Today is Wednesday, July 29th. Aspen Public Radio is in its Pledge Drive, and you can show your support by calling us at 920-9000.
Today at noon at Christ Episcopal Church, composer Steven Stucky and librettist Jeremy Denk will discuss their opera The Classical Style with Aspen Music Festival and School Music Director Robert Spano and AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.
A free Spotlight Recital will be performed by top student talent today at 3 in Harris Concert Hall.
The Aspen Philharmonic conducted by Rafael Payare performs at 6 in the Benedict Music Tent. Pianist Joyce Yang will play De Falla’s lush, impressionistic Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Liszt’s Totentanz, or Dance of Death. Even in his younger years, Liszt was fascinated with the macabre, visiting hospitals, gambling casinos, asylums and even prison dungeons in order to see those condemned to die. Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which Leonard Bernstein once described it as the first musical expedition into psychedelia As he put it, “Berlioz tells it like it is. You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral.”
At 8:30 tonight in Harris Concert Hall, pianist Kirill Gerstein plays works of Bartok, Bach and Liszt. Mr. Gerstein has graciously stepped in to replace mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke who was originally scheduled this evening.
Also at 8:30, a free Brass Bash in Scanlan Hall on the Bucksbaum Campus, with some of the season’s finest student brass players.