The 15th annual Aspen Fringe Festival arrives at the Wheeler Opera House this weekend and will incorporate musical theater into its two-night JuneFest for the first time.
Taking place at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, AFFs JuneFest will once again bring a series of multidisciplinary performances to Wheelers stage dance, film, opera and musical theater addition with this year’s festival centered on the musical works of award-winning composer Craig Bohmler.
David Ledingham, founder and executive director of AFF, said that following the success of JuneFest last year, when the two-part festival first focused on the works of a single artist , Tony Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens, he wanted to replicate that. again this year and do it around artistry the Fringe Festival has never done before.
I just feel like it gives people an understanding of who the artist really is, his sensibility and the themes he has in his works,” Ledingham said. And it’s so creative that it allows people to have a much deeper experience and a lot of it is new work and work they’ve never seen, especially this year.
While people may be familiar with some of Bohmlers’ musicals, Ledingham continued, so audience members can see the different avenues and areas of composers’ art and in this two-day in-depth Fringe festival format , he is inspiring, he said.
Born and raised in Texas, Bohmler learned the piano as a youth and composed music as a teenager. The American composer specializes in opera and musical theatre. Besides four operas and 12 musicals, he wrote numerous concertos, wind ensembles, choral and symphonic works.
Currently based in Phoenix, Arizona, Bohmler was Composer-in-Residence at Arizona Opera from 2013-2017, where his opera Riders of the Purple Sage premiered, and he received the 2019 Arizona Governor’s Arts Award for Individual Artist. .
Bohmler also has connections with Aspen. He spent a few years at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he really formed and cut his teeth as a young composer, Ledingham said.
Back in the Valley for this year’s JuneFest, Bohmler has been working with the local artists involved in the AFF production, and the composer will also be performing his own music live at Wheeler this weekend.
As in previous years, JuneFest is divided into two parts. A Friday night performance of the musical, Enter the Guardsman, is the humorous tale of an actor who, convinced the flower is out of the marital rose, decides to disguise himself as a guard in order to prove his wife’s infidelity actress.
Based on a play by the famous and controversial Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnr, and with music by Bohmler, lyrics by Marion Adler and a book by Scott Wensworth, Enter the Guardsman won first prize in the International Musical of the Year competition and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best New Musical in 1998.
The AFF iteration, directed by Brad Moore, features local actors Franz Alderfer, Meredith Daniel, Lyon Hamil, Sally Maxwell, Mike Monroney, Isabella Poschman and Ledingham, who himself has performed the musical twice before at the regional, he noted.
It’s just really funny, the music is amazing and we’ll be doing what they call a concert version of the show, because it’s just a performance, but it’s going to be a pretty detailed production,” Ledingham said. And the other part of that, which is really cool, is that Craig will be playing the piano, playing his own music that night.
Saturday will unfold like a musical salon, during which a cast of local and guest artists will perform scenes and excerpts from Bohmler’s body of musical theater work, including Gunmetal Blues, an old detective, a movie-like story black, said Ledingham and Mountain Days, which is the story of naturalist John Muir (whose words are actually carved into the rocks of the John Denver Sanctuary in Aspen).
Plus, the cast will perform songs from other Bohmlers musicals, like A Beautiful Place, All the More to Love, Gretel and Hansel and more.
There really are a lot of choices, Ledingham said. And it’s not just songs, but it’s actually kind of like scenes from these different musicals that include a song, but it really gives you an idea of these different musicals that [Bohmler] wrote.
The lounge party will also include a dance performance by the New York-based Soulskin Dance troupe. Titled Blue Eclipse, the multimedia dance piece, choreographed by Adrianna Thompson (Ledingham’s wife), features dancers Itzkan Barbosa and Federico Garcia and combines Jaco Stydom’s film with nuanced musical composition by Bohmler.
In addition to live performances throughout the Saturday show, there will be screenings of clips from the Emmy Award-winning film, Riders of the Purple Sage: The Making of a Western Opera, for which Bohmler composed the music.
So two nights, two very, very different separate shows and that’s why we really encourage people to buy a Fringe pass, to come to both events, Ledingham said, because it’s just, you know, you don’t get that anywhere.
Ledingham, an award-winning actor who has starred in a handful of musicals and was also part of the final season of Crystal Palaces, said when he founded AFF 15 years ago his brainchild was to create a multidisciplinary festival around great works that are a little more on the fringe, he says.
While this year marks the first musical theater themed festival, it is a discipline that Ledingham has celebrated in this valley since the days of Crystal Palace.
One of the things about Aspen and this valley is that there are so many talented singers, and in part thanks to Crystal Palace, there’s no doubt about that, Ledingham said. Crystal Palace’s influence on this valley has been phenomenal, and there are so many amazing singers here, and I wanted to create a platform for them at the Fringe Festival to contribute to this season, to this JuneFest.
AFFs JuneFest will take place at the Wheeler Opera House on Friday and Saturday. A festival pass costs $78 and includes admission to both nights. Single tickets to Enter the Guardsman or the Musical Lounge Night are $48. Tickets can be purchased at aspenshowtix.com.