New music at Aspen Music Festival & School (July 2–Aug 24)
Highlights include:
- World & U.S. premieres by Samuel Adams, Thomas Adès, & Christopher Theofanidis
- Recent works by Anna Clyne, Avner Dorman, Philip Glass, Magnus Lindberg, Missy Mazzoli, Jessie Montgomery, Nico Muhly, Ellen Reid, Caroline Shaw, Carlos Simon, & Jörg Widman
- Performers include Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Pekka Kuusisto, Nico Muhly, David Robertson, Davóne Tines, & Tyshawn Sorey
- Attending composers include Adams, Montgomery, Muhly, Sorey, & Theofanidis
(April 2025) — Contemporary music abounds this summer at the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS). In addition to weekly concerts devoted to prominent living composers and 20th-century luminaries by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, new music features extensively on virtually every orchestral, recital, and chamber program. Highlights include a celebration of this year’s Boulez centennial with conductor David Robertson, a leading exponent of the composer’s work, and performances of ten AMFS co-commissions. These commissions comprise recent works by Jasmine Barnes, Anna Clyne, Avner Dorman, Edgar Meyer, and Tyshawn Sorey, and the eagerly anticipated U.S. premiere of Thomas Adès’s The Origin of the Harp, as well as world premieresfrom Samuel Adams, Christopher Stark, Christopher Theofanidis, and Max Vinetz. New music dominates recitals by Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Pekka Kuusisto, Davóne Tines, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose three-program residency showcases the music of Messiaen. Composers in attendance include Stephen Hartke, Jessie Montgomery, Nico Muhly, and Matthias Pintscher, as well as Adams, Dorman, Sorey, Stark, and Theofanidis, the Co-Director of Aspen’s Schumann Center for Composition Studies.
For a sampling of the festival’s rich and extensive contemporary music offerings, listen to the “New Music at Aspen 2025” playlist here.
Click here to listen to the “New Music at Aspen 2025” playlist
As well as championing established composers, Aspen supports the next generation of creators through the Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies. The program accepts ten students each season from approximately 225 international applicants. Under Christopher Theofanidis’s auspices, participants work intimately with AMFS’s composition faculty, composer-in-residence, guest composers, and AMFS Music Director Robert Spano and President and CEO Alan Fletcher, both active composers themselves. Each student is paired with a conductor for intensive individual study, and each composes an orchestral work to be workshopped and rehearsed with the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble over the course of the season. This season, students will work with composers including Jasmine Barnes, Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, Christopher Stark, and Max Vinetz.
Aspen Contemporary Ensemble: Boulez centennial, world premieres, & more
In residence for the full eight-weeks of AMFS, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble (ACE)anchors the summer’s new music offerings with weekly performances throughout the festival. Since its founding in 1991, ACE has grown to become a nine-piece group, dedicated to performing new and 20th-century music, as well as to workshopping and premiering new works by Aspen’s student composers. Unlike other AMFS ensembles, ACE invites players to participate for up to three seasons, fostering consummate expertise and rapport among its members. As a result, ACE alumni may be found in such distinguished ensembles as the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Iceland Symphony, and the Grammy-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird. ACE’s resident conductors are Timothy Weiss, now in his eleventh season, who was recently recognized with a 2024 Grammy nomination and the 2025 Ditson Conductor’s Award, and Donald Crockett, the recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Crockett launches the ensemble’s season with the Aspen premiere of to airy thinness beat (2009), his own chamber concerto for viola, which takes its title from John Donne’s poem A Valediction Forbidding Mourning (July 7). A week later, he rejoins ACE for Soak Stain (2023) by his former student and AMFS alumna Sarah Gibson, whose music is “beautifully orchestrated” (Bachtrack). A Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition commission, Gibson’s work draws inspiration from the abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (July 12).
Soak Stain’s world premiere performance
This year marks the centennial of Pierre Boulez’s birth. David Robertson returns to guest conduct ACE in an evening devoted to the great French avant-gardist, who, until his death, was a close friend and mentor of Robertson’s. It was the Grammy-nominated American conductor who originally led Ensemble Intercontemporain’s world premiere performances of both works on the evening’s program: Boulez’s sur Incises and …explosante-fixe… (July 9).
