See the conducting stars of tomorrow in these engaging concerts where student conductors rotate between conducting a movement of a work, or playing in the orchestra. Program Director and AMFS Music Director Robert Spano observes the work of his students at this weekly event.

Four works showcase the variety and power of the orchestra as Aspen Conducting Academy students take the podium for the first time this season in a wide-ranging sonic journey!

The concert opens with Brian Raphel Nabors’ Onward. In the composer’s words, the piece “is an homage to the triumphs and growth we experience along the epic journey of life… a soundscape to celebrate the dreams and aspirations that motivate us to become our best selves. The consistent use of perpetual motion throughout the texture of the orchestra is meant to capture the spirit of constantly traveling onward either philosophically or quite literally. I aspired to create a musical journey depicting the moments of discovery, innovation, and change that continually push us and our world into the future.”

Oliver Knussen describes The Way to Castle Yonder as “a concise digest of orchestral interludes for my second operatic collaboration with Maurice Sendak. Higglety Pigglety Pop! is a theatrical requiem for his dog, Jennie, in the frame of a 'quest' opera. Castle Yonder is the animals' theatrical heaven of Sendak's imagination.”

In Britten’s powerful opera about the unjust treatment of a social outcast by an intolerant community, the sea plays a critical role in the characters’ lives. Six interludes depict its various moods and serve to separate each scene. Britten extracted four of them – Dawn, Storm, Sunday Morning, and Passacaglia – for publication apart from the opera. The colorful and haunting orchestration is so evocative you may feel like you’re at the shore instead of at 7900’!

Brahms agonized for 15 years over his first symphony, while his third was completed in a single summer. Unlike other composers who used their music as autobiography, Brahms was a guarded person who rarely discussed the inspiration for a piece and destroyed most of his sketches. Still, he did leave some clues. Although Robert Schumann had died many years before, he was almost certainly on Brahms’s mind when he wrote the 3rd during a summer vacation on the Rhine. Schumann’s own 3rd Symphony was called the “Rhenish” (Rhine) and is quoted in Brahms’s symphony. Brahms said that he lived his life by two principles, “never to attempt an opera or a marriage.” The three note theme F-A-F which dominates the 3rd symphony stands for “Frei aber Froh” – free but happy - and is said to be a motto expressing this commitment to lifelong bachelorhood. Experience the drama and passion of this musical journey from turbulence to tranquility.