Dorothy DeLay: Celebrating a Legacy of Mentorship
BY CINDY HIRSCHFELD
When people informally refer to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) as “the Music Fest,” they inadvertently omit one of the organization’s most important functions—as a school. And not just any music school. “So much of our identity is built on the amazing partnership between teacher and student,” says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain. That partnership in-
cludes opportunities to perform side by side with artist-faculty members, a unique component of a young musician’s education in Aspen.
To honor its long tradition of mentorship, AMFS celebrates Dorothy DeLay Week July 29–August 4, commemorating the legacy of the renowned violin teacher who taught in Aspen from 1971 to 2001 (she died in March 2002). Events include concerts by Midori and Gil Shaham—just two of the many luminaries who studied with DeLay—
open studio classes, and a High Notes panel discussion on mentoring.
“Dorothy DeLay could take a student full of talent and promise and really help mold them into a full-fledged artist,” adds Chamberlain. “We thought we would use her as a lens to pay tribute to the wonderful teaching that continues to happen in that way every summer in Aspen.”
“Miss DeLay,” as her students knew her, expertly tailored her approach to each student’s strengths and learning style, says acclaimed violinist Midori, who came to Aspen from Japan as a student in 1981 at the age of nine. “We each had a different experience with her,” she notes in a video interview given for a short feature on DeLay at the AMFS. “The way I prepared for the lesson and what I learned in my lesson, was not the same for the other students she worked with.”
“Dorothy DeLay didn’t have a playbook that she used for every single student. She saw something different in each of us. That’s what set her apart.”
nique, she had a knack for guiding students toward interpretation, rather than dictating, says long-time AMFS artist-faculty violinist Masao Kawasaki. “She would only mention one or two things,” says Kawasaki, who studied with DeLay at Juilliard, where she taught the rest of the year. “But afterward, they would expand in my brain. I realized I had to make the [musical] decision as a student. She always gave me the choice to decide how.” When he started to teach himself, coming to Aspen in 1978 to assist DeLay, Kawasaki understood this gentle approach even more and calls DeLay a “great mentor.”
Robert McDuffie Violinist, and former student of Dorothy DeLay
Fellow AMFS violin alum-turned-international-star Robert McDuffie, speaking in the same video, agrees. “Dorothy DeLay didn’t have a playbook that she used for every single student. She saw something different in each of us. That’s what set her apart.”
Though DeLay was strict when it came to mastering basics like bowing tech -
“She was able to instill an incredible discipline without being draconian,” says AMFS Music Director Robert Spano. “What a special gift that is, to be able to coax the best out of people yet hold them to an incredibly high standard.”
The best mentors often positively influence their students well beyond the music. Spano recalls the impact of his first piano teacher, with whom he started studying at age six. By the time Spano was in his teens, he says, “we talked about everything, and he would recommend books to read.” Midori credits DeLay with
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teaching her how to multitask. “She was always encouraging,” says AMFS artist-faculty violinist Naoko Tanaka, who studied with DeLay during three summers in the 1970s as well as at Juilliard, and then assisted her for many years. “She was almost never negative, but somehow at the end of a lesson I had a strong idea of what I should do to improve.” One summer,
See DeLay, Festival Focus page 3
Gill Shaham, James Conlon Shine in Chamber Symphony
BY EMMA KIRBY
“I am always happy to return to Aspen,” says James Conlon, one of the great American conductors of his generation. It was in Aspen where he took his first formal conducting lesson at the age of 18. The Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) “gave me my start,” he continues. “It was an inspiration and fundamental step [ ] the camaraderie with the other students, the openness of the faculty members, and the omnipresence of music every day for nine weeks, was completely new for me.”
So, when considering this year’s theme of Becoming Who You Are, “you can’t help but think of James Conlon,” says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration
Patrick Chamberlain. The AMFS alumnus has kept Aspen as a frequent stop on his busy travel itineraries and has “been at the helm of so many memorable performances” over the years, says Chamberlain. He continues this legacy of memorable performances on Friday, August 2, when he leads the Aspen Chamber Symphony in a lively program that includes Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.
Joining Conlon on stage for Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto in A major is beloved violinist and fellow AMFS alum, Gil Shaham. “Gil’s annual appearances in the Tent are hotly anticipated,” says Chamberlain. “Ev-
See Conlon, Festival Focus page 3
Conductor James Conlon returns to Aspen to lead the Aspen Chamber Symphony on Aug. 2 in the Klein Music Tent.
Violinist and AMFS alumnus Gil Shaham performs Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto on Aug. 2 with Conlon and the Aspen Chamber Symphony.
DIEGO REDEL
Dorothy DeLay pictured with a young Midori.
