About Us

Founded in 1949, the Aspen Music Festival and School is regarded as one of the top classical music festivals in the United States, noted both for its concert programming and its musical training of mostly young-adult music students. The eight-week summer season includes hundreds of classical music events: concerts by four orchestras, recitals, chamber music, operas, classes, lectures, and family programs. In the winter, the AMFS presents recitals and robust music education programs for local youth and families.

Come celebrate

75 Years Of Music

Programs of Study

The Aspen Music Festival and School offers musicians a choice of programs of study:

Orchestra / Instrumental

Solo Piano

Collaborative Piano

Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS

Aspen Conducting Academy

Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies

Aspen Contemporary Ensemble

American Brass Quintet Seminar @Aspen

Classical Guitar

Teaching and Performance Venues

Klein Music Tent

The Michael Klein Music Tent, which opened in 2000, is the Festival’s primary concert venue and seats 2050. The tent replaced an earlier tent designed by Herbert Bayer, which in 1965 replaced the original smaller tent designed by Eero Saarinen. Concerts are held in the Klein Music Tent on a nearly daily basis during the summer with additional seating on the lawn just outside the Tent, where many choose to picnic during events. The design has open sides; the curving roof is made of Teflon-coated fiberglass, a hard material also used by the Denver International Airport.

Harris Concert Hall

The 500-seat Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall is located next door to the Klein Music Tent, and was opened in 1993 at a cost of $7 million.

Bucksbaum Campus

In 2016, the AMFS completed its $75 million, 105,000-square-foot Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus, which serves as the center of its teaching activities. The Campus, located two miles from downtown Aspen, sits on a 38-acre site that is shared between the AMFS in the summer and Aspen Country Day School during the academic year. Designed by architect Harry Teague, who also designed the AMFS’s Harris Concert Hall and the Klein Music Tent, the Bucksbaum Campus includes three expansive rehearsal halls, numerous teaching studios and practice rooms, a percussion building, administrative offices, and a glass-enclosed cafeteria. The Campus was designed with Aspen’s natural setting in mind: the buildings’ roof lines mirror the shapes of the surrounding mountains and hug the contours of the ponds and creek.

The Wheeler Opera House

The Wheeler Opera House—a Victorian-era venue owned by the City of Aspen—is the home to Aspen Opera Center productions in the summer and the AMFS’s The Met: Live in HD screenings in the winter.