Today is Monday, August 17th.
Today at 10:15 is your last chance this season to take a free guided tour of the Bucksbaum Campus. Meet at the Administration Building.
The summer’s last free guided backstage tour of Benedict Music Tent and Harris Concert Hall takes place today at noon. Meet on Tent Plaza in front of the Tent.
At 6 in the Benedict Music Tent, an illustrious lineup of Aspen Music School faculty members team up for Portraits by El Greco by George Tsontakis, a chamber music work by a student in the composition program, and Seven Verses of Aleksandr Blok by Shostakovich. Blok was a major poet of the Russian Symbolism style. By 1921, he had become disillusioned with the Russian Revolution. He did not write any poetry for three years. Blok complained that his "faith in the wisdom of humanity" had ended and that he could not write poetry anymore because, in his words, "All sounds have stopped. Can't you hear that there are no longer any sounds?" When Blok became sick, his doctors requested that he be sent for medical treatment abroad, but he was not allowed to leave the country. His friend Maksim Gorky pleaded for a visa, saying "Blok is Russia's finest poet. If you forbid him to go abroad, and he dies, you and your comrades will be guilty of his death." Blok received permission only after his death.
