With Sadness, AMFS Notes the Passing of Kay Bucksbaum

With great sorrow, and yet also with an even greater sense of gratitude, we acknowledge that Kay Bucksbaum has died this week. Kay was peacefully at her home in Chicago, after a long illness which she bore with her accustomed wisdom, humor, and loving kindness.

Kay first came to Aspen in 1953. She was with her new husband Matthew, and, with her lifelong love for music and her natural inquisitive nature, she had found that there was a new festival beginning in a little town at the end of a mountain valley.

Kay and Matthew loved what they found, and their lives became intertwined with Aspen in a way that has benefitted countless people over multiple generations.

Kay and Matthew loved people. They loved enterprise. They loved beauty, and these loves came together in their historic support of the Aspen Music Festival and School. To describe what their contributions have meant would be worthy of a book, but let us summarize it in this way: they loved life, and music, and family, and Aspen, and they left everyone who they touched with something precious.

Kay cuts the ribbon at the official dedication of the Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus in 2016.

Among all the precious gifts Kay gave, the greatest was her attention. She was wise, demanding, and caring. She became chair of our Board at a critical time, knowing how great were the stakes, and she brought us into the future with powerful insight and commitment. It is truly a pleasure and honor to say how much we owe her, and how much of a blessing her memory is to us.

Kay and Matthew at the celebration of the opening of Harris Concert Hall in 1993.

From left to right: Music Director Robert Spano, Kay Bucksbaum, President and CEO Alan Fletcher.

If you would like to make a gift in Kay's memory, you can do so by clicking the button below.

Read more in the Des Moines Register here.