ARCHITECTURE

Aspen Music Festival and School Debuts the Final Phase of Its $75 Million Campus

Students from AMFS and Aspen Country Day School are the lucky recipients of gorgeous new surroundings.

By Cindy Hirschfeld July 12, 2016

The new Hurst Hall on the Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus.

Philanthropist and AMFS lifetime trustee Kay Bucksbaum, with AMFS Board Chair Robert Hurst, cuts the ribbon at the campus dedication.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

Hurst Hall provides a rehearsal space for groups ranging from a full orchestra to the brass quintet shown here. During the rest of the year, it serves as Aspen Country Day School’s gymnasium.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

During a campus tour, architect Harry Teague speaks about the new cafeteria on the ground level of the Robert Harth building. “The dining hall is the most important building on campus,” he notes, referencing its function as a place for exchanging ideas and socializing. “We took it very seriously.” The large tree trunk, which came from Grand Junction, covers up a steel support column and, says Teague, represents the life tree from ancient Norse mythology. It’s known more colloquially as the “ketchup tree,” thanks to the condiments that surround it.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

Interior designer Karen White, shown here in the lobby of the renovated Hardy administration building, selected the project’s furnishings. A portrait of Matthew and Kay Bucksbaum hangs above the fireplace.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

Business at the music school continued as usual throughout the dedication event, as tour groups came upon students practicing throughout the new buildings.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

Harry Teague explains how practice rooms in the Upper Studio (which also serves as Aspen Country Day School’s middle school) were designed for brass instruments—concrete block walls contain the sound within each space.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

The lines of the new Robert Harth building in the foreground connect in a historically appropriate way to the renovated Hardy administration building behind, which dates from the 1890s. The second stories of the two buildings literally connect via an upper breezeway.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

The 1890s-era, Craftsman-style Hardy administration building posed a “difficult structural puzzle,” says architect Harry Teague. “It was so curved at the front that everyone thought that was part of the architecture.” Turns out the curvature was due to age, not design. Now, thanks to an uninterrupted line of sight through the lobby, “you can see the pond on one side and Castle Creek on the other,” adds Teague. “It’s part of what makes this building so delightful.”

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

Hurst Hall’s intricate acoustic engineering includes interspersed tan panels that diffuse approximately 30 percent of the sound, black fabric panels that absorb another 30 percent, and flat portions of the wall that reflect an additional 30 percent.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

From the second floor of the Robert Harth building, which houses administrative offices, the view includes the slopes of Deep Temerity at Aspen Highlands in the background.

Photography by Cindy Hirschfeld

On a classically beautiful Aspen summer day—azure sky dotted with cottony clouds, a steady breeze taking the edge off the recent hot temps—the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) dedicated the final phase of the Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus. With the completion in May of three new buildings and a renovated administration center, a project eight years in the making to completely overhaul the previously outdated campus reached fruition. Architect Harry Teague and his team designed the new structures—all of which serve dual purposes, as Aspen Country Day School will use them during the academic year—infusing them with a rhythm and interplay that complements the music now being played within those walls.

Those who spoke at the July 11 ceremony included AMFS Board Chair Robert Hurst, President and CEO Alan Fletcher, Music Director Robert Spano, architect Harry Teague, Aspen Country Day School Head of School Josh Wolman, and AMFS life trustee Carolyn “Kay” Bucksbaum, who received a standing ovation for her and her late husband’s commitment to the project, which included a $25 million gift for the campus reconstruction.

Following the dedication, Teague and Fletcher led groups on tours of the final-phase buildings, as locals marveled over the crisp, contemporary design and sophisticated acoustical engineering. See the photos in the slideshow above and don’t miss our feature on the new campus (along with the Aspen Community School’s new home) in Aspen Sojourner’s midsummer issue.

Aspen Music Festival and School, Aspen Country Day School, Harry Teague