FULL CELEBRATING BERNSTEIN Aspen 2026 Tamara Mumford

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: CELEBRATING BERNSTEIN   
• Composer: Bernstein Leonard  
• Libretto: various  
• Venue & Opera Company: Klein Music Tent, Aspen Festival, Colorado  
• Recorded: July 17, 2026
• Type: Concert Live
• Singers: Tamara Mumford
• Conductor: Robert Spano  
• Orchestra: Aspen Chamber Symphony  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Aspen Music Festival  
• Date Published: 2026  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  PROGRAM

  BERNSTEIN: Three Meditations from Mass
  BERNSTEIN: Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah”
  —
  ALAN FLETCHER: An American Song
  BERNSTEIN: Serenade, after Plato’s Symposium

  Celebrate one of the foremost names in American music with this Leonard Bernstein extravaganza!

  Composed at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy for the inauguration of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1971, Bernstein later arranged his Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers for cello and piano.

  Written at age 24, Bernstein’s First Symphony premiered in 1944 and was named by the New York Music Critics Circle as best new work of the year. According to conductor Christoph Eschenbach, a close friend of Bernstein’s, “Jeremiah is a statement by an anxious, troubled soul. Bernstein was very well aware of what was going on in Europe in 1942, that people—the Jews—were victims of a horrible, deadly kind of paganism…. And I think of it also as a warning for what is happening today…that has meaning for all of us in a climate too often marked by racial intolerance and xenophobia…”

  Aspen alumnus and renowned violinist Robert McDuffie will join the Aspen Chamber Symphony for Bernstein’s Serenade, after Plato’s Symposium, inspired by the composer’s reading of Plato’s dialogue—each one made by a distinguished speaker—of related statements in praise of love.

  The program will also feature An American Song, a composition by AMFS Munroe President and CEO Alan Fletcher. He writes “The music is painted in the simple glowing colors of American singing. Layering onto the score in a series of thin translucent glazes. The rhythms and meters float subtly free, placed so that coincidence makes for happy accidents. This is an American process of free association.

  (Visited 21 times, 1 visits today)