Festival Focus June 20, 2016

FESTIVALFOCUS YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

SUPPLEMENT TO THE ASPEN TIMES

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

VOL 27, NO. 1

Renovated Bucksbaum Campus truly ‘Where Dreams Begin’ JESSICA CABE AND LAURA E. SMITH

Festival Focus Writers

Hundreds of exceptionally talented young musicians come through Aspen each summer to study at the Aspen Music Festival and School. With the stunning new Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus, they now have access to worldclass facilities in one of the world’s most beautiful settings.

After thirteen years of intensive planning, negotiating, designing, digging, and, finally, building, the AMFS has a fourteen-building, thirty-eight-acre teaching campus to rival that of any music institution in the world. And what’s more, it accomplishes this while showcasing its spectacular natural surroundings and sharing the facilities with a pre-K-8 school in a unique, eco-friendly institutional partnership. It’s a combination of accomplishment that leaves even the Festival leadership responsible for the project amazed.

“I knew it would be spectacular,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher, “but then once the buildings were up, it was even more than I had imagined.”

The second and final phase of the Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus’s construction was completed in June.

Bringing online these gracefully designed, acoustically honed spaces will usher in a new era for the Festival’s musicians, supporting their pursuit of an even deeper level of artistry.

That’s not hyperbole. See, this wasn’t just a remodel. And it wasn’t done for any single, simple reason, like providing more space or looking on the surface like the rest of the Festival’s world-class buildings. When you get down to it, it was done for the purest, most important reason of all: to provide the best spaces possible for blossoming musicians and to support their artistic transformation.

“One of the things we say about ourselves so frequently is that we are introducing young people to their careers,” says Fletcher. “Thus, it only makes sense that the experience of rehearsal and performance should be at the level that they’re

July 11: Campus Dedication Join us from 10 am to noon on Monday, July 11, for the free grand opening of the redeveloped Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus.

The dedication ceremony will begin at 10:30 am, tours and reception to follow.

For more information, visit www.aspenmusicfestival. com/campusdedication.

With special thanks to Karen White Interior Design and The Aspen Times

ELLE LOGAN

The Aspen Music Festival and School’s new Bucksbaum Campus debuts this summer; a dedication ceremony is on July 11.

going to experience when they become concertmasters of the Montreal Symphony or Chicago Symphony or become a soloist playing in halls all over the world.”

Before the redevelopment of the Bucksbaum Campus, conditions for the artist-faculty and young musicians of the AMFS were less than ideal for practice and rehearsal. Though they would perform in the breathtaking Benedict Music Tent, students used practice rooms that were cold, damp, and not exactly soundproof. Teachers would consider themselves lucky to lead lessons in carpeted trailers.

Rehearsal halls were inadequate—since there was not enough space, some of the AMFS’s orchestras rehearsed in a jerry-rigged space in Harris Concert Hall and in the commons at Aspen High School. Other orchestras rehearsing on site were in rooms that were hot and dim; at times, the percussionists could be seen standing outside the building with

their instruments, craning to see the conductor inside. Musicians were literally flowing out of the spaces that were too small to host the ensemble. Something had to change, and everyone knew it. ­— The story of the Bucksbaum Campus starts in 1964 when Robert O. Anderson, a friend of AMFS founders Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke, gave the land to the institution. (He had first offered it to the Aspen Institute, which declined.) The site had been originally developed as the Newman Silver Mine in the 1880s (two buildings on site date from that time period) and was briefly a restaurant and resort called The Four Seasons, owned by the Paepckes.

In 1967, Aspen-based architect Fritz Benedict was hired by the AMFS to create rehearsal spaces and practice rooms

See Campus, Festival Focus page 3

Shared Campus offers challenges, triumphs LAURA E. SMITH

Festival Focus Writer

There are many remarkable aspects of the new Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum Campus, but one that stands out is its extraordinary shared facilities arrangement with Aspen Country Day School (ACDS), a pre-K-8 school that operates on the site September through May and vacates while the Festival operates in June, July, and August.

An economical, ecological blending of institutions, it makes beautiful sense as an idea. But getting it to work in practical fact was a feat.

It was in 2003 that the Aspen Music Festival and School and ACDS, a longtime

tenant on its Campus, had their first charrette on the stage of Harris Concert Hall to explore the project. On a new, long-term Campus, the Festival needed orchestral rehearsal halls and studios for private lessons, and the school needed classrooms, science labs, and a playing field. How could these needs be brought together?

Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the AMFS, says, “They said, ‘We think a classroom should be 800 square feet.’ Our faculty said, ‘A teaching studio should be’ as if by magic, ‘400 square feet.’”

Amazingly, it looked like it could work, but if, and only if, an acoustically perfect, soundproof room divider could be found

See Collaboration, Festival Focus page 3

Hurst Hall is an orchestral rehearsal hall in the summer and a gymnasium in the fall, winter, and spring for Aspen Country Day School.