ACE gives its six remaining programs under the baton of Timothy Weiss. After leading a rare U.S. performance of Hele (2018), a Los Angeles Philharmonic commission from Gramophone Award-winning Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski (July 19), he conducts For George Lewis (2019) by Pulitzer Prize laureate Tyshawn Sorey. “Evolv[ing] gradually in tranquil, multi-textured waves of sound” (NPR), this concert-length work is one of those that established Sorey as a major player on the new music scene (July 24).
Next, Weiss joins forces with Grammy-winning French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard for an account of Olivier Messiaen’s Couleurs de la Cité céleste (1963) (Aug 2). As a leading exponent of the modernist canon and a former student of Yvonne Loriod, the late French composer’s wife, Aimard is “a peerless interpreter of Messiaen’s music” (Boston Globe). He makes his AMFS debut this summer with three programs, all featuring Messiaen’s music, of which ACE’s concert is the second.
Aimard performs Couleurs de la Cité céleste
“One of the most distinctive and important living composers” (The New York Times), Grammy-winner Stephen Hartke wrote his chamber concerto Ship of State (2017) for pianist Xak Bjerken. Having premiered and recorded it together, Weiss and Bjerken reunite at Aspen to reprise the work with ACE (Aug 9).
Weiss and ACE conclude their season with the world premieres of two AMFS co-commissions: a new nonet by Guggenheim Fellow and Aspen alumnus Christopher Stark(Aug 23), and First Work (2024-25) by Samuel Adams, who stands “among the most interesting composers of the millennial generation” (Gramophone). Set to texts by Pádraig Ó Tuama, Malachi Black, and Tracy K. Smith, Adams’s new work features Australian-American mezzo-soprano Tivoli Treloar (Aug 16).
Click here to hear one of Adams’s earlier compositions
New music in recital: Aimard, Kopatchinskaja, Kuusisto, Muhly, Tines, & others
New music is interwoven throughout Aspen’s recital programming this summer. “A brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (The Wall Street Journal), Pierre-Laurent Aimard bookends his ACE appearance with two solo recitals. After making his AMFS debut with a program of Boulez, Schoenberg, Messiaen, and Debussy (July 30), he completes the residency with one of his signature, site-specific open-air performances of Catalogue d’oiseaux, Messiaen’s monumental piano collection depicting the birds of Europe (Aug 4). Aimard’s previous accounts of the Catalogue have been variously hailed as “a landmark statement” (The New York Times), “one of the exceptional recitals of the summer” (Chicago Tribune), and one of the “top ten musical events of the year” (The Guardian).
Aimard discusses Messiaen’s music
“A ‘quirky maverick’ … in a class of her own” (The Times of London), violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja makes her AMFS debut alongside Gramophone Award-winning Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta. Spanning more than three centuries of music, their duo recital features works by Germany’s Jörg Widmann, Spain’s Francisco Coll, late avant-gardists György Ligeti and Giannis Xenakis, and Kopatchinskaja herself (July 14).
Also on violin, Finnish polymath Pekka Kuusisto, who “surely has the most personal sound of any classical violinist now alive” (The Telegraph, UK), joins forces with renowned pianist-composer Nico Muhly for a program devoted almost entirely to new music. After works by Ellen Reid, Caroline Shaw, Philip Glass, and others, this concludes with a chamber arrangement of Muhly’s violin concerto Shrink, of which Kuusisto is the dedicatee (July 26).
The music of Pulitzer Prize laureate Shaw is also the primary focus of Recital No. 1: MASS, the thoughtfully curated solo program with which bass-baritone Davóne Tinesmakes his AMFS debut, together with pianist John Bitoy (Aug 9). (More information about Recital No. 1: MASS is available here.)
In a duo recital with pianist Orion Weiss, Grammy-winning violinist Augustin Hadelichfeatures works by American icon John Adams, Stephen Hartke and Haitian-American composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, who is “about as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (The New York Times) (Aug 12). Aspen’s summer recital lineup also offers opportunities to hear three composers performing their own music: two-time Gramophone Award-winning Scottish pianist Steven Osborne (July 10), two-time Grammy-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin (Aug 13), and pianist Conrad Tao, whom New York magazine considers “the kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music” (July 2).
