Aspen Music Festival & School Reveals 2026 Season

The Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) celebrates 77 years of performance and mentorship this summer, when more than 450 young artists from around the world come together for almost 200 public events with artist-faculty and guest artists from the foremost orchestras and music schools nationwide.

Titled “For All,” in a nod to the closing words of the Pledge of Allegiance, the 2026 festival commemorates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. True to this theme, the summer's programming champions new American composition with the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin's First Symphony, a new AMFS commission; a focus on the music of Principal Guest Composer Caroline Shaw; and recent AMFS co-commissions from Reena Esmail, Jake Heggie, David Lang, Jessie Montgomery, Joan Tower, and Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose acclaimed first opera, Hildegard, receives its Colorado premiere. The Aspen Festival Orchestra and Robert Spano open the season with a celebration of American greats Ives, Copland, and John Adams and close it with a pairing of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, famed for its enduring and apposite vision of fellowship for all. Recognizing the contribution made by visitors and new arrivals to the American sound, other featured works include Dvořák's “New World” Symphony, Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto, and Varèse's Amériques. Those making AMFS debuts are María Dueñas, Thomas Hampson, Delyana Lazarova, Erin Morley, Angel Stanislav Wang, and Anthony Roth Costanzo, who headlines a fully staged production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, while returning stars include Teddy Abrams, Emanuel Ax, Lawrence Brownlee, James Conlon, Cristian Măcelaru, Joyce DiDonato, Augustin Hadelich, Marc-André Hamelin, Leonidas Kavakos, Edgar Meyer, Abel Selaocoe, Gil Shaham, Daniil Trifonov, Alisa Weilerstein, Yuja Wang, and Aspen vocal program director Renée Fleming. As in previous seasons, this wealth of offerings will be presented over eight weeks in Aspen's spectacular mountain setting (July 1–Aug 23).
 
Looking ahead to the 2026 festival, Music Director Robert Spano says: “As I embark on my 15th season with AFMS, I marvel at the creative bounty that blossoms in Aspen each summer. This year, we borrow the final two words from the Pledge of Allegiance, “for all,” as a theme for our celebration of the year's 250th anniversary, and America's unique balance of individualism and pluralism. We'll open the season with three generations of American composers: Ives, Copland, and John Adams. With two spectacular vocalists, Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, we will perform selections from John Adams's Nixon in China, a work that changed the face of American opera. I am also looking forward to a mostly Bernstein program this summer featuring Robert McDuffie, and to performing Gershwin with Jean-Yves Thibaudet. This season, we launch the multi-year First Symphonies Project, which commissions first symphonies from some of the most exciting, emerging, and established American composers, beginning with Matthew Aucoin.” AMFS Munroe President and CEO Alan Fletcher explains: “The words of our 2026 season theme, ‘For All,' reflect the inspirational sentiment behind the Declaration of Independence and indeed the American experiment as a whole. The American spirit uniquely combines a passionate celebration of individual voice along with the richness of pluralism, which lends itself perfectly to an Aspen summer season.” Now in his 21st and final year at the helm of the AMFS, Fletcher will assume the role of President Emeritus on January 1, 2027. He says: “I look forward to staying close to AMFS and its community of students, faculty, staff, and Board for years to come. Every accomplishment of this great organization is the result of dedication, creativity, inspiration, and immense hard work coming from every side: the promise of the young artists, the leadership of the faculty, the remarkable work of the staff, and the visionary generosity and commitment of the Board and Aspen community.” Learn more about Fletcher and his extraordinary 21-year tenure here.

Launch of First Symphonies Project

Aspen boasts a long history of fostering new music through commissions, premieres, and performances. The 2026 season shines a light on new American orchestral music with the launch of the First Symphonies Project. Championed by AMFS Music Director Robert Spano, this multi-year initiative commissions first symphonies from both emerging and established U.S. composers, starting with MacArthur fellow Matthew Aucoin. An AMFS co-commission, Aucoin's First Symphony receives its world premiere performance from the Aspen Festival Orchestra and three-time Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato under the leadership of AMFS alumnus Cristian Măcelaru, music director of both the Orchestre National de France and the Cincinnati Symphony (July 19).

Colorado premieres & other co-commissions

Aspen presents the Colorado premieres of a number of important AMFS co-commissions, including Sarah Kirkland Snider's first opera, Hildegard (July 31; see below); the wealth of nations, a new Adam Smith-inspired oratorio by Pulitzer Prize laureate David Lang, featuring Fleur Barron and Davóne Tines with this season's Choral Ensemble-in-Residence, Kantorei (Aug 1); Grammy winner Jessie Montgomery's Cello Concerto, These Righteous Paths, with its dedicatee, South African cellist Abel Selaocoe, as soloist (Aug 9); the Concerto for Violin and Piano by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, performed by the brother-and-sister team of Gil and Orli Shaham (Aug 14); and Earth 2.0, the celebrated environmental-themed monodrama by Jake Heggie, Musical America's Composer of the Year 2025, featuring countertenor and AMFS alumnus Key'mon W. Murrah (July 3). There will also be a performance of Joan Tower's saxophone concerto, Love Returns, another AMFS co-commission, with Steven Banks, “the saxophone's Best Friend” (The Washington Post), as soloist (Aug 7).

