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BEHIND THE MUSIC

The raising of the music tent was once an annual ritual. The strenuous task, combining Aspen’s mountaineering and music traditions, took until noon.

Locals gathered at dawn to watch the crew of a dozen harness-strapped men as they strung cables and rigged canvas panels cut to size by a circus-tent maker in Sarasota, Florida.

That ritual is now an anachronism, but others remain — and still more are added each summer. The Aspen Music Festival & School marks its 60th anniversary this season, and our last installment of this story (see the Summer 2009 issue, page 64) covered the festival’s first 30 years. In the years since, the Music Associates of Aspen has passed many milestones, with the arrival of a permanent music tent in 2000 only the most visible.
In the past three decades, the festival has grown more serious. Now an internationally known festival and school, it ranks with the other big names in the performance world: Tanglewood, Ravinia, Salzburg. The homespun, antic quality of the old festival may be less in evidence today, but there’s still enough of that “let’s put on a show” enthusiasm to make every summer a time of anticipation. 

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