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New AMFS Campus perfects acoustics­—inside and out LAURA E. SMITH

Festival Focus Writer

One of the major challenges of building a campus for a music institution is the need for precise acoustics. This is something that occupied the team building the Aspen Music Festival and School’s new Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus for years.

“Rehearsal, whether for chamber music or for an orchestra, is only at the very beginning about assembling the piece,” says Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the AMFS. “Then the real work, the real artistry, is in balance. If the players can’t hear each other, then how can they know what they are achieving together?”

He points out that rehearsal halls present a special challenge because “you have a room essentially the size of the stage, but the sound in the room has to be as if you are in a large performance hall.”

The three orchestra rehearsal halls on the Bucksbaum Campus used a host of techniques, designed by the renowned acousticians of Charles Salter and Associates, to pull off this acoustic sleight of hand. The halls all have a precise amount of extra height, and they sport custom-

made “acoustic clouds” on the walls and ceilings, curved panels that bounce the sound around the room in specifically engineered ways.

The steel beam supports in the halls, usually hollow, were filled with sand to decrease reverberation. Heating and cooling systems were specially designed with massive, over-sized ducts and isolated boilers and chillers to move air very slowly and protect against any vibrations or hum.

For two of the three halls, the climate control systems are actually housed across the street with heating and cooling piped in underground.

Acoustics play a role on the outside of the buildings as well. Another acoustical aspect of the Campus carefully considered by the AMFS team was how much sound should carry outside of the buildings. Fletcher recalls, “The acousticians said they can do anything we want. They could seal the buildings completely or they could be virtually open. It was up to us.”

Ultimately, Fletcher directed the team to strike a delicate balance. “I thought it would be creepy to be walking around a music campus and not hear music,” he

TIMOTHY HURSLEY

Every inch of the floor, ceiling, and walls of the rehearsal halls was designed for optimal acoustics.

says. “But, still, many things must happen here at once.”

Fletcher continues, “What I asked is that when you walk by one rehearsal hall, you can hear they are practicing, say, Mendelssohn, and when you walk by the next, you can hear they are practicing Beethoven, but the musicians in each hall essentially must not hear each other.”

The same principle applied for the teaching studios and practice rooms. While musicians in each must not be bothered by the other when engaged in their own music, they should be able to hear the other when not playing. The tipping point actually is determined by a psychoacoustics principle: See Acoustics, Festival Focus page 3

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CAMPUS: Upgraded facilities reach world-class level Continued from Festival Focus page 1 on its relatively new Campus. Budgets were lean at the eighteen-year-old non-profit, and amenities, like insulation, were not accommodated. But even as simple, costconscious structures, the buildings engaged and intertwined with nature in a magical way. Young Yale Architecture School graduate student Harry Teague worked on that project and was profoundly influenced by Benedict and the principles underpinning his design. When hired, forty years later, to design the Bucksbaum Campus in its entirety, Teague knew those principles would remain fundamental to these spaces.

“The landscape is impossible to ignore,” he says. “It is in your face, and that has been a part of the Festival from the beginning.

You want to take advantage of that for the halls and the practice spaces. They must be completely engaged in the environment, and the musicians must be aware of where they are.”

To reimagine the space, and the buildings, Teague spent hours on the Campus at different times of day, sketching the profiles of the surrounding mountains. These eventually came to be incorporated directly into the design of the rehearsal halls through materials and angles that represent “sky, earth, and water.” A translucent substance called Kal-Wall crowns the buildings, “daylighting” them; angled windows let in the sunlight sparkling on the water, siding custom-colored to match natural elements blend and soften the buildings so that they don’t overwhelm the natural beauty of the site.

A particularly ingenious design feature is not going to cancel a season. This was our that the practice rooms lining the perimeter only option.” of the Campus function partially as retaining Approaching contractors with this walls for the many slopes on site with angles schedule often went about as well as you’d greater than thirty degrees. Form and func- imagine. “Some said no; some, their brains tion blend efficiently and creatively in these exploded,” Elliot says with a laugh. “But structures, some which have grass grow- Shaw was like, ‘Well, of course you need it ing on their roofs for insulation and further done in nine months.’ They’d done it twice blending of the buildings in to the natural site. before.”

— Shaw Construction built the AMFS’s HarThe ultimate 105,000-square-foot plan ris Concert Hall, which they were able doubled the square to complete in one footage of the Campus. year because the Hall “I knew it would be It includes three orwasn’t in use prior to its chestra rehearsal halls, construction; and the spectacular, but then two buildings for teachBenedict Music Tent, ing studios, chamber which was finished once the buildings music spaces, a perin nine months. Both were up, it was even cussion studio, sixtywere also designed by eight practice rooms Teague. more than I had (some especially deSo how in the world signed for percussion did the Bucksbaum imagined.” instruments), a dining Campus get finished hall, offices, maintein two bouts of nine nance buildings, and months when it should Alan Fletcher, AMFS President and CEO two new bridges. have taken four full Building was comyears? pleted in two phas“You pay for it,” says es—phase one was completed in 2013, and Elliot. “Those are your choices. You can sacphase two was completed this year—and rifice schedule, quality, or money, and we each phase could have taken two years on sacrificed money.” its own. Instead, each was completed in More people, more hours, and better prenine months. planning all had a hand in the quick and most “It’s the only way it would work,” says Jenny efficient completion of the project. Crews Elliot, the AMFS’s senior vice president for of up to 200 at a time worked seven days a strategy and administration and the overall week, twelve hours a day, through snow and manager of the project. “Or else we would freezing temperatures. Some workers even have had to cancel a season. And we were were there on Christmas.

