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

Named the 2025 Classical Woman of the Year by NPR’s Performance Today, Grammy Award–winning composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery wrote her cello concerto for South African cellist Abel Selaocoe. In the composer’s words, it’s “very sentimental because it’s very much about mothers and about care. It’s a series of lullabies and songs that are specifically from mothers to children, or love songs of some kind. So those sentiments of love and adoration and magnetism, magnitude, those things are all wonderful inspirations.”

“It came gushing out like a mountain torrent,” Mahler said of his First Symphony. Written for a huge orchestra and full of youthful Romanticism, the work follows the journey of Mahler’s “hero” through episodes of optimism, struggle, death, and ultimately triumph.

Be inspired by two works that capture both the intimacy and drama of the human experience!

CARLOS SIMON: Fate Now Conquers
JESSIE MONTGOMERY: These Righteous Paths (AMFS co-commission)
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G. MAHLER: Symphony No. 1 in D major