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Today

Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

The Festival’s focus on today’s music continues as world-renowned conductor and Festival composer-in-residence/co-curator John Adams takes the podium to lead his off-beat and grooving Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? with the extraordinary Jeremy Denk at the piano — listen for a second “detuned honky-tonk piano” to add its voice. Music Director Peter Oundjian conducts the final symphony by Christopher Rouse, which The New York Times called Rouse’s Sixth “a haunting and profound farewell” true to the composer’s character: “all of Mr. Rouse — contemplative elegy, rowdy playfulness, eclectic homage — is in this score.” In her Tumblebird Contrails, composer Gabriella Smith calls to mind the Pacific Ocean and “keening gulls, pounding surf, rush of approaching waves, sizzle of sand, and sea foam in receding tide.”

$25 – $75

Sibelius’ Second Symphony + Violinist Randall Goosby

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

“ Goosby plays like an angel with nothing to prove,” claims the L.A. Times. The youngest recipient ever to win the Sphinx Concerto Competition and an artist dedicated to the dynamic music of Black composers, violinist Randall Goosby joins the Festival to perform a scintillating work by Saint-Saëns and Florence Price’s sweeping Second Violin Concerto, lost to history until 2009. These showpieces are introduced by an orchestral work by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the arresting and achingly romantic Ballade that made the young composer an overnight sensation. The “energetic yet graceful” Ryan Bancroft (The Guardian), conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, joins the Festival to lead Sibelius’ sonorous Second Symphony; Sibelius once said of its first movement, “It is as if the Almighty had thrown down the pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to put them together.”

$25 – $75

Sibelius’ Second Symphony + Violinist Randall Goosby

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

“ Goosby plays like an angel with nothing to prove,” claims the L.A. Times.  The youngest recipient ever to win the Sphinx Concerto Competition and an artist dedicated to the dynamic music of Black composers, violinist Randall Goosby joins the Festival to perform a scintillating work by Saint-Saëns and Florence Price’s sweeping Second Violin Concerto, lost to history until 2009. These showpieces are introduced by an orchestral work by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the arresting and achingly romantic Ballade that made the young composer an overnight sensation. The “energetic yet graceful” Ryan Bancroft (The Guardian), conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, joins the Festival to lead Sibelius’ sonorous Second Symphony; Sibelius once said of its first movement, “It is as if the Almighty had thrown down the pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to put them together.”

$25 – $75
Young Concert Artist Albert Cano Smit photographed at Steinway Hall - classical pianist performing in Colorado

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 (previously Simone Dinnerstein)

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

“If you want to hear perfection, this is it,” says Music Director Peter Oundjian of Mozart’s final concerto, performed here by pianist Albert Cano Smit. Mozart is at his most majestic and most beautiful in his Symphony No. 39. Ryan Bancroft conducts this all-Mozart program, which begins with a dark and intense serenade for winds.

$25 – $75

Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

Mozart, Flute Quartet in D Major; Perkinson, Movement for String Trio; Dvořák, Terzetto in C Major; Brahms, Clarinet Quintet in B Minor

$25 – $65
Pianist Gabriela Montero to play Tchaikovsky concerto at the Colorado Music Festival

Prokofiev 5 + Gabriela Montero Plays Tchaikovsky

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov); Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1; Prokofiev, Symphony No. 5

$25 – $75
Pianist Gabriela Montero to play Tchaikovsky concerto at the Colorado Music Festival

Prokofiev 5 + Gabriela Montero Plays Tchaikovsky

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov); Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1; Prokofiev, Symphony No. 5

$25 – $75
John de Lancie

A Midsummer Night’s Dream with John de Lancie

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

Principal Guest Conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts a special Midsummer Night’s Dream. This performance pairs Mendelssohn’s lush score, which includes the instantly recognizable “Wedding March,” with a dramatic reading by actor John de Lancie (American Shakespeare Festival, TV’s Star Trek The Next Generation) to summon Shakespeare’s fairies, royalty, and fools in love. Mendelssohn penned Midsummer’s overture at age 17; Bizet was the same age when he wrote his Symphony in C, a surprisingly mature work, effervescent and full of contrasts. The program opens with a brand new orchestral arrangement of Jessie Montgomery’s vivid Starburst, which is, in her words, “a play on imagery of rapidly changing musical colors.”

$25 – $75

Musicians - Flavors of Russia: Tchaikovsky, Glinka & Borodin

Danish String Quartet

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

Purcell, Chaconne in G Minor (arr. Britten); Folk Music from the British Isles (arr. Danish String Quartet); Schubert, String Quartet 14 in D Minor

$25 – $65

Stravinsky’s Firebird + Clarinet Star Anthony McGill

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

The New York Times has praised clarinetist Anthony McGill for “his trademark brilliance, penetrating sound and rich character”; McGill’s musical charisma is a perfect match for Weber’s First Clarinet Concerto, which showcases the full range of the instrument. After intermission enjoy another gem for clarinet, the brief Rhapsody by Debussy — then listen for Debussy’s influence on an absolute icon: Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, a dramatic fairytale featuring a heroic prince, an evil sorcerer, and a powerful fire spirit. This fresh and thrilling concert opens with a world premiere commission by rising star composer Wang Jie, inspired by poet Su Dongpo’s reflections on China’s Mount Lu and her own experiences climbing Colorado’s Eldorado Canyon.

$25 – $75

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO

Leave it to Mahler to give us harrowing funeral marches shot through with blinding rays of hope. That is his epic Fifth Symphony: a masterpiece which, while not expressly telling a story, still whispers Mahler’s secrets about tragedy, joy, and love. Music Director Peter Oundjian closes the 2022 Festival with this dramatic journey through life, death, and everything in between. The Festival is honored to give the Colorado premiere of a co-commissioned fanfare by jazz great Wynton Marsalis.

$25 – $75

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