New orchestral music by Thomas Adès, Jasmine Barnes, Anna Clyne, & others
New music also plays a major part in Aspen’s orchestral programming throughout the summer. The Aspen Chamber Symphony performs three major AMFS co-commissions: conductor Marie Jacquot makes her Aspen debut with the U.S. premiere of The Origin of the Harp (1994), a tone poem by contemporary music titan Thomas Adès (July 5); under the baton of Jane Glover, Avery Fisher Prize winner Jeremy Denk performs ATLAS(2023), a piano concerto co-commissioned by AMFS from Grammy nominee Anna Clyne(Aug 8); and AMFS assistant conductor Paul-Boris Kertsman leads KINSFOLKNEM (2024) by Emmy winner Jasmine Barnes, whose concertante work celebrates Black family gatherings and showcases the talents of four of the nation’s leading Black woodwind principals: Anthony McGill on clarinet, and AMSF artist-faculty members Demarre McGillon flute, Titus Underwood on oboe, and Andrew Brady on bassoon (July 11). The Aspen Chamber Symphony also performs Matthias Pintscher’s Assonanza (2022), with Blake Pouliot as violin soloist under the composer’s leadership (July 25), and Tumblebird Contrails (2014) by Gabriella Smith, whose music “exudes inventiveness … rousing energy and torrents of joy” (The New York Times), in a concert that marks the AMFS debut of conductor Ryan Bancroft (Aug 1).
Barnes’s KINSFOLKNEM, featuring its four dedicatees
Led by Music Director Robert Spano, the Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) anchors the staged world premiere performance of Siddhartha, She (2025), an immersive new music drama co-commissioned by AMFS from Christopher Theofanidis and Melissa Studdard (Aug 2). (More information about Siddhartha, She is available here.) The AFO also features contemporary works on three concert programs, with Spano leading Inferno Suite (2019) by Thomas Adès (July 6), Xian Zhang conducting Hymn for Everyone (2021) by Grammy winner Jessie Montgomery (July 27), and French maestro Stéphane Denève making his AMFS debut with blue cathedral (1999) by Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Higdon (Aug 10).
The Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra completes the summer’s contemporary orchestral offerings with the world premiere of an AMFS co-commission from Max Vinetz, winner of Aspen’s 2024 Druckman Prize (Aug 13), and accounts of “Motherboxx Connection” from Grammy nominee Carlos Simon’s Tales: A Folklore Symphony (July 9), These Worlds in Us by Grammy nominee Missy Mazzoli (Aug 3), and Arena by Finland’s Magnus Lindberg, former Composer-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic (Aug 6).
New chamber music by Avner Dorman, Edgar Meyer, Tyshawn Sorey, & others
Contemporary music features prominently in Aspen’s chamber programming as well. The husband-and-wife team of Avery Fisher Prize-winner Gil Shaham and Nielsen Competition winner Adele Anthony are the soloists in a new double concerto for violins and strings by International Opera Award finalist Avner Dorman. An AMFS co-commission, Dorman’s concerto shares a program with recent works by Estonia’s Arvo Pärt and the UK’s Julian Milone (July 29). Seven-time Grammy-winning AMFS artist-faculty bassist Edgar Meyerperforms his own Fourth String Trio, an AMFS co-commission, on a program of his music and arrangements, for which he is joined by violinist Tessa Lark and cellist Joshua Roman (July 7).
Lark, Roman, and Meyer perform the latter’s First String Trio
The American Brass Quintet performs a new AMFS co-commission from Tyshawn Soreyalongside recent works by David Snow, Philip Lasser, and Joan Tower (July 23). Other contemporary chamber highlights include Michael Kimber’s viola quartet Violas on Fire!(July 26); percussion pieces by Tan Dun, Javier Diaz, Philip Glass, and Stewart Copeland of The Police (Aug 4); and the Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and Strings by R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, featuring its dedicatee, violinist Robert McDuffie, with the composer on bass guitar (Aug 20).
More information about the Aspen Music Festival and School is available here and high-resolution photos are available for download here.
