here in Aspen, away from cities and surrounded by majestic nature, our founders believed that the power of music and the brilliance of the artists who make and perform it could ignite a brighter future. And it worked. This year the AMFS builds on those founding themes to embrace the connections between music and spiritual experience.
The AMFS has been central to Aspen’s special culture of convening for nearly eight decades. Each summer we convene hundreds of young artists and world-class musicians at our Bucksbaum campus and on our iconic stages—the Klein Music Tent, Harris Concert Hall, and the Wheeler Opera House. Over our eight-week season we convene the Aspen community and visitors from around the world to enjoy, think about, and celebrate a range of excellent offerings across some 400 events, from classical to popular symphonic music, from opera to contemporary compositions. Our profound impact on Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley is ingrained in who we are and whom we serve, from the expert equally comfortable with Barbara Strozzi and Igor Stravinsky to the nearly 500 local children served each year by our after-school music education programs. Consider the smallest participant in our Festival for Kids; the eighth-grade violin student in Glenwood Springs serving on our Youth Leadership Council; the parent who brings their child to the free Mariachi Celebration (July 2) to explore cultural heritage. Those programs and more, many undertaken in partnership with community organizations, help instill a love of music and education across generations and link all of us to the Aspen Idea, engaging body, mind, and spirit in acts of joy and learning.
Riding on the extraordinary momentum of our 75th anniversary season, the AMFS is thinking big about how to shape the future impact of our institution for Aspen and beyond. Our campaign, Aspen Promises, will enhance the excellence of our educational mission, strengthen our institutional foundation through scholarships and capital improvements, and catalyze innovation in the world of music. Our dedicated board, leadership, and staff appreciate that what happens in Aspen can change the world.
We dedicate our 2025 season to Kay Bucksbaum. Thanks to her enduring generosity our community of musicians, artist-faculty, students, neighbors, business owners, and music lovers can continue to gather at AMFS and take in all things “concerning the spiritual in art.”
