Collaborations

Several 2022 collaborations gave audiences a chance to explore a variety of musical traditions. Bassist and artist-faculty member Edgar Meyer invited special guests and frequent collaborators Béla Fleck, banjo, and Mike Marshall, mandolin, to the Benedict Music Tent to revisit their beloved 1997 album Uncommon Ritual.

Multiple Grammy Award–winner and artist-faculty member Sharon Isbin brought to Aspen the worldrenowned sarod player Amjad Ali Khan, her partner in the Strings for Peace project. They were joined by Khan’s sons, Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, also sarod artists, and tabla artist Amit Kavthekar for a program interweaving varied musical, spiritual, and artistic traditions, showing how music can cross barriers of language, time, and culture to unite people.

Once again, the Aspen Music Festival collaborated with Theatre Aspen—this time to present Rodgers & Hammerstein’s beloved musical, THE SOUND OF MUSIC In Concert, conducted by Andy Einhorn. Broadway talents Christy Altomare and Brandon Victor Dixon, who charmed Aspen audiences in 2021, returned to the Tent for the roles of Maria and Captain Georg von Trapp. They were joined by the tremendous Ana María Martínez as The Mother Abbess.

Final Sunday

The 2022 season concluded with Berlioz’s monumental, rarely performed Grande Messe des morts (Requiem), a work the composer envisioned as a profound communal experience. Joining Music Director Robert Spano and an expanded, 112-instrument Aspen Festival Orchestra were tenor soloist Zach Borichevsky and a 150-voice chorus comprising singers from Denver’s Kantorei, Seraphic Fire, the Seraphic Fire Professional Choral Institute, the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS Program.

Just as electrifying as the sheer size of the ensemble and its ability to reach “the outer limits of forte” (as President and CEO Alan Fletcher put it), were the looks of awe on patrons’ faces when music from the soloist, orchestra, chorus, and antiphonal brass ensembles ringing the tent completely encircled them.