The Aspen Music Festival’s free annual Fourth of July concert returns to the Benedict Music Tent on Sunday at 4 p.m. Courtesy photo
Back in the quarantine doldrums of May 2020, when the Aspen Music Festival and School finally canceled its summer season amid the coronavirus crisis after valiant efforts to stage a shortened one, festival president and CEO Alan Fletcher promised that he and his team were already at work on a 2021 season.
At the time, he hopefully and boldly predicted it would be “nothing less than an explosion of musical joy.”
That memorable phrase echoed through the head of many a music lover in the long year since then, amid so many more cancellations and, until the past week, no concerts of any kind in Aspen. What, we might have wondered would this “explosion of musical joy” sound like when it came, if it ever did come?