Aspen Art Museum

This event is at capacity. A limited number of standby tickets may be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Members get priority access.

Complimentary Silver Queen Gondola access starts at 6:30 PM

Performance begins at 7:30 PM

Please be prepared for cool, high altitude conditions, and wear appropriate footwear for walking on grass and rocky terrain.

Aspen ArtWeek reaches an apex with AUDIENCE PLANT 2024, a concert of original music by Michael Beharie, Lizzie Fitch, Ashland Mines, Aaron David Ross, and Ryan Trecartin, and performed at the top of Aspen Mountain. Featuring guest performers including Sam Gendel, Matthew Jamal, JK Kim, Jason Moran and the Aspen Music School’s Contemporary Ensemble, the live event merges a newly composed score of electronic and orchestral music with rollicking sonic improvisations. Between performances of the orchestrated tracks, the band will develop new songs in real time against the backdrop of towering pines and mountain peaks approaching dusk.

Music for Plants

The composition of songs was written by Trecartin in Athens, Ohio between 2017 and 2024 to be used as sound design in ongoing movie-making projects, as well as headphone music for gardeners and scores for plants and outdoor spaces. With Aaron David Ross and Michael Beharie, Trecartin and Ashland Mines combed through hundreds of digital tracks, making a selection of songs to arrange for live performance with acoustic instrumentation. Applying their knowledge of each instrument’s potential, Ross and Beharie craft playable mutations of Trecartin’s music with a poetic fidelity to source material. Location and the intricacies of how space, structures, and sonic attributes are used in social events is of great interest to Mines and Trecartin. Through their long standing collaboration, Mines and Trecartin map the conditions of an audience and spaces with choreographic qualities, foregrounding how the fluidity of these zones plays an important role in identity formation.



Music has been a foundational element of Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch’s artistic practices since they began making art together in the early 2000s, marrying synthetic sounds with organic noise, traditional instruments, foley and filmic soundscapes. The two artists share an interest in the sculptural qualities of film, theater and exhibition design, dismantling and reconfiguring language, objects, sounds and images to examine how social codes, identities and behaviors are processed. Trecartin and Fitch applied this philosophy to music making as they formed bands and experimented with nascent digital music production software, amassing a vast catalog of tracks that are now often integrated into the sculptural theaters, soundtracks and live events they create, articulating atmosphere. As such, sound design could be considered the connective tissue of their collaborative work.

The musicians and artists involved in AUDIENCE PLANT 2024 are drawn to the synesthetic possibilities of sound, with Fitch equating the composition of sonic loops and patterns to weaving textiles. The tracks performed in Aspen are characterized by compositional buoyancy and musical non sequiturs in which genres crash and merge into familiar, but ultimately unplaceable, sonic conditions. Elements of jazz, fusion, pop, foley, ambient noise, video game scores, sound effects, theme songs, outros, children’s music, and EDM beats blend into a cascade of shifting passages that keep listeners in an expectant state. Sounds grapple with one another, momentarily resolving into harmony only to return to a dueling timbre, mirroring the conversation patterns of friends and possible foes. As Trecartin notes, “audio has an amazing power to conjoin or hold seemingly unrelated ideas or things together from the standpoint of emotion and feeling.” Developed as a team, these new arrangements reflect a rejuvenated focus on the collective’s composition logic, extracting sounds from the screen and the archive and performing them en plein air.

An Ongoing Collaboration

The concert in Aspen builds upon past performances at the Walker Art Center (2018) and Park Avenue Armory (2016) in which many of the featured performers and composers have previously collaborated, including Jason Moran, one of Aspen Art Museum’s 2024 Honorees. The staging from Jason Moran and the Bandwagon’s 2018 performance at the Walker, entitled The Last Jazz Fest, is repurposed here at 11,212 feet as an environment conceived by Fitch, Mines and Trecartin, integrated into the small meadow near the mountain’s new Hero’s lift. Between performances of the orchestrated tracks, the band will develop new songs in real time against the backdrop of towering pines and mountain peaks approaching dusk.

Additional Information

Please prepare for cool, high altitude conditions, and wear appropriate footwear for walking on grass and rocky terrain. The Sundeck at the top of Aspen Mountain will be open for food and beverage service as well as restroom access from 6:30–8:30 PM. On the occasion of AUDIENCE PLANT 2024, the artists have made merch and a special edition wet-grass-proof summer concert blanket, which will be available at the top of the mountain.

For questions related to accessibility, please email artweek@aspenartmuseum.org.

AUDIENCE PLANT 2024 is organized by Eliza Ryan, Curator-At-Large, and Daniel Merritt, Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Sabrina Piersol, Producer, and Simone Krug, Curator. Organized in collaboration with the Aspen Music Festival & School. Made possible by the support and collaboration with Aspen One and Six Productions.

Special thanks to Robert Rosenkranz and Alexandra Munroe, and the Rosenkranz Foundation.

About the AMFS

Founded in 1949, the Aspen Music Festival and School is regarded as one of the top classical music festivals in the United States, noted both for its concert programming and its musical training of mostly young-adult music students. The eight-week summer season includes hundreds of classical music events: concerts by four orchestras, recitals, chamber music, operas, classes, lectures, and family programs. In the winter, the AMFS presents recitals and robust music education programs for local youth and families.

About Aspen One

Aspen One is the parent company of Aspen Skiing Company, Aspen Hospitality and ASPENX. The mountain division, Aspen Skiing Company owns and operates four mountains—Snowmass, Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk—creating premium, sustainable and transformative experiences in recreation, culture, and nature. In addition, the company runs the award-winning Aspen Snowmass Ski & Snowboard School, Four Mountain Sports rental and retail shops, and a collection of sustainably-sourced on-mountain food & beverage outlets.  Aspen Hospitality owns and operates a portfolio of hotels and residences including the Five-Star, Five-Diamond The Little Nell; and its affiliated Residences at The Little Nell, both at the base of Aspen Mountain; as well as the Limelight Hotel Aspen and Limelight Hotel Snowmass in Colorado; the Limelight Hotel Ketchum, Idaho and the Limelight Denver. Currently in development are two additional Limelight Hotels in Mammoth, California, and Boulder, Colorado. Aspen Hospitality also owns and operates the ASPENX Mountain Club, Snowmass Mountain Club. ASPENX is a contemporary retail and experience brand that features the first performance product line designed by a ski resort. ASPENX also offers premium retail, elevated rental equipment, and exceptional food and wine experiences both on- and off-mountain.  Aspen One leverages its influence across all its business units to advance climate action, community engagement and racial justice. For more information on Aspen One visit www.aspen.com. 

Image credits: Ryan Trecartin at the piano. Spring 2024. Photo: Ashland Mines; Aaron David Ross, Ryan Trecartin with Enya and Michael Beharie. Spring 2024, NYC. Photo by Ashland Mines; Ashland Mines, Lizzie Fitch, and Jason Moran at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, 2018