Aspen Music Festival and School: contemporary music 2025
July 2
Recital: Conrad Tao, piano
Program to include:
Conrad TAO: Improvisation for Lumatone
Conrad TAO: Keyed In
July 5
Aspen Chamber Symphony / Marie Jacquot, conductor (debut)
Program to include:
Thomas ADÈS: The Origin of the Harp (U.S. premiere of AMFS co-commission)
July 6
Aspen Festival Orchestra / Robert Spano, conductor
Program to include:
Thomas ADÈS: Inferno Suite from Dante
July 7
Chamber Music: Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Donald Crockett, conductor
Program to include:
Donald CROCKETT: to airy thinness beat
July 7
Special Event: Edgar Meyer, double bass; Tessa Lark, violin; Joshua Roman, cello
Program to include:
Edgar MEYER: String Trio No. 1
Edgar MEYER: String Trio No. 4 (AMFS co-commission)
Edgar MEYER: Trio No. 3 for Violin, Cello, and Bass
July 9
Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra
Program to include:
Carlos SIMON: “Motherboxx Connection,” from Tales: A Folklore Symphony
July 9
Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / David Robertson, conductor
Recital: “An Evening of Pierre Boulez”
BOULEZ: …explosante-fixe…
BOULEZ: sur Incises
July 10
Recital: Steven Osborne, piano
Program to include:
Meredith MONK: Railroad (Travel Song)
RZEWSKI: “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” from North American Ballads
Steven OSBORNE: Improvisation
Keith JARRETT, arr. Steven OSBORNE: My Song
PETERSON, arr. Steven OSBORNE: Indiana
July 11
Aspen Chamber Symphony / Paul-Boris Kertsman, conductor
Program to include:
Jasmine BARNES: KINSFOLKNEM (AMFS co-commission; with Demarre McGill, flute; Titus Underwood, oboe; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Andrew Brady, bassoon)
July 12
Chamber Music: Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Donald Crockett, conductor
Program to include:
Sarah GIBSON: Soak Stain
July 14
Recital: Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin (debut), and Sol Gabetta, cello
Program to include:
Jörg WIDMANN: Selections from 24 Duos for Violin and Cello, Vol. 2
Francisco COLL: Rizoma
Patricia KOPATCHINSKAJA: Ghiribizzi
LIGETI: Hommage à Hilding Rosenberg
XENAKIS: Dhipli Zyia for Violin and Cello
July 19
Chamber Music: Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Timothy Weiss, conductor
Program to include:
Lotta WENNÄKOSKI: Hele
July 23
Recital: American Brass Quintet
Program to include:
David SNOW: Dance Movements
Tyshawn SOREY: new work (AMFS co-commission)
Philip LASSER: Common Heroes, Uncommon Land
Joan TOWER: Copperwave
July 24
Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Timothy Weiss, conductor
Tyshawn SOREY: For George Lewis
July 25
Aspen Chamber Symphony / Matthias Pintscher, conductor
Program to include:
Matthias PINTSCHER: Assonanza for Violin and Orchestra (with Blake Pouliot, violin)
July 26
Chamber Music: Blake Pouliot, violin; Choong-Jin Chang, Victoria Chiang, Masao Kawasaki, & Zhenwei Shi, viola; Anton Nel & Cameron Stowe, piano; Jonathan Haas, percussion / Paul-Boris Kertsman, conductor
Program to include:
HARRISON: Concerto for Violin and Percussion
BOWEN: Fantasia for four violas
Michael KIMBER: Violas on Fire!
