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Two music school students killed in car crash Monday

Jason Auslander
The Aspen Times
The tuba player, far right, Ben Darneille, and the trumpet player, in the middle, is Alex Greene. Both Aspen Music School students reportedly died Monday night in a car accident in Wyoming.
Facebook photo |

Two students from the Aspen Music Festival and School died Monday night in a car accident near Rock Springs, Wyoming, the festival’s president said Tuesday.

“It’s hit everyone here very hard,” Alan Fletcher said. “They were just super guys. Everybody loved them.”

Ben Darneille, 21, a tuba player, and Alex Greene, 23, who played the trumpet, were both members of the fellowship brass quintet Rendezvous Brass, according to a post on the music school’s Facebook page. The quintet played atop Aspen Mountain at the Sundeck and Harris Hall.



Darneille was from Rochester, Illinois, and attended DePaul University in Chicago, while Greene studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, said Laura Smith, a spokeswoman for the festival. Information on Greene’s hometown was not available Tuesday.

A phone message left after 5 p.m. Tuesday for a spokesman at the Wyoming Highway Patrol was not returned, so details about the accident were not available. Fletcher said all he knew was the accident occurred near Rock Springs. The two young men had just left Aspen after spending most of the summer in Aspen, Fletcher said.




Photos and remembrances posted on Darneille’s Facebook indicate that the two young men were close friends.

Fletcher said he knew Greene fairly well and that he played a brilliant trumpet solo Wednesday during a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 at the Aspen Music Tent that “made the whole piece.”

“Alex — just everybody loved him,” Fletcher said.

He said he’d met Darneille as well, and that he was an important member of the quintet.

jauslander@aspentimes.com