Entertainment
Although there is always something arty or intellectual going on - a film about Nepal, a lecture on how to slow aging, a Celtic band playing - Aspen is at heart an athletic town. You can get physical right away with yoga or 10-mile hikes and mornings spent casting for fish. But it's good to indulge in the decidedly cultural bent to this ski town in the off season. Besides the eating and nightclubbing, that is! Both of which are adequately provided for, no matter what your tastes or energy level. more info
Summer mainstays include the Summer Words literary festival; the Aspen Art Museum; the Aspen Dance Festival, in July and August, which features visiting troupes (the Washington Ballet and Hubbard Street Dance from Chicago) and a resident company, the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet; and Jazz Aspen Snowmass, a summer-long festival of jazz and popular music, that ends with a four-day blowout over Labor Day weekend. There are also free bluegrass concerts each Sunday atop Aspen Mountain.
Ever since its debut in 1951 attracted Charles Eames and Louis Kahn, the International Design Conference in Aspen has been among the world's best-known gatherings dedicated to design in all its guises. This year's lineup includes Shigeru Ban, the Japanese architect; Julie Bargmann, who teaches landscape architecture at the University of Virginia; and Bill Joy, a founder of Sun Microsystems.
The big cultural draw of the summer, however, is the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival, now in its 54th year, with its impressive lineup of chamber music and orchestral and opera performances from June through till August. On some afternoons and evenings, festival staff members lead preconcert walking tours from downtown to the concert site, passing through a leafy residential neighborhood full of bungalows and modernist houses along the way.
45FOther pages you might find helpful:
The Aspen Filmfest
The Aspen Filmfest is an annual event that presents a selection of independent films.
