Bravo! Vail, Episode 4: These moments

[Being the fourth and last in a series of dispatches from the 2023 Bravo! Vail Music Festival, attended by yours truly as part of a delegation from the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA)]

For the MCANA collective the final day at Bravo! Vail (Friday July 14th) began at 12:30 pm with a session with composer Anna Clyne, whose “This Moment” had its world premiere that night by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Unofficial activities started much earlier as the early risers in our group (i.e., not me) decided to take the scenic gondola ride to the top of Vail Mountain. At a little over 10,000 ft. (a good 2K above Vail) both the air and the views are rarefied and well worth the ticket price, as I would discover later in the day. One of our number actually walked up (there are multiple hiking trails for the more adventurous), but then he’s considerably younger than the rest of us.