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Gordon Hardy Tribute

Gordon Alfred Hardy (1918–2013)

The Aspen Music Festival and School remembers a foundational figure in its history, its longtime administrator and key supporter, Gordon Alfred Hardy. During his twenty-eight year administrative tenure, Gordon left a rich legacy central to the AMFS’s mission of providing transformative educational experiences within a community of artistic excellence.

Gordon came to the Festival in 1962 from the Juilliard School in New York, where he was on the music theory faculty. He started as assistant dean and became dean only a week later. In addition to his role as dean, he became president in 1977. Hardy is remembered especially for his deep devotion to the music students; the erection of the Bayer-Michael Klein Music Tent in 1965; the development of the first campus, also in 1965; the creation of the Friday Aspen Chamber Symphony in 1968; and the engagement of legendary violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay in 1971. During his tenure, the Aspen Opera Theater Center, the Aspen Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, the Edgar Stanton Audio Recording Institute, a contemporary music series, and the Guitar Studies program, among other programs, were all launched. He retired in 1989, and soon after the administrative building on the Bucksbaum Campus was named in his honor.

He is survived by his wife Lillian, son Christopher Bartlett Hardy and daughter Susan Hardy Suechting. Sons Gordon Alfred Hardy, Jeffrey Pike Hardy, and John Studebaker Hardy predeceased their father.

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