No Better Place To Be Than Aspen

June 26th, 2006 at 05:34am Michael Conniff 2

At the end of the day, on Sunday, there was no way I was going to make it back into Aspen for the Phishful Trey Anastasio, whom I had always wanted to see, and the former James Brown sideman Maceo Parker, whom I had always wanted to hear.

By the end of the Jazz Aspen Snowmass (JAS) June 2006 festival, I was completely out of gas.

But what a gas it was.

I really did try to pace myself this time. I decided to focus on the Elvis Costello concert with Delbert McClinton as the eye-opener, and that worked out famously. I took in the free jazz under the awning at Wagner Park and discovered the Louisiana blues stomper Henry Butler, and he was smoking.

So I missed Jamie Cullum and Diana Krall to begin with. It was informed decision entirely unrelated to their considerable talent. I just wanted to pace myself for a change, to get through the weekend without feeling like I had to see everyone.

But the one performance I had to see was Yo Yo Ma with the Aspen Festival Chorus under the baton of David Zinman, an impulse that required its own strategy given that the main show at 4 PM under the Benedict Music Tent was a sellout. But there was the dress rehearsal of the performance at 9:30 AM to consider, and that meant getting up too early after staying up too late for the likes of Delbert and Elvis. Up we got, which meant we got a plainclothes symphony performing the Shostakovich Symphony #7 (“Leningrad”), the war tome with a second movement that builds like no other work of classical music I’ve ever heard.

And then there was Yo Yo performing the original composition “Vision,” a commissioned piece in honor of Zinman’s 70th birthday. I think the cellist enjoyed the piece more than anyone, and that’s saying something. Modern without being onerous or self-conscious, “Vision” allowed Yo Yo, in a blue polo shirt, enough down time to enjoy the surroundings—the tent, the surroundings, the music, the light. Without the pressure of a full-dress performance, there was unfettered joy in the music and the presence of a musical giant of his time.

After the dress rehearsal, we addressed ourselves to the free gospel noontime performance that is a Sunday JAS tradition. After returning home, I had every intention of making it back for Trey and Maceo. But it was not to be. One can only absorb so much greatness at one time.

Entry Filed under: Classical Music, Aspen, People, Blues, Pitkin County, Jazz, Pop, Fractional Post