Since 1976, the Colorado Music Festival has dazzled classical music fans with stirring and passionate sets performed by a cross-section of skilled virtuosos. After keeping folks entertained last year with a number of virtual offerings, the long-running, multi-day event will make its awaited return to Chautauqua on July 1.
“I think it’s reasonable to say that this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Peter Oundjian, Colorado Music Festival’s music director. “It’s a great celebration of the joyous opportunity to witness a gathering of passionate music lovers who have been deprived of this experience for so long.”
When tickets initially went on sale, social distance guidelines were more rigid. Now, seats in the first five rows of Chautauqua Auditorium are available for purchase for all festival concerts.
While there are a number of ticketed shows running through Aug. 7, CMF also prides itself on making the revered art form accessible to all.
In partnership with the Arts in the Park series, The Ivalas Quartet — a group dedicated to showcasing works by underrepresented people of color — will perform a free concert at the Boulder Bandshell, on July 31, at 7 p.m. Registration is required.
“Designing a festival is always a fascinating experience,” Oundjian said. “Music lovers have many different preferences and the intent is to create a series of concerts with enough variety to excite people of all tastes.”
Making sure to stretch beyond highly-recognizable compositions by the classical masters, CMF has become a place where new artists shine and the subject matter of pieces are often layered.
This year’s festival features four world premieres by Joan Tower, Joel Thompson, Hannah Lash and Aaron Jay Kernis.
Kernis’s premiere “Elegy,” is a powerful tribute to the lives lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thompson’s premiere pays homage to the renowned writer and activist James Baldwin, author of “Notes of a Native Son,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and many others. Baldwin’s own words will be woven into the moving soundscape, making for a truly unique performance.
Understanding that not everyone will be able to make it to live shows, CMF will offer livestreams of seven performances. Tickets are $15 per performance. There are also options to purchase a variety of tiers to access all livestreams that start at $72.
Two shows that will be streamed and can also be enjoyed in person feature Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear, with the symphony, on July 8 and 9, at 7:30 p.m.
“The audience will experience a concerto that begins like a majestic organ in a cathedral, an operatic aria filled with drama, a whimsical fantasy and a wild wallop of a tarantella,” Goodyear said.
Tickets range from $48-$75.
Goodyear, an artist hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “one of the best pianists of his generation” was first drawn to music as a way to interact with others and express himself.
“I was a painfully shy kid of 3 years old when music spoke to me very deeply,” Goodyear said. “At school, playing the piano and performing songs that people knew would break the ice and make me more comfortable to say hello and make friends. It was such a fun and beautiful way to connect with people, and that was my ‘aha’ moment. Music, since then, has been my heartbeat.”
He is best known for performing all 32 Beethoven sonatas in a single day at various venues.
While Goodyear is a fan of Mozart and the greats, he also revels in a range of genres and his list of influences remains vast.
“Led Zeppelin, James Brown, anything old-school calypso, Ravi Shankar and Miles Davis are always on repeat,” Goodyear said.
On July 24, at Boulder JCC, folks will get to feast on peach white balsamic-braised chicken breast and enjoy the exquisite musicianship of cellist Alisa Weilerstein and marimbist Ji Su Jung as part of the Festival Gala. With several dining options, cocktails and special performances, it is sure to be a night of sophistication.
But not all the festivities are reserved for adults.
Returning to the festival will be the Maine-based troupe Really Inventive Stuff, a collective of musicians and actors that bring the joy and wonder of classical music to children with highly entertaining shows.
The vaudeville-inspired storytellers have proven to be a crowd favorite in previous years.
“It has been a long tradition at the festival to involve the younger generations in every possible way, so this is a continuation of that goal,” Oundjian said.
On July 3, at 11:30 a.m., “The Story of Babar” — a tale about a baby elephant’s journey out of the jungle and its eventual reign as king — will be performed. Tickets are $10.
“The July 3 concert is my first performance since the world started reopening and the Colorado Music Festival is a beautiful place to begin again,” said Michael Boudewyns, co-founder of Really Inventive Stuff. “I look forward to performing for families with the fabulously talented musicians and spending time with Alberto Gutierrez (CMF’s general manager) and the incredible CMF staff.”
When Boudewyns takes the stage at Chautauqua Auditorium in early July, it will be his 47th performance of “Babar.”
“I love that the story was a family creation,” Boudewyns said. “Babar simply began with a mother improvising a tale for her children, then their father illustrated it and today it’s the classic children’s book we all know.”
Never afraid to deliver quirk and whimsy, Really Inventive Stuff plans on implementing some not-so-conventional instruments into performances and will likely encourage some audience participation.
“‘The Toy Symphony’ is a fun composition that employs bird whistles, cranks and toy trumpets,” Boudewyns said. “For our performance, we also added an Austrian sound scientist named Professor Tympanium van Hammer zee Trumpeterclangor.”
New this year is the Robert Mann Chamber Music Series, named for Robert Mann, who was founding first violin of the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as a friend and mentor to Oundjian.
Performances by 2021 artist-in-residence Augustin Hadelich will take place on July 1, 2, 29 and 30.
Spread out over six weeks, CMF provides the perfect blend of never-before-heard works and timeless pieces that conjure nostalgia in listeners.
“Many people love to hear music being created today,” Oundjian said. “World premieres are always exciting, but even older music written by living composers has a significant place in many people’s hearts. There is so much great music written over the last several hundred years that it is a feast waiting to be experienced.”
With so much screen burn-out of last year and restrictions on in-person events, organizers see this year’s festival as being particularly special for music-starved attendees.
“I think the feeling of being present at a live concert and feeling the immediacy of the energy that comes not only from the stage, but from their fellow music lovers will stay in their memories for a long time,” Oundjian said.
