As the 75th season of the Aspen Music Festival kicks off next week, it’ll be interesting to see what, if any, fallout there is from the renaming of the music tent. As one who, in my misspent youth, jumped a BMX bike off the stage, skateboarded on the roof, got chased from the grounds by caretakers and then — incredibly — became a paid employee on the tent crew, I feel an oddly vested interest in the now somewhat tepid topic.
I still call the newly christened “Klein Music Tent” what I always have — simply, “The Tent,” much as I refer to the Invesco Field or whatever they call Mile High these days as “Mile High.”
What’s in a name? As far as names go in Aspen, there’s always fertile history behind the nomenclature. Call a place something else, add or drop an “s” or pronounce it wrong, and you’ll likely be at the business end of a public browbeating that’ll leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth for days, if not longer.
Over the years there have been numerous docudramas regarding the renaming or mislabeling of places and things around Aspen. There was the kerfuffle surrounding the renaming of Buttermilk to Tiehack that lasted all of a fleeting ski season. The one that really gets a burr underneath my saddle blanket is the grotesque renaming on Tiehack of “Ego Hill” to “Eagle Hill.” Don’t even get me started on the “Highlands” Bowl renaming debacle. Just so you know what kind of monster you’re dealing with, I accidentally — or perhaps reflexively — called Hero’s “Pandora’s” last week.
Heck, I even know people who’ve changed their own names. As someone who has a name that’s widely open for interpretation, I unfortunately can relate.
Sometimes I wish I’d just been named “Bill” or “Gary” or “Kyle” or “Mike.” Even “Joe” would do. My nickname “Lo” is short for “Lorenzo.” I’ve oddly been able to use my unordinary forename to my advantage. Some know me by one and not the other. I can be anonymous, or two people at once, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. My split personalities and evil twin are both equally delighted by this duality.
The Klein Music Tent doesn’t have that luxury, nor will it ever. Michael Klein? Never met him. I would’ve loved to have been in the room when the board arrived at the controversial decision. There were public cries to rescind the naming, but the Music Associates of Aspen has held pat. I heard what I felt was a good compromise; to rename the campus the Klein Campus, and keep the tent the Benedict/Bayer Tent. (And wasn’t the name “Teague” in there at some point?) The bottom line is that everything in the world of nonprofits — a pervasive ecosystem in this town — comes down to fundraising.
In retrospect, the music-tent name change felt like a slap in the face to the Benedict family whom I do know, and came at a very inauspicious time when some townsfolk felt like they were losing a battle or being left behind. Those sentiments of defeat are still raw and scabby from what I can tell. I’m curious to see if locals are less likely to contribute money to the MAA this summer or if attendance will be down. To me, the rechristening was an egregious example of the ridiculousness of naming rights and name changes in general, but to me it’s already water under the Grindlay Bridge.
Will there be any creative local pushback, like there used to be? Perhaps a rolling edible protest by an irreverent group calling themselves the “Benedict Brunchers” out on the lawn will materialize, eating the loudest foods possible. Every Sunday they’ll show up and chow down on the most obnoxious spreads, like tortilla chips in crinkly bags, apples, corn nuts, carrots and “snap” peas, or Pringles with cans of spray cheese; every course will be accented by the “pssscht!” opening of cheap beer cans. Kazoos? A drum circle? Anything’s possible in Aspen.
I rebelled in a peculiar fashion by going to the tent grounds with a rake and some organic fertilizer to beautify my nook of the “Karetsky” Lawn for lazing about and listening to free classical music. As a former employee of the summer MAA “tent crew,” that’s how I’ve protested against the name change — by improving the grounds. I was surprised at how unkempt and dry the lawn was, and how much leftover fall and spring cleanup there still was to do around the tent.
Any form of mutiny against the MAA at this point in the movement only hurts the students. They’re the actual stars of the music festival each summer.
One of my favorite things to do is host a music student dinner at my house each summer, just like my mom used to do. It’s the most…
Read More: The music tent’s identity crisis | Opinion