This concert will be carried live on Aspen Public Radio! Tune in 91.5FM and 88.9FM or at aspenpublicradio.org.

The Aspen Festival Orchestra opens its season with Wall Family Music Director Robert Spano in an all-American concert honoring our nation’s 250th anniversary! Celebrate this milestone with performances of twentieth-century favorites by opera luminaries Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, and Denver-based Kantorei.

Premiered in 1987, the opera Nixon in China was inspired by Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China. In 1943, Aaron Copland expressed his patriotism by writing Fanfare for the Common Man, intending to honor those who performed heroic deeds on the home front rather than on the battlefield. In the finale to his Third Symphony, he reused this beloved piece. The entire work evokes a sort of abstract Americana and is full of the composer’s characteristic intermingling of confidence and yearning, reflecting the aspirational nature of American ideals.

IVES/SCHUMAN: Variations on “America”
JOHN ADAMS: Selections from Nixon in China
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COPLAND Symphony No. 3