American Academy of Arts and Sciences Welcomes Aspen Music Festival's President

Alan Fletcher has been named a 2025 Academy member alongside over 200 other leaders across numerous disciplines 

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recognizes outstanding leaders in the respective fields who examine new ideas, address issues of importance, and collaborate “to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”

Alan Fletcher, who serves as the president and CEO of Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival and School, has been appointed among the 2025 members, including visionaries in academia, the arts, industry, policy, research, and science. 

Previously, Fletcher served as Professor and Head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University, and as Professor, Dean, and Provost of Boston’s New England Conservatory.

In addition to lecturing nationally and internationally on music and its social importance, he has written for Gramophone magazine and appeared in numerous publications, including Sonus, The Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Symphony magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. 

As a composer, his music includes more than 200 works in all traditional classical forms, which are recorded on Albany and Exton Records and published by Boosey & Hawkes and Subito.

Currently, he serves on the boards of the Aspen Institute, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the International Festival for Contemporary Piano. He is a member of the University of Chicago Music Visiting Committee plus has served on the boards of the Pittsburgh Opera and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Having earned degrees from Princeton University and The Juilliard School, Fletcher also attended the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. 

In addition to Fletcher, the nearly 250 Academy members in 2025 include filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer Ava DuVernay; actor, producer, and humanitarian Danny Glover; attorney and playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle; novelist Amy Tan; and Kenny Leon of the Roundabout Theatre Company. 

The induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2025.

“These new members’ accomplishments speak volumes about the human capacity for discovery, creativity, leadership, and persistence. They are a stellar testament to the power of knowledge to broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding,” said Academy President Laurie L. Patton. “We invite every new member to celebrate their achievement and join the Academy in our work to promote the common good.”

“Our newly elected members have demonstrated expertise and leadership of astonishing breadth and impact,” added Chair of the Board Goodwin Liu, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. “We look forward to engaging their diverse talents and experiences through Academy initiatives that bring interdisciplinary inquiry and unfettered pursuit of knowledge to bear on our society's greatest challenges.”

Past Academy members include Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jennifer Doudna, John Legend, Xuedong Huang, and more.