CHARLES ABBOTT
Alumni Spotlight: Conductor Roderick Cox
BY EMMA KIRBY
When conductor Roderick Cox makes his debut with the Aspen Festival Orchestra on Sunday, August 11, his appearance will be special, one that truly captures the magic of the Aspen Music Festival and School. While a conducting student in Aspen, Cox attended every performance of the Festival Orchestra, observing the professional guest conductors on the podium. Ten years later, in a full circle moment, he will be stepping into the role of the guest artist in front of that same ensemble and a new generation of aspiring young professionals.
Cox first went to school for music education but soon decided that conducting was perhaps a better fit for his graduate studies. He thought conducting was more involved, in the center of the action, and he loved being part of the music making. “I fell in love with working with an orchestra,” he says, and with support from his mentors
at Northwestern University, he felt that it was something he could do professionally.
Shortly after graduating from Northwestern, he was accepted to the conducting program at the Aspen Music Festival and School (then called the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen, or AACA). It was “a dream come true,” says Cox; the program was well-known with a long tradition of producing top talent.
He received the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize in 2013, securing an invitation to return the following summer. “I felt quite privileged and honored to be there with great colleagues and to study with Robert Spano,” he says. “Aspen served as a place to magnify, or propel, young conductors’ development and deepen their craft.”
He fondly remembers his first performance in Aspen, conducting Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun “It was an opportunity to not only challenge myself, but to show my teacher the type of work I was capable of. I was very much devoted [to my studies].”
His time in Aspen served as a stepping stone to his professional career. Shortly after, he would win a job as assistant, and later associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra. He has since gone on to perform with countless major orchestras in the U.S. and Europe and was recently appointed as the music director of the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier Occitanie in France. “I don’t think I would have had the skills to achieve that without the help of the AMFS,” says Cox.
Cox first returned to the AMFS as a guest artist to conduct the Aspen Chamber Symphony in 2022. It “meant a great deal to return to Aspen,” a place that was so for-
mative for him as a student, he says. When he steps onto the podium this Sunday for his Festival Orchestra debut, one can’t help but wonder what emotions he will feel and which budding star will look back and remember this concert as a pivotal moment in their musical journey.
To learn more about Cox, watch Conducting Life, a documentary filmed over seven years, currently available on Amazon Prime and produced by Aspenite Diane Moore. The film follows Cox’s improbable and inspirational journey, one especially rare for musicians of color. All proceeds go to the Roderick Cox Music Initiative (RCMI) which provides funding to young musicians for summer camps, instrument repair/ purchases, advanced training programs, and private lessons, as well as mentorship by Roderick Cox and professional musicians in the areas the RCMI serves.
ONLY THREE WEEKS LEFT! HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE TENT YET?
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Roderick Cox as a student of the American Academy of Conducting (AACA) in 2013. That year he won the Harth Conducting Prize.
ALEX IRVIN
Cox narrating Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra on during an AACA Concert in 2013.
ALEX IRVIN
Boundary-Defying Sharon Isbin Plays Jewels of Guitar Rep
BY SARAH SHAW
In honor of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s 75th anniversary season, multiple-Grammy winner and 2020 Musical America Instrumentalist of the Year Sharon Isbin returns to Aspen on July 30 with a specially curated evening of classical guitar. One of four bespoke performances by longtime AMFS alumni artists, Isbin’s Anniversary Reminiscences Program features the much-lauded artist at her best: performing music with a mix of stories and anecdotes that have molded her career as a classical guitarist, a teacher, a musical collaborator, and an outstanding spokesperson for the legacy that is the AMFS.
Grounded by a background of piano lessons mixed with a heavy dose of rocket science, Isbin has been described as a boundary-defying musician. In the early 1970s Isbin, who had taken up guitar after giving up the piano at age eight, had the opportunity to play for Oscar Ghiglia, founder of the AMFS’s
classical guitar program. Impressed with her budding proficiency, he invited her to come study with him in Aspen. Three years later, at age 17, she became his teaching assistant. After Ghiglia left in the mid-1980s, the guitar program ceased to exist for almost a decade. In 1993, the Festival asked Isbin to create a new program, which she has directed for the past 32 summers: teaching, performing, and collaborating with musical guests from all over the globe. AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain says she has “ almost single-handedly popularized and legitimized the classical guitar repertoire in this country and the teaching of classical guitar. She’s a tremendous pedagogue, and a fabulous performer.”
One of her recent collaborations occurred in 2022 when Isbin invited legendary Indian sarod masters Amjad Ali Khan, his sons Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, and tabla virtuoso Amit Kavthekar to perform at a sold-out concert in Aspen. A few months after the concert, she says they listened to the archival recording that the Festival does for all the programs, “ and we were just stunned by the energy and power of the audience, and how it infused us with inspiration.” The recording was turned into an album called LIVE IN ASPEN, which was released worldwide on June 21 of this year in celebration of the AMFS’s anniversary season.
