Aspen Music Festival and School president and CEO Alan Fletcher has certainly had a rocky administration up in the Sawatch Range.
In 2009, he was almost fired.
A year later, Fletcher received a non-binding, no-confidence vote by the Music Associates of Aspen--that governing body composed mostly of Aspen's faculty and staff.
In the end, however, the fest's board of directors granted him a five-year extension on his contract, keeping the composer-cum-administrator in office until New Year's Eve of 2016.
Musical politics in The Centennial State aside, Alan Fletcher's opening speech to this summer's Aspen class is well worth a read. So pressing, so spot on, in fact, Classicalite sees fit to reprint Fletcher's convocation verbatim...just don't tell David Zinman:
"Each summer I like to say something hopeful and encouraging to all who gather here: ready to work, ready to be part of something wonderful, ready to create something beautiful and meaningful. And this summer is no different. I have so much confidence in you, and confidence in what we are doing. I believe in you, in your gifts, and especially in your ability to use very hard, purposeful work to make something of lasting value from those gifts. I believe what we do is important and that our society values it, as it should.
This leads me, though, to want to say some blunt things about what our profession is experiencing. This has not been a good year for many people we care deeply about in the world of music. I feel it wouldn't be right simply to say that everything in our future is bright and uncomplicated. So I'll make some observations about the state of classical music. I entirely respect that not all of you are going to agree with all I will say, and I welcome the opportunity to talk more about this as the summer progresses. In fact, part of the solution to our current challenges is to have more, not less, constructive and respectful discussion.
A large part of what is happening stems from the global recession from which we are just emerging. People have been afraid and have lost confidence, in every sector, and this loss of confidence has a profound effect on musical organizations that depend on belief, confidence, and generosity.
Classical music in the United States depends on four groups working together: musicians, donors, administrators, and listeners. No one of these groups "owns" the music, and no one or even two of them can keep the music going without the others. Too often we've been hearing from one group or another that someone else is unimportant, or worse, that 'they owe us.' But everyone involved here is making a free choice to be involved, and is mutually obliged to make the enterprise work.
We've been seeing some terrible fractures in the historic cooperation that is needed to create music.
For me, the very worst of it has been in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where two great orchestras were locked out of their halls.
This is not the place to try to describe fully what has happened--the complexity of the problem is intense--but what happened, and is still happening, has no place in our art form. A strike is a very unhappy thing, but a lockout is unworthy of us all and unworthy of our beautiful profession.
In almost all of the problematic cases in recent years, one or more of the 'sides' in a dispute is saying that they can't, or won't, recognize another side's good faith, and the rhetoric all around the country has been remarkably poisonous and negative.
We really must find a way to work together, and this fracturing makes that seem impossible."
Come back to Classicalite tomorrow, when we'll post even more of Alan Fletcher's trenchant remarks.
