The Aspen Music Festival and School announced Meghan Umber will be its next president and CEO.
She will be the first woman in the leadership role in the institution's 77-year history.
Umber will replace Alan Fletcher, who has held the position for the last 21 years.
She currently serves as president of the Hollywood Bowl and chief programming officer at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she has worked for the last two decades.
Umber will move to the Roaring Fork Valley with her family this fall and begin her new role on Oct. 1.
Aspen Public Radio’s Regan Mertz spoke with Umber earlier this week from her home in L.A.
The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.
Regan Mertz: Tell me a little bit about yourself — where you're from, how your career's been to get you to this point.
Meghan Umber: I'm from Minnesota originally, and I moved to Los Angeles to attend [the University of Southern California] and played piano there — very, very poorly — but had so much fun and knew that working with orchestras and musicians and great artists was what I wanted to do with my life.
So, I started working at the L.A. Phil many years ago and worked my way up. If you can believe it, I started as an intern. So, I'm looking forward to bringing some of my LA Phil experience to Aspen, but they're very, very different places.
Mertz: What interested you about the Aspen Music Festival?
Umber: I remember going the first time and walking onto the Meadows campus and just being blown away by the intersection of this gorgeous setting, the beautiful tent, and then all of these young people coming together with their teachers and making music together. It was such a unique experience — one that you felt like really was not able to be replicated really anywhere else.
Mertz: What year was that, that you came here for the first time?
Umber: It was about a decade ago, a little bit longer, right after the Bucksbaum Campus opened.
Mertz: That was one of Alan Fletcher's big projects in his tenure.
He's been with the Music Festival and School for over 20 years, and, again, he focused a lot on redevelopment of the campus and fundraising, increasing accessibility in local schools, diversity of those attending the Music Festival and School. So, what are your overarching goals?
Umber: Certainly, what he has accomplished is so extraordinary for the wider Aspen community, and I want to just really build upon that. I love the school programs that have started year-round.
I want to continue making sure that the festival is an amazing transformational experience for both the students, the faculty. Frankly, it's very special for them when they come in and work with these young people, and then the audience as well. I know that there is such love for the festival in the local area, and I want to just keep growing upon that and making it the very, very best place that it can be.
Mertz: Music, in whatever facets that it may be, can be a male-dominated field. And so, moving into this role, how are you looking to also increase that diversity, or put your own voice into your time at the Aspen Music Festival and School?
Umber: My work at the LA Phil — I've spent a lot of time diversifying who's standing on the podium, conducting, who's performing, and who are we commissioning new music from?
Orchestras can be very welcoming places once you get to know them, but I think sometimes they can be a bit intimidating from the outside, so making sure that everyone has a place where they feel that they're welcomed is essential to me — and that is both whether you're a young violinist in the back of the section or you're somebody aspiring to write the massive next symphony for the world to hear.
It's essential that we make sure that everybody knows they belong. I've always loved hearing different voices on stage and getting to know different personalities, and I think it can allow people to really grow and to find their voice.
Mertz: We're in the third year of celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Aspen Music Festival and School. So, any sort of big plans to kick off 75 years?
Umber: It’s never too soon to start dreaming about what Aspen at 100 looks like, in my opinion. So, as crazy as it sounds, I love looking far into the future.
Again, just starting to think about listening to what the board of trustees is telling me, what the faculty and the artists are telling me about the festival itself, and just lifting it off into a whole other level. I also think that it's such a jewel box of a place, and more of the world needs to see it and hear about it. So, making sure that the Aspen Music Festival and School is radiating worldwide is very important to me as well.
