Alan Fletcher To Become President Emeritus In 2027 Following 21 Years of Extraordinary Leadership

A leader with integrity and dedication, Fletcher oversaw the full redevelopment of the 105,000-square-foot Bucksbaum Campus; created the new opera training program under Renée Fleming and Patrick Summers; brought Robert Spano on as Music Director; stewarded the institution through the COVID pandemic; supported significant expansion of education programs in area schools; and shaped both the training program and artistry of the AMFS at premier levels for twenty years. In the great tradition of administrator-composers, he did all this while continuing his composition work and having many works premiered on stages around the world.

ASPEN, CO — (October 21, 2025) The Aspen Music Festival and School announces today that Alan Fletcher will become President Emeritus on January 1, 2027, following an extraordinary 21-year tenure as President and CEO. He will steward the institution through its 2026 summer season and over the next 14 months will work closely with the board of trustees on key strategic and fundraising initiatives.

Fletcher leaves a deep legacy of excellence and commitment at the AMFS. He arrived in March of 2006 after serving in multiple executive posts at leading conservatories. He secured the largest gift to date at the institution to name the Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus, and over the next 10 years led an $80 million redevelopment of the 38-acre site into a stunning, acoustically crafted space ideal for the creation and teaching of music. In 2011 he appointed Robert Spano as Music Director, and in 2020, he created the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS program with co-artistic directors Renée Fleming (an Aspen alumna) and Patrick Summers. He steadfastly stewarded the institution through the pandemic, after which he created the festival’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Committee and oversaw an expansion of representation in programming and throughout the institution. He also greatly increased the commitment to bringing music programs to local schools. Throughout it all, he approached the core work of classical music training and programming with both the purity of an artist and vision of an executive.

Fletcher’s timeline allows for a thoughtful and smooth transition. He states, “As we enter the third year of our 75th Anniversary celebrations in 2026, I have proposed to our Board leadership that it is the right moment to plan for CEO succession. As the Anniversary has given us many occasions to reflect on our achievements, it has also encouraged us to think boldly about our future sustainability and growth. We have a plan, including an ambitious campaign, to ensure that we stay both committed to excellence in our unique mission, and committed to financial stability and responsibility. As a key part in this, we have been thinking together about how best I can contribute to my own legacy at AMFS and in Aspen. To achieve the most smooth and thoughtful transition, I will conclude my tenure as President and CEO at the end of my current contract, when I will have completed 21 seasons."

Chair of the Board of Trustees Alexandra Munroe will lead the search process for Fletcher’s successor. Of the transition, she states, “Last summer, we celebrated Alan’s twentieth year of stellar leadership as President and CEO of Aspen Music Festival and School. His plan for CEO succession at the end of the 2026 season, after his 21st year spanning one-third of AMFS’s history, gives us an opportunity to look back with gratitude on his extraordinary leadership and to look forward to building on the strong foundation he helped create.”

She continues, “Alan is a brilliant and visionary leader whose fierce dedication to excellence has built the AMFS into one of the greatest centers of classical musical performance and training in the world. AMFS now draws more than 100,000 visitors over its summer season, making the Festival and School the major driver of Aspen’s cultural economy and one of the largest regional artistic producers in the country. The Festival and School constitute an extraordinary platform and training ground with its 500 young artists, 100 musician faculty, and some 80 world-renowned visiting conductors, recitalists, and soloists who gather in the mountains each year.  Alan’s enduring legacy includes the extraordinary transformation of the Bucksbaum Campus. He is enthusiastically committed to working with us over the next year to fulfill our Aspen Promises campaign goals to secure innovation, growth, and sustainability for our future."

Music Director Robert Spano reflects on his valued partnership with Fletcher, “It’s hard to imagine being in Aspen without Alan Fletcher at the helm of the AMFS. He clearly loves this institution and has cared for it with his unique, quiet, and unswerving passion. His musical genius, along with his administrative acumen and devotion to our educational mission have made working with him one of the great joys of my life. AMFS is a better place thanks to his stewardship. All good wishes to him, my dear friend, in all his next adventures."

