photo by Lynn Goldsmith
Alan Fletcher
President & Partner
Alan Fletcher is an accomplished scholar, composer, and arts leader. He serves as president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School. Alan previously served as professor and head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University, and as professor, dean, and provost of New England Conservatory. Born in Riverside, New Jersey, he earned his baccalaureate at Princeton University, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. He earned a master’s degree and doctorate at The Juilliard School as a Danforth graduate fellow, where he received the Irving Berlin Fellowship and the Alexandre Gretchaninoff Prize. Alan attended the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, and he has been a frequent fellow at the MacDowell Colony.
Alan’s leadership activities have included chairing the 1997 Salzburg Global Seminar Music for a New Millennium: The Classical Genre in Contemporary Society, which convened 70 distinguished musical leaders from around the world in Mozart’s birthplace. Fletcher lectures nationally and internationally on music and its social importance and has delivered keynote addresses to the National Association of Schools of Music, ClassicalNEXT in Vienna, the Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion, the Shanghai International Arts Festival, and many more.
Fletcher has contributed articles and opinion pieces to numerous publications including the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Symphony magazine, Gramophone magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Sonus: Journal of Global Music, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and others.
Alan studied composition with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, and Paul Lansky and piano with Jacob Lateiner and Robert Helps. He has won numerous composing awards and received commissions from the National Dance Institute, the Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Nashua Symphony, National Gallery of Art, Boston Celebrity Series, Duquesne University, New York Camerata, and other noted ensembles, organizations, and soloists. Alan’s music includes more than 200 works in all traditional classical forms. His music is recorded on Albany and Exton Records and published by Boosey & Hawkes and Subito.
Fletcher has served on many boards, panels, juries, seminars, and committees, including the boards of the Aspen Institute, Aspen Science Center, Aspen Chamber Resort Association, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Pittsburgh Opera, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the International Festival for Contemporary Piano, and is an Advisor for Advisory Board for the Arts. Most recently, Fletcher was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Class of 2025.