New music by resident composer Caroline Shaw & others

Caroline Shaw, whose honors include a Pulitzer Prize and five Grammy Awards, will be in residence as Principal Guest Composer. As well as mentoring composition students and leading masterclasses, this role will see her preside over the performances of three of her own works. The Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra undertakes her kaleidoscopic orchestral work The Observatory (July 22); Assistant Conductor Ken Yanagisawa, winner of the 2025 Aspen Conducting Prize, leads her Entr'acte for strings, on an otherwise all-Mozart program featuring Avery Fisher Prize-winning pianist Emanuel Ax (July 25); and AMFS alumnus Teddy Abrams, the Grammy-winning music director of the Louisville Orchestra, conducts her site-specific experiential installation piece, Brush, outside on the Meadows Campus (July 30).
 
As in previous seasons, fresh music is interwoven throughout the Aspen summer. Led by Grammy-nominated resident conductor Timothy Weiss, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble performs works by prominent living composers and 20th-century classics, with special focus on U.S. composers. Summer highlights include world premieres of new works by Guggenheim Fellow Donald Crockett (July 11) and Rome Prize winner Jesse Benjamin Jones (Aug 22). In addition, the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra gives the world premiere performance of a new AMFS commission from Celka Ojakangas, winner of the 2025 AMFS Jacob Druckman Prize (July 15).

Aspen Festival Orchestra with Fleming, Hampson, Thibaudet, & others

The Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) performs eight programs this summer. Robert Spano leads three programs, all of which lean into the season's theme. After launching the orchestral season with an all-American opening night featuring Copland's Third Symphony and selections from John Adams's opera Nixon in China, with star vocalists Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson (July 5), Spano and the AFO reunite for a concert concluding with Gershwin's F-major Piano Concerto, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist (Aug 2), before drawing the summer to a close with a season finale juxtaposing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with a homegrown choral masterpiece: Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (Aug 23). Both their opening and closing concerts will feature this season's Choral Ensemble-in-Residence, the Denver-based chorus Kantorei.
 
Other AFO highlights include Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, led by Rafael Payare, music director of Canada's Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and California's San Diego Symphony (July 12); Varèse's monumental Amériques, under the baton of Finnish maestro Dima Slobodeniouk (July 26); Mahler's First Symphony, conducted by Stéphane Denève, music director of the St. Louis Symphony and artistic director of the New World Symphony (Aug 9); and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, led by Delyana Lazarova, principal guest conductor of both the Utah Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, in her AMFS debut (Aug 16).
 
As in previous seasons, there will also be multiple performances by the Aspen Chamber Symphony, led by Nicholas McGegan (July 10), Robert Spano (July 17), James Conlon (July 24), and David Robertson (Aug 14).

Opera: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hildegard, & The Magic Flute

Under the co-artistic direction of Renée Fleming and Patrick Summers, the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS (AOTVA) program presents three operas this summer. Dame Jane Glover conducts two performances of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Aspen's historic Wheeler Opera House, where countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo – “a bona-fide star” (The New Yorker) – makes his AMFS debut as Oberon in a fully staged production by Simon Godwin, artistic director of Washington, D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre Company and former associate director of London's National Theatre (July 20 & 22). Glover's feel for Britten's music stems from a deep personal connection; she was just 16 when she first met the composer, who went on to become a key mentor and guiding influence over her career.
 
Timothy Weiss leads the Colorado premiere of AMFS alumna Sarah Kirkland Snider's first opera, Hildegard, in Harris Concert Hall (July 31). An AMFS co-commission that explores the life of medieval polymath St. Hildegard von Bingen, the work was hailed at its recent LA Opera world premiere as “gorgeously mesmerizing” (The New York Times).
 
To conclude the opera season, Patrick Summers conducts Mozart's The Magic Flute in the Klein Music Tent, where Kantorei will anchor a semi-staged production directed by Paula Suozzi, executive stage director of the Metropolitan Opera (Aug 21). This summer's AOTVA students will participate in both A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Magic Flute, as well as in weekly opera scene classes and song recitals, events in private homes, and composer-artist collaborations.
 
In a salute to America's homegrown musical-dramatic art form, AMFS also presents two concert performances of a musical, to be announced shortly. Led by eminent Broadway music director and conductor Andy Einhorn, the presentation marks the festival's seventh annual musical theater co-production with Theatre Aspen (July 13 & 14).

