Renée Fleming, Thomas Hampson to Headline Aspen Music Festival & School 2026 Season

Broadway + NYC

Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Off Broadway

Cabaret

Dance

Opera

Classical Music

Eastern

Central

Western

West End

WEST END

UK Regional

International

Canada

Australia / New Zealand

Europe

Asia

Latin America

Africa / Middle East

Entertainment

TV/Movies

Music

Ctrl + K to open · Esc to close

The eight-week 'For All' festival will feature world premieres, Joyce DiDonato, Yuja Wang & more at AMFS.

POPULAR

Get all the top news & discounts for Colorado & beyond.

July 1 marks the start of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) 's 2026 summer season. Titled “For All,” in a nod to the closing words of the Pledge of Allegiance, the eight-week festival commemorates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (July 1–Aug 23). Highpoints of the opening weekend include the Colorado premiere of Earth 2.0, the celebrated environmental-themed monodrama co-commissioned by AMFS from Jake Heggie , Musical America's Composer of the Year 2025 (July 3), and an all-American program from Robert Spano and the Aspen Festival Orchestra, featuring selections from John Adams 's opera Nixon in China, with star vocalists Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson (July 5).

Get all the top news & discounts for Colorado & beyond.

A comparably intensive eight-day period follows three weeks later. Vocal highlights include an “Opera Encounters” showcase, hosted by leading composer Nico Muhly and Grammy-winning countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (July 25), and the Colorado premieres of two important AMFS co-commissions: AMFS alumna Sarah Kirkland Snider's “gorgeously mesmerizing” (The New York Times) first opera, Hildegard (July 31), and the wealth of nations, a new Adam Smith -inspired oratorio by Pulitzer Prize laureate David Lang , featuring Fleur Barron and Davóne Tines with Choral Ensemble-in-Residence Kantorei (Aug 1). Pulitzer Prize-winning Principal Guest Composer Caroline Shaw presides over an open-air performance of her site-specific experiential installation piece, Brush, led by Grammy-winning conductor and AMFS alumnus Teddy Abrams (July 30). Five of today's preeminent pianists also feature prominently during this period. Avery Fisher Prize winner Emanuel Ax graces an all-Mozart program with Robert Spano and the Aspen Festival Ensemble (July 25); Grammy winner Daniil Trifonov joins Finnish maestro Dima Slobodeniouk and the Aspen Festival Orchestra for Glazunov's Second Piano Concerto (July 26); Diapason d'Or winner Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs Debussy's complete Preludes (July 27); Rachmaninoff Competition gold medalist Angel Stanislav Wang makes his AMFS debut with a solo program of Granados, Liszt, Debussy, and Stravinsky (July 28); and global sensation and AMFS alumna Yuja Wang undertakes a one-night-only program of Latin-Caribbean jazz with the People of Earth collective (July 29) before reuniting with Abrams, with whom she won a 2024 Grammy Award, for Barber's Piano Concerto with the Aspen Chamber Symphony (Aug 1).

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). Aspen presents the Colorado premieres of two more AMFS co-commissions: Grammy winner Jessie Montgomery's Cello Concerto, These Righteous Paths, with its dedicatee, South African cellist Abel Selaocoe, as soloist (Aug 9) and 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). There will also be a performance of Joan Tower's saxophone concerto, Love Returns, another AMFS co-commission, featuring Steven Banks , “the saxophone's best friend” (The Washington Post), under Leonard Slatkin 's leadership (Aug 7). In addition to Brush (see above), Principal Guest Composer Caroline Shaw will be on hand for performances of her kaleidoscopic orchestral work The Observatory by Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra (July 22) and of her Entr'acte for strings, led by Assistant Conductor Ken Yanagisawa, winner of the 2025 Aspen Conducting Prize (July 25). Other new music highlights include world premieres of new works by Guggenheim Fellow Donald Crockett (July 11), Rome Prize winner Jesse Benjamin Jones (Aug 22), and Celka Ojakangas, winner of the 2025 AMFS Jacob Druckman Prize (July 15).

The Aspen Festival Orchestra (AFO) performs eight programs this summer. After launching the orchestral season with an all-American opening night (July 5; see above), Robert Spano joins Jean-Yves Thibaudet for Gershwin's F-major Piano Concerto (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). 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); 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). 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).

Under the co-artistic direction of Renée Fleming and Patrick Summers, the Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS (AOTVA) program presents two operas besides Hildegard (see above) 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). 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 Frank Loesser 's Guys and Dolls. 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).

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 of Haydn, Rossini, Mahler, Debussy, and Lieberson 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 with a program of American song 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).

As ever, the AMFS summer features an abundance of solo and chamber recitals. In addition to those detailed above, 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 Daniil Trifonov (July 22); 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). 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). Other recital highlights include a duo program of Brahms and Shostakovich from Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan (July 9); original compositions and arrangements from Opus Klassiek Award-winning cellist and composer 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); recent music for 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).

Get an Alert Each Time Chloe Rabinowitz Writes

Videos

Colorado SHOWS

Recommended For You

Sign up for announcements, and exclusive discounts on tickets to your favorite shows!

© 2026 - Copyright Wisdom Digital Media , all rights reserved. Privacy Policy

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/denver/article/Rene-Fleming-Thomas-Hampson-and-More-to-be-Featured-in-Aspen-Music-Festival-School-2026-Season-20260618)._