Colorado Chautauqua Auditorium Boulder CO

The Colorado Music Festival is a

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festival in

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Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

. It was founded in 1976 by the

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-born conductor and violinist, Giora Bernstein and presents an annual summer season of concerts in Boulder's Chautauqua Auditorium performed by the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra as well as visiting artists and ensembles. The festival runs from late June to early August with a focus on orchestral and chamber music. Orchestra members representing many of North America's best professional orchestras come to Colorado to participate. Its current music director is Peter Oundjian.

History

The festival began life as the Colorado Chamber Orchestra founded in 1976 by Giora Bernstein, the newly appointed head of the

conducting Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance, such as an orchestral or choral concert. It has been defined as "the art of directing the simultaneous performance of several players or singers by the use of gesture." The primary duti ...

program at

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University of ...

. In 1977, its first series of concerts were given in Boulder's First Presbyterian Church. Guest soloists in the five-concert initial season included the soprano Judith Raskin, clarinetist

Richard Stoltzman Richard Leslie Stoltzman (born July 12, 1942) is an American clarinetist. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he spent his early years in San Francisco, California, and Cincinnati, Ohio, graduating from Woodward High School in 1960. Today, Stoltzman is pa ...

, cellist Leonard Rose and violinist Sidney Harth. Following restoration work in 1978, the Chautauqua Auditorium, a national historic landmark, became the festival's home. Its inaugural Chautauqua season brought the festival the first of five

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

Adventurous Programming Awards. On Giora Bernstein's retirement in 2000, the American conductor, Michael Christie was appointed music director. After he stepped down, Jean-Marie Zeitouni was appointed to the position in 2014. Under Christie's directorship, the festival's ticket sales increased by 42 percent and more new works were added to the programming such as the 2005 world premiere of Mark Grey's ''Pursuit''. He also initiated Intermission Insights, where guest artists come back onstage after the first half of their performance for a ten-minute conversation with Christie about their performance followed by questions from the audience. In 2009, the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts merged with the Colorado Music Festival to become its Education Division. As of January 2019, Peter Oundjian is the music director for the Colorado Music Festival.

Premieres

Regional and world premieres at the festival include: * William Thomas McKinley's ''Concerto for clarinet and orchestra'' (world premiere, 1980) *

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's ''Dreamtime'' (North American premiere, 1983) *

Krzysztof Penderecki Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best known works include '' Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'', Symphony No. 3, his '' St Luke Passion'', ''Polish Requiem'', ' ...

's ''Concerto for viola and orchestra'', (North American premiere, 1995) * Mark Grey's ''Pursuit'' (world premiere, 2005) *

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for i ...

's '' Sun Rings'' (Colorado premiere, 2006) *Mark Grey's ''Elevation'' (world premiere, 2006) *Mark Grey's ''Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio'' (Colorado premiere, 2008) * Behzad Ranjbaran's ''Seven Passages'', the third part of his '' Persian Trilogy'' (Colorado premiere, 2009) * Tan Dun's ''Pipa Concerto'' (Colorado premiere, 2009) * Aaron Jay Kernis's ''Elegy (for those we've lost)'', (world premiere, 2021) * Hannah Lash's ''Forestallings'' (world premiere, 2021) *

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's ''A New Day'' (world premiere, 2021) * Joel Thompson's ''To Awaken the Sleeper'' (world premiere, 2021) *

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' ''Dark Patterns'' (world premiere, 2022) * Wang Jie's ''Flying on the Scaly Backs of Our Mountains'' (world premiere, 2022) *

Wynton Marsalis Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awar ...

' ''Herald, Holler and Hallelujah!'' (Colorado premiere, 2022)

References

Sources

*Blotner, Linda Solow
''The Boston Composers Project: A bibliography of contemporary music''
MIT Press, 1983. *Colorado Music Festival
Press release: "Colorado Music Festival and Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts Announce Plans to Merge"
13 April 2009. *MacMillan, Kyle
"Christie's back at home helming Colorado Music fest"
''

Denver Post ''The Denver Post'' is a daily newspaper and website published in Denver, Colorado. As of June 2022, it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 ...

'', 30 June 2008 *Siddons, James
''Toru Takemitsu: a bio-bibliography''
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. *Shulgold, Marc

''

Rocky Mountain News The ''Rocky Mountain News'' (nicknamed the ''Rocky'') was a daily newspaper published in Denver, Colorado, United States, from April 23, 1859, until February 27, 2009. It was owned by the E. W. Scripps Company from 1926 until its closing. As ...

'', 12 June 1996 (accessed 13 December 2009 via subscription) *Fantz, Christy

''

Daily Camera The ''Daily Camera'' is a newspaper in Boulder, Colorado, United States. It is owned by Prairie Mountain Publishing, a division of Digital First Media. History Frederick P. Johnson and Bert Bell founded the weekly ''Boulder Camera'' in 1890, ...

'', 31 January 2019 *Allen, David (2022-08-05)
"A Road Trip to Sample America's Many, Many Music Festivals"
''The New York Times''.

ISSN An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs a ...

0362-4331.

External links

Official websiteColorado Music Festival's official YouTube channel
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