Vocal highlights from Brownlee, Costanzo, DiDonato, Hampson, & Morley

Other vocal highlights include a festive Opera Benefit featuring Grammy winner Anthony Roth Costanzo (July 7), and recitals by four more of the nation's foremost singers. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who is “a transformative presence in the arts” (Gramophone), returns for a special evening with Patrick Summers at the keyboard (July 15). Before his concert appearance with Spano and the AFO, baritone Thomas Hampson – “without question one of the world's greatest opera singers” (Good Morning America) – makes his AMFS debut in collaboration with AOTVA's Head of Music, pianist Myra Huang (July 2). Finally, also in collaboration with Huang, soprano Erin Morley makes her AMFS debut alongside tenor Lawrence Brownlee, singing some of the favorite duets and arias heard on Golden Age, their collaborative Pentatone release, which was named among the “Best Classical Albums of 2025” by The New York Times (Aug 4).

Latin jazz & Barber from Yuja Wang

Global sensation and AMFS alumna Yuja Wang returns for two collaborations, each with a longtime friend from her student days at the Curtis Institute of Music. The first of these is percussionist Gabriel Globus-Hoenich, with whose Latin-Caribbean jazz collective People of Earth the pianist undertakes a one-night-only program of Afro-Latin and Caribbean compositions and new arrangements in the 500-seat Harris Hall (July 29). Next, she reunites with conductor Teddy Abrams, with whom she won a 2024 Grammy Award for The American Project, to perform Barber's Piano Concerto with the Aspen Chamber Symphony (Aug 1). As the Financial Times writes, Wang's “combination of technical ease, colouristic range and sheer power has always been remarkable … but these days there is an ever-greater depth to her musicianship, drawing you into the world of each composer with compelling immediacy.”

Piano recitals: Dinnerstein, Hamelin, Thibaudet, Trifonov, & more

As ever, the AMFS summer features an abundance of solo and chamber recitals. This year's piano offerings include a curated “journey through time and space” from Inon Barnatan, “one of the most admired pianists of his generation” (The New York Times) (July 11); Taneyev, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, and Robert Schumann from Grammy winner Daniil Trifonov (July 22); Debussy's complete Preludes from Diapason d'Or winner Jean-Yves Thibaudet (July 27); Granados, Liszt, Debussy, and Stravinsky from Rachmaninoff Competition gold medalist Angel Stanislav Wang, in his AMFS debut (July 28); Bach and Philip Glass from Simone Dinnerstein, “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity” (The Washington Post) (Aug 15); Gershwin arrangements and more from Canadian virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin (Aug 20); and Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and more from Anton Nel, who is “truly a musician's musician” (New York Concert Review) (Aug 22).

Violin recitals: Gil Shaham plays complete Beethoven sonatas, & more

On violin, ECHO Klassik Instrumentalist of the Year Leonidas Kavakos joins pianist Enrico Pace for sonatas by Beethoven, Mozart, and Franck (July 8); Grammy winner Augustin Hadelich performs a solo program of Telemann, Tchaikovsky, Ysaÿe, Paganini, and Perkinson (July 16); Menuhin Competition winner María Dueñas makes her AMFS debut alongside pianist Eric Lu in sonatas by Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms (July 23); Italy's National Arts Award laureate Giovanni Andrea Zanon duets with pianist Tony Siqi Yun (Aug 13); and festival favorite Gil Shaham performs Beethoven's complete violin sonatas in three recitals with pianist Akira Eguchi (Aug 6, 8, & 11).

Chamber recitals: Barnatan, Meyer, Selaocoe, Weilerstein, & more

Other recital highlights include a duo program of Brahms and Shostakovich from Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan (July 9); a cello recital from Opus Klassiek Award winner Abel Selaocoe (Aug 5); music for double bass and piano from AMFS artist-faculty and seven-time Grammy winner Edgar Meyer and pianist Amy Yang (Aug 18); classical guitar from two-time Grammy winner Sharon Isbin (Aug 19); and chamber programs from both the Danish String Quartet (Aug 3) and Pacifica Quartet (Aug 12).

Alumni and the Aspen spirit

The AMFS is a place artists return to in a spirit of deep affection and to give back. Former students like Teddy Abrams and Alisa Weilerstein return both as headlining artists and to visit with their former teachers. They return to play unusual repertoire, experiment with their own new works, or, like alumna Renée Fleming, to join the faculty or to design and lead their own programs. They join other visiting artists who enjoy connecting with young musicians on the cusp of their careers, or who enjoyed an early career break at Aspen and now never miss a summer. Aspen represents ideas and musicianship at their best, and in uniquely personal and authentic ways. There are no metaphorical barriers at the festival. After performing, artists often slip into the audience for their concert’s second half; they walk the streets casually, dropping bills in the instrument cases of busking students. AMFS alumni returning to perform, direct, and teach this summer are Key’mon Murrah (July 3), James Gaffigan (July 3), Renée Fleming (July 5), Alisa Weilerstein (July 9 & 12), Robert McDuffie (July 17), Cristian Măcelaru (July 19), James Conlon (July 24), Sarah Kirkland Snider (July 31), Sharon Isbin (Aug 19), Yuja Wang (July 29; Aug 1), Teddy Abrams (Aug 1), Leonard Slatkin (Aug 7), Edgar Meyer (Aug 18), Ryan McKinny (Aug 23), Orli Shaham (Aug 14), and frequent returning guest Gil Shaham (Aug 6, 8, 11, & 14).