July 26
Recital: Pekka Kuusisto, violin; Nico Muhly, piano
Program to include:
TIPPETT: “A Lament. Andante espressivo” from Divertimento on “Sellinger’s Round”
Ellen REID: Desiderium for solo violin
Nico MUHLY: Drones & Violin
Iro HAARLA, arr. Pekka KUUSISTO: Barcarole for solo violin
Caroline SHAW: Entr’acte’
Philip GLASS: Mad Rush
Nico MUHLY: Shrink
July 27
Aspen Festival Orchestra / Xian Zhang, conductor
Program to include:
Jessie MONTGOMERY: Hymn for Everyone
July 29
Gil Shaham & Adele Anthony, violins
Arvo PÄRT: Fratres for violin, string orchestra, and percussion
Avner DORMAN: Concerto for Two Violins and Strings (AMFS co-commission)
Julian MILONE: En Coulisses for 12 violins
July 30
Recital: Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano (debut)
BOULEZ: 12 Notations
DEBUSSY: 4 Études
BOULEZ: Piano Sonata No. 1
SCHOENBERG: Fünf Klavierstücke
BOULEZ: Incises
MESSIAEN: Quatre études de rythme
Aug 1
Aspen Chamber Symphony / Ryan Bancroft, conductor (debut)
Program to include:
Gabriella SMITH: Tumblebird Contrails
Aug 2
Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Timothy Weiss, conductor
With Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
Program to include:
MESSIAEN: Couleurs de la Cité céleste
Jeremiah SIOCHI: Pelagic Poem for harp and vibraphone
Aug 2
Aspen Festival Orchestra / Robert Spano, conductor
Christopher THEOFANIDIS: Siddhartha, She (world premiere of AMFS co-commission; staged)
Libretto by Melissa Studdard
(With Siddhartha: Caitlin Lynch, soprano; Govinda: Maya Kherani, soprano; Kamala: Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Dharuna: Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano; Gotama: Key’mon Murrah, countertenor; Abinaswar: Nmon Ford, baritone; Kantorei choir / Joel Rinsema, chorus director)
Aug 3
Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra / Robert Spano, music director
Program to include:
Missy MAZZOLI: These Worlds in Us
Aug 4
Recital: Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
MESSIAEN: Catalogue d’oiseaux
Aug 4
Percussion Ensemble / Jonathan Haas, director
Philip GLASS, arr. Jonathan HAAS: “Train to São Paulo” from Powaqqatsi
Javier DIAZ: Alchemy
Stewart COPELAND: “The Bells”
Tan DUN: Elegy: Snow in June
Phil COLLINS, arr. Javier DIAZ: “In the Air Tonight”
Aug 6
Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra
Program to include:
Magnus LINDBERG: Arena
Aug 8
Aspen Chamber Symphony / Jane Glover, conductor
Program to include:
Anna CLYNE: ATLAS, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (AMFS co-commission; with Jeremy Denk, piano)
Aug 9
Chamber Music: Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Timothy Weiss, conductor
Program to include:
Stephen HARTKE: Ship of State (with Xak Bjerken, piano)
Aug 9
Recital: Davóne Tines, bass-baritone (debut); John Bitoy, piano
Program to include:
Caroline SHAW: Kyrie
Caroline SHAW: Agnus Dei
Tyshawn SOREY: “Were You There?” from Songs for Death
Tyshawn SOREY: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” from Songs for Death
Caroline SHAW: Credo
Caroline SHAW: Gloria
Caroline SHAW: Sanctus
EASTMAN: Prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc
Igee DIEUDONNÉ, arr. Davóne TINES: VIGIL
Aug 10
Aspen Festival Orchestra / Stéphane Denève, conductor (debut)
Program to include:
Jennifer HIGDON: blue cathedral
Aug 12
Recital: Augustin Hadelich, violin; Orion Weiss, piano
Program to include:
Stephen HARTKE: Netsuke
Daniel Bernard ROUMAIN: Filter
John ADAMS: Road Movies
Aug 13
Aspen Conducting Academy / Robert Spano, music director
Program to include:
Max VINETZ: world premiere of AMFS co-commission
Aug 13
Recital: Sharon Isbin, guitar
Karen LEFRAK: Habanera Nights
Karen LEFRAK: Urban Tango
Karen LEFRAK: Miami Concerto for Guitar & Chamber Orchestra (with chamber ensemble TBA / Elizabeth Schulze, conductor)
Aug 16
Chamber Music: Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Timothy Weiss, conductor
Program to include:
Samuel ADAMS: First Work (world premiere of AMFS co-commission, with Tivoli Treloar, mezzo-soprano)
Aug 20
Recital: Robert McDuffie, violin; Derek Wang, piano; Mike Mills, bass guitar
Program to include:
Mike MILLS: Concerto for Violin, Rock Band, and String Orchestra
Aug 23
Aspen Contemporary Ensemble / Timothy Weiss, conductor
Program to include:
Christopher STARK: new work (world premiere of AMSF co-commission)
[All programs subject to change.]