Condoleezza Rice to perform at Aspen Music Fest

ASPEN — Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, and a former student at the Aspen Music Festival and School, will return to Aspen to perform at this summer’s Music Festival.

Rice will be featured, as a pianist and speaker, at a Words & Music event at 3 p.m. on Aug. 2, at the Benedict Music Tent, and will perform a Dvorák piano quintet with students from the Music Festival. The event is co-presented by the Music Festival and the Aspen Institute.

Rice was a piano student in Aspen for one summer in the early ‘70s, when she was a teenager and her family was living in Denver. The name “Condoleezza” is a musical term, derived from the Italian phrase meaning “with sweetness.”

According to a 2006 New York Times article, Rice, at the age of 15, performed a Mozart piece with the Denver Symphony, and currently plays regularly with a chamber group in Washington, D.C.

When cellist Yo-Yo Ma received a National Medal of the Arts in 2002, he was accompanied by Rice, with the duo playing a Brahms violin sonata, arranged for cello and piano.

Rice’s mother, Angelena, taught music in high school, and her maternal grandmother gave private piano lessons.

The topic of Rice’s talk has not been announced.

Tickets for the event are $60 and $30, and are available at aspenmusicfestival.com, or by calling 925-9042.