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The number of challenges and hurdles to be overcome to create this beautiful new space, the leaps of faith, and strokes of luck, and dedicated people who put in their hearts and souls—these things could fill a book. One might say that in order for everything to have happened the way it did, the Bucksbaum Campus was just meant to be.

Elliot points out that the goal had always been to “preserve all the things that were amazing about the Campus and about the Music Festival, and keep its soul, while moving the quality to an astronomically higher level.”

Mission accomplished. The new Campus will completely change the legacy of the AMFS. Musicians will be inspired by the graceful design of the spaces, will be better able to hear themselves and each other, and, with this support, will go deeper into their art.

The musicians coming out of this unmatched Campus will spread their talents elsewhere, and then the cycle will start again with each summer.

No, the creation of the Bucksbaum Campus project was no small feat. It’s not a remodel; it’s not a face-lift. It’s a rebirth.

“Something like this will never happen again,” says AMFS Vice President and General Manager Daniel Song. “So many things, from the way the contracts were negotiated to the weather, it won’t happen again. We’re never going to talk about building like this ever again, and especially in the arts. Where are you going to have a place that’s doing something this crazy and amazing? People will build a hall. One hall. But something like this? It’s a completely different thing.”

Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through intermission of the evening concert, daily.

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily beginning June 28.

COLLABORATION: Campus

ACOUSTICS

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Continued from Festival Focus page 2

to split 800-foot elementary and middleschool classrooms into 400-foot teaching studios for virtuoso-level developing musicians. Lessons had to be able to take place simultaneously on both sides.

“It started with the wall,” says Daniel Song, AMFS vice president and general manager. “Funny, because walls divide things, but it was the wall that actually brought us together.”

Architect Harry Teague, who also designed the Benedict Music Tent and Harris Concert Hall, found a company called Skyfold that made acoustic, retractable room dividers. Nothing in its product line was adequate for the Music Festival’s rigorous requirements, but the company said it would custom make a new product for this purpose. Many months and three tests later, Skyfold had done it, and the organizations had their wall. The Campus could be built.

“If that Skyfold didn’t work, we would

have no Campus,” notes Song. Skyfold now sells these same room dividers to other music organizations across the country.

The next challenge was that the Campus could only accommodate so much square footage, hemmed in by avalanche zones, mudslide zones, riparian areas, wetlands, trail easements, even a wildlife corridor. For both institutions to develop at the highest levels, on the acreage available, many, even most, spaces would have to be dual use.

So the institutions planned shared use of each space arduously, painstakingly, over many years. In the end, approximately eighty-five percent of space on the site is used by both institutions.

The school classrooms divide into music teaching studios, and the Festival’s orchestra and chamber rehearsal spaces become the school’s art room, drama room, and music room. The school’s common area for assemblies becomes the Festival’s student computer lab. The

dining hall is used similarly by both—but with a hand-washing trough for use by the young schoolchildren.

The largest orchestra rehearsal hall, Hurst Hall, functions as the school’s gym.

However, this space presented a special challenge. Since the flat walls and right angles that are good for ball games don’t create the best acoustics for an orchestra, the institutions each have their own wall coverings in this 7,400-square foot building. During the summer, curved “acoustic clouds” cover the walls and reflect sound in precise ways for ideal musical blend and carry; during the school year, ACDS covers these wavy panels with flat grids to protect them from balls and kids, and also to ensure the kids’ balls bounce straight.

“I think it’s fantastic,” says Fletcher of the collaboration. “Imagine if we were going to build this 105,000-square-foot spectacular Campus and it would just be empty for nine months. Coming together was hard, but we made it work, and it is something of which we are all very proud.”

there is a level at which, while focused on one’s own playing, one’s brain no longer is distracted by sound, even if one’s ears can actually hear it.

Sound complicated? While it may be in the engineering, in practice it is the most natural situation possible. The verdict from the musicians?

“They love it,” says AMFS Vice President and General Manager Daniel Song. “Not only do I not get complaints, I get praise. Faculty who teach in some of the best spaces in the country during the school year come here and say these spaces are awesome.”

A couple exceptions to the balance-andblend rules are the designated percussion and brass studios. The percussion rooms are isolated in their own corner of Campus, and the brass rooms are surrounded by filled-in cement blocks. “They are bunkers,” jokes Song.

In the end, the Buckbaum Campus was meant to combine visual and auditory beauty, both for the moment and for the ages. “It is a crazy challenge,” says Fletcher, “and, yet, we all agree that we’ve done it.”

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MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

FESTIVALFOCUS | YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

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