Fletcher leaves the institution in superb artistic and financial circumstances and poised for further excellence, which the Board of Trustees will honor by naming him president emeritus. Munroe illuminates, “Alan is a respected and beloved friend to the Aspen community, and a paragon of our founding philosophy of The Aspen Idea. We are pleased to announce that the Board of Trustees will name Alan as President Emeritus in 2027 – the first such honor in the institution’s history. This is a challenging responsibility -- but also an exciting opportunity.  We look forward to working with the AMFS and Aspen community as we usher in the next era of our Festival and School’s joyous mission.”

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ABOUT ALAN FLETCHER

Alan Fletcher is an accomplished scholar, composer, and arts leader. He serves as president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School. Alan previously served as professor and head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University, and as professor, dean, and provost of New England Conservatory. He has received many awards and honors, including recently having been inducted into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Born in Riverside, New Jersey, he earned his baccalaureate at Princeton University, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. He earned a master’s degree and doctorate at the Juilliard School as a Danforth graduate fellow, where he received the Irving Berlin Fellowship and the Alexandre Gretchaninoff Prize. Alan attended the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, and he has been a frequent fellow at the MacDowell Colony.

Alan’s leadership activities have included chairing the 1997 Salzburg Global Seminar Music for a New Millennium: The Classical Genre in Contemporary Society, which convened 70 distinguished musical leaders from around the world in Mozart’s birthplace. Fletcher lectures nationally and internationally on music and its social importance and has delivered keynote addresses to the National Association of Schools of Music, ClassicalNEXT in Vienna, the Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion, the Shanghai International Arts Festival, and many more.

Fletcher has contributed articles and opinion pieces to numerous publications including the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Symphony magazine, Gramophone magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Sonus: Journal of Global Music, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and others.

Alan studied composition with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, and Paul Lansky and piano with Jacob Lateiner and Robert Helps.  He has won numerous composing awards and received commissions from the National Dance Institute, the Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Nashua Symphony, National Gallery of Art, Boston Celebrity Series, Duquesne University, New York Camerata, and other noted ensembles, organizations, and soloists.  Alan’s music includes more than 200 works in all traditional classical forms. His music is recorded on Albany and Exton Records and published by Boosey & Hawkes and Subito.

Fletcher has served on many boards, panels, juries, seminars, and committees, including the boards of the Aspen Institute, Aspen Science Center, Aspen Chamber Resort Association, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Pittsburgh Opera, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the International Festival for Contemporary Piano, and is an Advisor for Advisory Board for the Arts. Most recently, Fletcher was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Class of 2025.

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ABOUT THE ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL

The AMFS is the United States’ premier classical music center for performance and education, presenting more than 400 musical events during its eight-week summer season in Aspen. The organization draws top classical musicians from around the world for a rich combination of performances of orchestral works, opera, chamber music, recitals, contemporary music, works by new or previously unrecognized voices, popular genres, family events, and talks, competitions, and classes.

About 500 music students from 40 U.S. states and 40 countries come each summer to play in four orchestras, sing, conduct, compose and study with more than 100 artist-faculty members who come from the orchestras of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, the Metropolitan Orchestra, and the leading conservatories and music schools like The Juilliard School, The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and The Colburn School. Students represent the field’s best talent; many have already begun their professional careers, and others are on the cusp.

The AMFS is deeply committed to community and many events are free, including seating outside the Music Tent on the David Karetsky Music Lawn and in the Kaye Music Garden. Regular livestreams are free anywhere in the world. The AMFS also runs music programs in-school and after-school at most schools in the Roaring Fork Valley.

Renowned alumni include violinists Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Midori, Gil Shaham, and Robert McDuffie; pianists Joyce Yang, Orli Shaham, Conrad Tao, Yuja Wang, and Wu Han; conductors Marin Alsop, James Conlon, Leonard Slatkin and Joshua Weilerstein; composers William Bolcom, Philip Glass, David Lang, Augusta Read Thomas, Bright Sheng and Joan Tower; vocalists Isabel Leonard, Jamie Barton, Sasha Cooke, Danielle de Niese, Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw and Tamara Wilson; cellist Alisa Weilerstein; guitarist Sharon Isbin; bassist Edgar Meyer; and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

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MORE INFORMATION

The AMFS’s 2026 summer season will run July 1 to August 23, 2026 and be announced in February.

Aspen Music Festival and School
225 Music School Road, Aspen, CO 81611

Photo credit: Lynn Goldsmith. Further photos available upon request: LSmith@aspenmusic.org.