Upcoming Events

2025 Festival highlights include performances by pianist Hélène Grimaud, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, and classical guitarist Xuefei Yang; the world premiere of a new saxophone concerto by Joan Tower; a multi-concert celebration of Ravel’s 150th birthday; and more, all with the help of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra and some of the world’s most accomplished soloists.

 

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 & Symphony No. 3

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO, United States

Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is famous for being one of the most fiendishly difficult pieces ever composed for the instrument. Pianist Nicolai Lugansky, one of the preeminent Rachmaninoff interpreters of our time, performs here as part of his global tour celebrating the composer’s 150th birthday. While this program celebrates the gems that Rachmaninoff composed during his time in America, his moody and staggeringly beautiful Third Symphony also hints at the exiled composer’s homesickness for his native Russia.

$18 – $75

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 & Symphony No. 3

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO, United States

Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is famous for being one of the most fiendishly difficult pieces ever composed for the instrument. Pianist Nicolai Lugansky, one of the preeminent Rachmaninoff interpreters of our time, performs here as part of his global tour celebrating the composer’s 150th birthday. While this program celebrates the gems that Rachmaninoff composed during his time in America, his moody and staggeringly beautiful Third Symphony also hints at the exiled composer’s homesickness for his native Russia.

$18 – $75

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4 & Symphonic Dances

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO, United States

In our second program celebrating the music Rachmaninoff wrote while living in America, the Orchestra performs his final composition: Symphonic Dances, a three-movement suite featuring a frantic dance, a restless waltz, and a final flourish of triumph. Lauded Rachmaninoff interpreter Nicolai Lugansky joins the Orchestra for the composer’s capricious Fourth Piano Concerto, a work of daring imagination, as well as his romantic Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which proved an instant success for the composer.

$18 – $75

JACK Quartet: New York Stories

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO, United States

The 2023 Robert Mann Chamber Series opens with the esteemed JACK Quartet. Hailed by The New York Times as “our leading new-music foursome,” the JACK Quartet maintains an unwavering commitment to giving voice to underheard composers. In the quartet’s New York Stories program, “Two masters of New York's downtown heyday, Philip Glass and John Zorn, bring stylistically divergent visions: a rollicking, romantic ride through a maze of patterns in Glass' epic String Quartet No. 5, and a peek into the catacombs in Manhattan's Upper West Side from John Zorn who brings medieval mystery to contemporary America. Caleb Burhans leads the listener in a healing ritual of absolution in Contritus, while Caroline Shaw pays homage to the father of the string quartet, Josef Haydn, in her Entr'acte. Morton Feldman finally reminds us of the pattern and structure all around us. New York: a city of Byzantine systems and countless ideas that defies tidy summary, but always fascinates and excites continued exploration.”

$18 – $65

John Corigliano: Living Legend

Chautauqua Auditorium 900 Baseline Road, Boulder, CO, United States

The Festival is honored to welcome none other than Pulitzer Prize-winning John Corigliano as 2023 composer-in-residence. Conducted by Music Director Peter Oundjian, this retrospective program examines three stages of Corigliano’s vast career, beginning with his pastoral Gazebo Dances. Corigliano penned the song cycle One Sweet Morning in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the events of 9/11, borrowing text from four poems of varying intensity and ultimately ending with, as he explains, “the dream of a world without war – an impossible dream, perhaps, but certainly one worth dreaming.” The tender words of these poems are performed here by the highly sought-after mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. Corigliano’s most recent work is Triathlon, written for guest saxophonist Timothy McAllister, who returns to the Chautauqua stage after dazzling Festival audiences in 2022. Triathlon demonstrates McAllister’s musical athleticism in three dynamic movements which feature in turn soprano, alto, and baritone saxophone.

$18 – $75