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There\u2019s the summer Snowmass ritual of the Thursday night concert on Fanny Hill, the soul-rending experience of a First Friday concert in the cozy confines of Steve\u2019s Guitars in Carbondale, the date nights at the JAS Caf\u00e9, the bar bands at the Red Onion, karaoke nights at Ryno\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Summer 2020 is going to be quiet, though. In successive recent weeks, Jazz Aspen moved its June and Labor Day festival lineups to 2021, the Music Fest canceled and Belly Up \u2014 which hasn\u2019t hosted a show since the second week of March \u2014 \u201cpaused operations.\u201d In this quiet year, Aspen will have exactly as much live music per capita as everyplace else: zero, or close to it.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of summer concerts here have been canceled. Organizers are doing the right thing to save lives and keep people safe by canceling and following public health orders, just as we\u2019ve all been trying to do right by staying home. And, of course, music can seem a trifle when as we\u2019re dealing questions of life and death and deep grief for the suffering around the world. But it\u2019s all right to miss the life-affirming experience of a concert.<\/p>\n
Normally here in the mud-season hush of May, I\u2019d be putting together my annual \u201cMost Anticipated\u201d list of concerts and cultural events. I\u2019d be cramming for the season \u2014 listening to a ton of music from the artists on the summer docket, planning interviews, previews and concert coverage. In an alternate universe, I\u2019m plugging away right now on stories about Chromeo, Kermit Ruffins, Ren\u00e9e Fleming and Stevie Nicks.<\/p>\n
That anticipation, and the reason why the void of summer 2020 hurts, is less about the starry names of the artists and the sonic experience than it is about gathering people. That\u2019s why we can\u2019t have concerts during a pandemic and that\u2019s also why we are going to miss it so deeply.<\/p>\n
The Sunday concerts in the Benedict Music Tent aren\u2019t an iconic Aspen experience just because it\u2019s a great orchestra performing under the world\u2019s best conductors and with superstar soloists. It matters because of the lawn, the picnic, the friends and family on the blanket with you.<\/p>\n
Most Aspenites aren\u2019t deciding whether to go to the Labor Day festival based on the artists on the bill, they\u2019re going because it\u2019s what you do Labor Day weekend here with the people you love.<\/p>\n
The memories we make at Belly Up aren\u2019t just about who is onstage but also, so often, about who ends up next to you on the floor during the show.<\/p>\n
Yes, there are virtual experiences and streaming concerts and Instagram Live sets. Yes, we\u2019re all grateful to have them right now to keep us sane. It\u2019s what we have, so we have to embrace it. But it\u2019s not the same if you\u2019re not sharing it alongside other people. Some have quietly begun floating ideas for small-group socially distanced concerts this summer, others drive-in concerts, which would feel like liberation.<\/p>\n
When full concerts do return, it will be, as Aspen Music Festival President and CEO Alan Fletcher put it, \u201cnothing less than an explosion of musical joy.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, if we love live music, then ensuring its return is also our duty. When you get the option to turn your festival ticket into a donation, if you have the money, you\u2019ve gotta take that option if you want the festival to return in 2021. When you get a refund for a club show, take that disposable income and put it toward paying for merch or vinyl or by donating to one of the organizations supporting out-of-work musicians or struggling venues.<\/p>\n
As Belly Up cleared most of its summer shows and stopped announcing new bookings, it joined the new National Independent Venue Association, a national advocacy group with 1,300 members aimed at saving small clubs nationwide from closing for good due to COVID-19. They\u2019re asking fans to write to congressmembers to support small venues.<\/p>\n
Some new ways of sharing live music will emerge this summer for in Aspen, maybe new traditions will be born, maybe we\u2019re already seeing the beginnings of that.<\/p>\n
The same May weekend that I got word Labor Day fest was officially canceling, the local singer-songwriter Brad \u201cBradman\u201d Manosevitz played the first public concert in Aspen since mid-March. It wasn\u2019t much \u2014 just Brad doing his one-man-band thing on the porch of Jour de Fete as people came and went for takeout lunch \u2014 but it was something, a socially distanced and masked and kinda weird something. And it gave us something to look forward to every Saturday he returns.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one thing we all know, Aspen won\u2019t stay quiet forever.<\/p>\n
atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The closest I\u2019ve come to attending a concert in the past two-plus months was watching a teenager sitting on the banks of the Roaring Fork River practicing Led Zeppelin tunes on an acoustic guitar. My daughter and I stumbled upon him during a morning walk on the Rio Grande Trail, and sat entranced for several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2458674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-17 10:48:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2458674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2458674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2458674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2458674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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