Isbin’s Harris Hall program opens with three Renaissance duets that she will perform with Alan Liu, a recent graduate of her Master of Music program at Juilliard. It’s a work she recorded years ago on an album called Journey to the
New World where she was joined by a variety of musicians including singer-songwriter Joan Baez and fiddle player, composer, guitarist, and mandolinist Mark O’Connor.
The program culminates with Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, a piece that Chamberlain calls “the real jewel of the guitar repertoire.” He continues, “Sharon was a personal friend of the composer and was coached by him on this music. To have someone who had direct contact with one of the greatest composers for guitar is extraordinary. Every year she comes up with something brilliant and beautiful and totally different. Our audiences know it’s absolutely not to be missed.”
Now–August 18: Daily, 12–4 PM MT, or concert time, or intermission, if applicable.
Conlon: Celebrating Mozart and Mahler
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ery year he chooses a concerto that speaks to him in the moment.”
Aspen audiences have had the opportunity to hear him perform concertos ranging from standards like Barber, Korngold, and Brahms’s Concerto for Violin and Cello, to lesser-known works by Sessions and Jonathan Leshnoff. This year he has selected Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto, in which the violin at times delicately floats in upper registers above the orchestra, and at times displays technical precision and expertise. Says Conlon, “I believe [Mozart] never wrote a bad piece of music. His music fits anywhere and everywhere.” And no matter what concerto Shaham chooses to perform, one can be sure that it will be exquisitely done. The second half of the evening features Gustav Mahler’s most popular and commonly performed symphony: the Fourth in G major. Mahler is known for his grandly orchestrated, long, and powerful symphonies. The Fourth is a lighter introduction to those who are less familiar with the Romantic composer’s works, and an interesting change for those who attended last Sunday’s Festival Orchestra performance of Mahler’s Ninth. The two symphonies
“couldn’t be more different,” says Chamberlain. While the Ninth is almost 90 minutes long, enlisting a huge orchestra with an extended wind section, the Fourth requires a much smaller orchestration and is one of the shortest of his symphonies, clocking in at just under an hour. Where the Ninth is deeply anguished and formidable, the Fourth is “Mahler’s most beautiful work,” says Chamberlain. The symphony opens with a light, lilting melody accompanied by sprightly sleigh bells, and closes with a child’s joyful vision of heaven, sung on Friday by soprano Erica Petrocelli.
“I find the contrast of Mozart and Mahler to be particularly satisfying, as they are both giants of their different times, and have written music that transcends all times.”
James Conlon AMFS alumnus and guest conductor and Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera
You won’t want to miss this Friday’s concert of Mozart and Mahler, featuring two AMFS alumni who have kept the Aspen identity closely intertwined with their own. CELEBRATE THE AMFS’S 75TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON! ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL BOX OFFICE: 970 925 9042 OR ASPENMUSICFESTIVAL.COM
Conlon, who has conducted Mahler symphonies hundreds of times since his first summers in Aspen as a student and then throughout his professional career, is “one of the great Mahler conductors in the world,” asserts Chamberlain.
When considering the program as a whole, says Conlon, “I find the contrast of Mozart and Mahler to be particularly satisfying, as they are both giants of their different times, and have written music that transcends all times.”
DeLay: Shaping Lives and Careers
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DeLay coordinated the opportunity for Tanaka to play with the Aspen Chamber Symphony; that experience, she says, helped Tanaka to later launch a successful chamber orchestra in New York with a friend from the AMFS. When it was called for, DeLay could also be direct. McDuffie recalls the time she told him to get rid of his freshman roommate because he was a bad influence. “She looked at me and said, “You need to get the f--- out of there.” When the greatest violin teacher in the world uses profanity like that, it hit home. So I got the f--- out of there,” he says.
Indeed, DeLay cared for her students as if they were family, whether it was improving their living situation, facilitating auditions, or helping them rehearse for a big performance. Says Tanaka, “She was like a big mother. She was always trying for us to do better.”
Visit our Dorothy DeLay Week webpage to hear from Miss DeLay in her own words and peruse the schedule of open studio classes, discussions, and performances at aspenmusicfestival.com/events/dorothydelay-week or by scanning the QR code at right:
Classical guitarist, and AMFS alumna and artist-faculty member Sharon Isbin presents a special Anniversary Reminiscences Program of memories and guitar classics on July 30.
Classical guitarist Sharon Isbin (center) during her recital last summer with the Pacifica Quartet.
DIEGO REDEL