Musicians Check In to Aspen Long After Skiers Check Out

The statue of Justice still stands on her platform on the face of the county courthouse, smiling a haughty welcome to miscreant and righteous visitors alike, her robe freshly silvered in the garish tone of a chewing gum wrapper.

Aspen was founded when some adventurous miners crossed the Continental Divide at the top of Independence Pass and began the search for silver. In the summer of 1879 there were two log cabins and 12 inhabitants. Fifteen years later, in 1894, Aspen was the third-largest city in Colorado, with 12,000 people, paved streets, gas street lamps, a streetcar line two miles long, three banks, a post office, an opera house, the courthouse, a city hall, a jail, a luxury hotel, a hospital and three daily newspapers.

When the U.S. Congress went off the silver standard, silver lost its value and Aspen emptied almost as quickly as it had boomed. Miners and businessmen left the beautiful Roaring Fork River valley 8,000 feet high in the mountains, and the town went to sleep until the end of World War II.

That’s when Walter Paepke, chairman of the Chicago-based Container Corp. of America, decided the natural beauty of the valley made it ideal for a resort. He gathered snow-minded investors and built a ski resort. In 1949, Paepke made it a year-round resort by encouraging the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Music Institute to make the mountains ring with oratory and music in the summers.

As a result, like other places, Aspen is almost immobilized by its popularity. You can’t find a place to park. People circle the four-block radius of the Jerome Hotel, hoping someone will back out as they drive by.

The Aspen Institute draws scholars, students and spectators from all over the world. Jean Erck and I were among several hundred people who heard Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens speak. He was in town to chair an Aspen Institute law seminar. Stevens opened with a few remarks, then fielded questions. I have done the same on several occasions when I had absolutely no prepared remarks. Some asked questions that were really speeches on subjects dear to their hearts. These spokesmen were inclined to ramble, causing fellow audience members to grumble and ask, “What was the question?”

Students at the Aspen Music Institute are among the finest young musicians in the world. They are selected on the recommendations of teachers, professors and coaches.

Some were playing downtown on the edge of the mall, and Jean and I sat on a park bench and listened to the sounds of pure beauty sail in the clear, sunny air. The conductor, a tall, thin man with wisps of white hair, looked as if he had fallen from the pages of a Dickens novel.

The orchestra is composed of students and older musicians who occupy first chairs worldwide. Jean and I and a dozen of her Aspen friends are going to a concert if it doesn’t rain. The Music Institute orchestra plays in a huge tent that leaks like cheesecloth.

It has rained--and sometimes hailed--every morning since I have been here. I had almost forgotten that rain can make the world alive and exciting, fresh and clean.