Bravo! Vail Music Festival

Photo Courtesy of Zach Mahone

When Anne-Marie McDermott looks at the 39th season announcement of Bravo! Vail—her final as artistic director—the emotion that rises first is not nostalgia. It’s exhilaration.

“I think it’s going to be an extraordinary, really exciting celebratory season, which is exactly what I wanted,” she says.

That sense of joyful anticipation defines McDermott’s 16-year tenure in Vail. Rather than stepping away quietly, she has designed a finale of rare ambition: performing all five Beethoven piano concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields; presenting Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; premiering a major new work written by Aaron Jay Kernis in her honor; and offering a sweeping, free traversal of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas at the Vail Interfaith Chapel.

It is not a wind-down. It’s a crescendo.

Photo Courtesy of Bravo! Vail Music Festival

A Notebook of Dreams

Before she ever led Bravo! Vail, McDermott spent a weekend drafting what she calls a “fantasy season.” She kept a notebook filled with aspirations—ideas that felt almost audacious at the time.

“The No. 1 thing on my list,” she recalls, “was to make Vail an international hotbed for musicians. A place they wanted to come because they felt the love and the joy here.”

Sixteen summers later, she believes that vision has been realized.

Today, Bravo! Vail is the only festival in North America to host four of the world’s leading orchestras in a single season. Nearly 60,000 audience members attend each summer. Musicians return year after year not only for the prestige, but also for the community.

McDermott is quick to credit the late founding executive director, John Giovando, who had the original vision to bring major orchestras to the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater when the audience was smaller than the ensemble onstage. “I walked into that. What a gift,” she says.

Her contribution was cultivation. “I learned early on that you plant seeds,” she explains. “You don’t force something to happen. You build consensus. You build momentum.” That patient leadership led to new chamber orchestra residencies, immersive composer-focused series, and the beloved Piano Fellows program, inviting emerging pianists to spend a summer embedded in the festival’s artistic life.

When she revisits her original notebook, she sees almost every dream fulfilled. “I’m leaving with a really good feeling of accomplishment,” she says. “No regrets.”

Photo Courtesy of Sophie Zhai

Beethoven as a Farewell

If this season has a spine, it is Beethoven.

With the Academy of St Martin in the Fields—widely considered one of the world’s finest chamber orchestras—McDermott will perform and direct all five Beethoven concertos from the keyboard. There will be no conductor on the podium. Between passages at the piano, she will cue the orchestra herself.

“It’s like climbing Mount Everest,” she says with a laugh. “But I can’t imagine a more meaningful way to close out my time with Bravo!”

Her relationship with Beethoven has deepened over decades. “When I was a kid, I didn’t particularly like him,” she admits. “Now I feel much closer to his language. It’s an evolving understanding—and that’s exciting.”

The programming also anticipates 2027, the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death. “Why not celebrate before everyone else does?” she says.

Beyond the concertos, McDermott has organized a free series at the Vail Interfaith Chapel presenting all 32 piano sonatas over eight July concerts—an undertaking no other American festival is attempting this summer.

Nearly half of Bravo’s 60 concerts are free, a point of pride for McDermott. For her, accessibility is not obligation; it’s joy. “It’s ridiculously fun to bring music throughout the valley,” she says. “The community gives so much to us.”

Photo Courtesy of Tom Cohen

Expanding the Festival’s Voice

Under McDermott’s leadership, Bravo! Vail broadened its artistic identity. This summer marks the Dallas Symphony’s first-ever opera performance at the festival: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in concert version, led by its music director, Fabio Luisi.

“Everything I’ve done has been intentional,” McDermott says. “If you have one of the great opera conductors on the planet, you give him the opportunity to bring opera.”

She also launched the Symphonic Commissioning Project, ensuring that living composers stand alongside the masters. “All music was once new,” she says simply. “What would the world be without Beethoven?”

This summer, she premieres Prayer for the Living by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kernis—a surprise commission in her honor, commissioned by Bravo! Vail. “It’s five movements, about 25 minutes,” she says. “It’s so deeply meaningful to me.”

For McDermott, premieres are communal adventures—shared discoveries between composer, performer and audience. Listeners experience a piece together for the very first time, knowing no one else in the world has heard it before. Conversations spill into intermission, curiosity sparked and perspectives exchanged, and the composer steps onstage not as an abstraction, but as a living, breathing artist. “It’s exciting,” she says. “It opens up dialogue and invites you in. It’s a privilege and a responsibility to have these conversations when there’s new work being performed.”

Collaboration and the Next Chapter

The celebratory tone extends beyond Beethoven. McDermott also will perform Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos with legendary pianist Yefim Bronfman and the New York Philharmonic. She’ll close the season’s Classically Uncorked series with a “piano bash” alongside Gregory Anderson, Elizabeth Roe and Anton Nel—two evenings of exuberant, multi-piano repertoire at the Vail Golf Clubhouse.

“I wanted to end with sheer joy,” she says. “There will be tears. But I think they’ll be happy tears.”

Despite persistent questions about “retirement,” McDermott laughs at the notion. At 62, she continues to perform more than 100 concerts a year, with engagements in South America and Europe and a major tour in Spain ahead. She plans to expand mentoring initiatives and launch a piano seminar for young artists, as well as lead a long-running festival series in Ocean Reef, Fla.

“I’m not retiring,” she says. “It’s a new chapter.”

Photo Courtesy of Tom Cohen

What Endures

What will she miss most? The sheer abundance of music each summer. The friendships. The mountains in July. And, she adds warmly, the Little Diner in Lionshead Village and its owners, Brian and Peggy Little.

If someone writes about her tenure 20 years from now, she hopes they note that the Vail community feels ownership of Bravo! Vail—that the pride is mutual. She hopes they mention the Piano Fellows program, the Symphonic Commissioning Project, the Immersive Experences series. And above all, the joy.

Every August, she says, staff members look at one another and declare, “Best summer ever.” “And truly,” McDermott reflects, “that’s exactly how it has felt. One great summer after another.”

For an artist who once wondered whether she could make it through a three-year contract, 16 years later the verdict is clear: mission accomplished—and celebrated in full voice.

Bravo! Vail is found at 2271 N. Frontage Road W, Suite C, Vail. 

970-827-5700

bravovail.org