Soprano Renee Fleming enchanting listeners with her version of Puccini’s popular aria, “O mio babbino caro.”
A couple offering a champagne toast on a lush, green lawn.
A student string duo performing outside a coffee shop, with an instrument case open for donations.
The New York Philharmonic sounding the powerful opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
These are among the sights and sounds that make up the kaleidoscope of experiences at the Aspen Music Festival and Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival – the largest of Colorado’s more than 15 summer classical presenters. Although both feature internationally known artists and attract tens of thousands of attendees from across the country, the two festivals differ in significant ways.
Here’s look at how they compare and contrast.
Aspen Music Festival
Dates: June 21-Aug. 20
Founded: 1949
Acclaimed participants: Pianist Arthur Rubinstein, composer Aaron Copland, conductor James Levine, soprano Renée Fleming and violinist Gil Shaham.
Overview: With more than 350 concerts, lectures and other events each summer, the Aspen Music Festival is one of the largest music festivals of any kind in the United States, and it surpasses any other Colorado classical-music organization in size. It and the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Mass., rank as the two most important American classical-music festivals.
Ambience: Despite its size and prestige, the Aspen festival has managed to preserve a kind of small-town feeling. Attendees feel comfortable chatting with a well-known musician during intermission, and some supporters have formed lasting friendships with artists, meeting them as students and watching them mature into stars.
Although tickets cost as much as $72, everyone is welcome to listen to concerts on the lawn around the tent for free. In addition, music takes place all over Aspen, with students offering impromptu concerts outside a coffee shop or near the central fountain.
Attendees: At the heart of the festival are a group of devoted, knowledgeable attendees who come from across the United States. It is not unusual to hear someone say, “I’ve been coming to the festival for 31 years. I just missed one summer when my daughter was born.” Many concertgoers book their visit around the lineup, picking a week based on the artists and programs scheduled then.
It also is not uncommon to attend a concert by one famous artist and look around and see other well-known musicians in the crowd. And there are always students in the audience, many hearing works live for the first time, and they inject a welcome enthusiasm.
Venues: The main facility is the 2,050-seat Benedict Music Tent, which just might be the best such structure of its kind in the world. It gives listeners an outdoorsy, festival atmosphere while offering most of the first-rate amenities of a regular concert hall. Chamber music takes place in the 500-seat Harris Concert Hall, with its superb acoustics.
School: The festival’s school is among the largest and most respected such programs in the world. About 750 top students from nearly 40 countries study in Aspen each year, performing in the festival’s five orchestras and taking part in a range of other activities.
Concessions: The Aspen festival has never put an emphasis on concessions. In keeping with its small-town flavor, the mainstay at tent events has long been a humble stand manned by volunteers, selling such items as muffins for $2 and lemonade and iced tea for $1 a glass. Carts selling Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and gelato can be found at Sunday’s concerts, and vintner Clos du Val has a small tent selling its products.
Celebrity sightings: Jack Nicholson, Queen Noor, Martha Stewart, Michael Eisner.
Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival
Dates: June 28-Aug. 3
Founded: 1987
Acclaimed participants: New York Philharmonic, conductor Lorin Maazel, pianist Andre Watts, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, pianist Lang Lang.
Overview: During its six-week schedule, Bravo! offers more than 60 orchestral and chamber concerts up and down the Vail Valley. A little more than one- third the age of the Aspen Music Festival, it does not have the storied history or prestige of its counterpart. But its addition next year of the venerable Philadelphia Orchestra to an orchestral lineup that already includes the New York Philharmonic is making the classical world take notice.
Ambience: Bravo! is in many ways two different festivals. Its main concerts in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater are as much splashy social gatherings as musical offerings. So eager are people to chit chat that a public announcer has to urge people back to their seats at the end of intermission. But some of the festival’s free performances in out-of-the-way venues such as the Eagle Ranch or Gypsum Town Hall have a smaller, more grassroots feeling.
Attendees: As the big diamonds, perfect coiffures and body enhancements make clear, the festival draws many of Vail’s elite permanent and seasonal residents. Unlike the classical connoisseurs who make annual pilgrimages to Aspen, much of the Bravo! audience consists of people looking for something entertaining to do. Though appreciative of the music, they are just as interested in having a night out and seeing and being seen.
School: No school is associated with Bravo! but it does have a young-artist residency program, in which up-and-coming musicians have a chance to rub elbows with veteran professionals and gain performance experience. Featured this summer was the Hyperion String Quartet, which was formed in 1999 at the Eastman School of Music.
Venues: The main concerts take place in the Ford Amphitheater, which has covered seating for 1,276 and room for a 1,700 additional people on a grassy knoll to the rear. With striking mountain vistas visible in any direction, it’s hard to beat the setting visually. But the openness of the pavilion causes the sound to be diffuse and unfocused, and the music has to be amplified for the attendees on the lawn. Many of the festival’s chamber concerts take place in the 536-seat Vilar Center for the Arts, a first-rate facility in nearby Beaver Creek.
Concessions: Food and drink play a big role in the social atmosphere at amphitheater concerts. Five bartenders are typically on hand at a long, fully stocked bar, with bottles of white wine in ice buckets among the most popular items. Drinks are allowed on the lawn and in the covered seating, and, occasionally, the sound of a bottle tipping over can be heard during a concert. In addition to alcohol, another large concession stand sells a range of soft drinks and snacks.
Celebrity sightings: Gerald and Betty Ford, Jerry Springer and actor Ian Ziering.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
