by Thomas Mayo
The Colorado Music Festival takes place in a strikingly scenic setting at the foot of Boulder’s Flatirons, about 30 miles northwest of Denver. Its five-week season julio 9-Aug. 9 is presented within the Colorado Chautauqua, a National Historic Landmark where cottages and lodges surround an auditorium built in 1898. The Chautauqua movement brought education, recreation, and cultural programs together in summer communities; here, much of that original pattern survives. Musicians and audience members cross the same lawns and paths throughout the day, often falling naturally into conversation before and after performances.
The auditorium — often likened to a kind of oversized attic — is a vast wooden structure with exposed framing, considerable height, and small openings along the sides that leave it unusually porous to the outside world. Though enclosed, it admits birdsong, breezes, and the changing evening light. With no air-conditioning and only large fans suspended overhead, heat gathers beneath the roof; handheld fans become cherished accessories. The physical discomfort is a small price to pay for a remarkably clear, lively acoustic, intimate enough for solo wind playing to carry naturally.
“They bring out a certain kind of inspiration in each other,” music director Peter Oundjian said of the musicians who assemble there each summer. Most spend more than 40 weeks a year with their home orchestras. At the Colorado festival, they find new stand partners and encounter players whose habits may be quite different from their own. “The playing is so energized,” Oundjian said, describing the festival as a chance for the musicians to recharge.
I spoke with the conductor on a Sábado, after the second of two performances of the same full-orchestra program. Each week, the Jueves-Viernes pairing forms the festival’s symphonic backbone; on Domingo, members of the ensemble return in chamber-orchestra formation.
Colorado Music Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer. Its collective bargaining agreement provides for a core roster of at least 78 musicians, while rotations and the additional forces required for larger scores bring the number employed over the five-week season to approximately 120. The players come from orchestras across the United States, creating a national ensemble whose personnel shift from one summer to the next.
The organization’s work extends well beyond the summer festival through the Center for Musical Arts, its year-round community music school in nearby Lafayette. Founded in 1995 and merged with the festival in 2009, the center now provides lessons and classes to more than 550 students each week, regardless of age, experience, or financial means. The combined festival–Center for Musical Arts organization has budgeted expenses of $4.3 million for 2026, with as much as two-thirds attributable to the festival. Oundjian wants those students to become a more visible part of festival life, attending rehearsals and perhaps participating in a summer camp-style program.
“We punch above our weight class in terms of what we’re able to produce,” outgoing executive director Elizabeth McGuire said. The anniversary season supports her case: four world premieres, a closing Mahler Third, and soloists including Yuja Wang and Michelle Cann, alongside the weekly shifts between symphonic and chamber-orchestra programs.