43rd Annual Telluride Chamber Music: Overview

06 Aug 43rd Annual Telluride Chamber Music: Overview

The 43rd annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival takes place over two consecutive weekends, starting Friday, August 12 through Sunday, August 21 at the historic Sheridan Opera House. This year the event is a tribute to Elaine Fischer, a former board member and passionate supporter. Elaine, also once Telluride’s mayor and country commissioner, passed away in June. The concert series kicks off  Thursday, August 11, 6 p.m. with a free picnic in Town Park featuring local talent. Bring a picnic dinner and enjoy the music. Full Chamber Fest schedule below. Tickets here.

43rd annual Telluride Chamber Music Fest is dedicated to the memory of Elaine Fischer, former mayor, country commissioner and music lover.

The 2016 season dedicated to the memory of Elaine Fischer:

Elaine Cantor was a Pittsburgh girl, and a legendary “Rizdee” alumna (Rhode Island School of Design), with some pretty substantial roots on lower First Avenue, where Manhattan Island meets the East River. You couldn’t have found a less likely candidate for a successful Telluride transplant. But surprisingly, she ended up taking to life here like a matzoh ball takes to soup, and in time rose to become Telluride’s Mayor and a Commissioner of San Miguel County…

From personal philanthropy to the nuts-‘n’-bolts of housing musicians in her home that somehow clung successfully to the edge of the Judd Wiebe Trail, Elaine’s devotion to the Telluride Chamber Music Festival was passionate. She introduced the Festival to Michael Palm (and vice versa), thus paving the way for some of the most glorious chapters in the TCMF biography. And her wise counsel was gladly taken, often over a late-night table at La Marmotte, after the Sheridan applause had faded away…

One tires so easily of death’s euphemisms, even though they mean well. My people in the Northern Highlands of Scotland, however, have long employed a phrase that rings especially true in Elaine’s uniquely wonderful case. It doesn’t involve passing on, and no buckets have been kicked, nor any farms bought. We say instead that Elaine has been “gathered up” — and we say it so very sorrowfully…

It is with vast gratitude that we dedicate the 2016 Season to Elaine’s loving memory.

The above was written by the eloquent co-founder of the Telluride Chamber music Festival, pianist and beloved friend of Elaine’s, Robin Sutherland.

On to the 43rd annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival:

Roy Malan & Robin Sutherland, co-founders, Telluride Chamber Music Festival.

The term “chamber music” conjures a small group of people – more than one, but fewer than 15 – performing centuries-old masterworks in an intimate space without a conductor.

For aficionados, the genre is the height of cultural aspiration: emotional, intellectual, and political dramas played out in sound. For everyone else, however, “art music” is quaint –  or worse, dull. At least part of the problem is the name: when many people hear the word “classical,” they think “Dead White Men” and “not relevant.” Fans of the Telluride Chamber Music Festival know better.

Telluride Chamber Music Festival fans return year after year like moths to a flame to hear the music of their “rock stars,” composers like Beethoven, Mozart, and Mendelssohn, brand names in the genre. This year, artistic director/founder, violinist Roy Malan adds to the mix the sounds of Saint-Saens, Dohnanyi, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Dvorak, also Samuel Barber and William Bolcom.

And this year, the program also features an opera, “Dynamo: Thomas A. Edison, a life overheard.”

The Telluride Chamber Music Festival was founded by Malan and Robin Sutherland 43 years ago in 1974, the same year Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the Telluride Film Festival came into being. And that was just after Joe Zoline opened the mountain to skiing (in 1972). Telluride officially had it all: snow and cultcha.

This year as every year the event promises to bring two memorable weekends of top-quality music to our historic mining town, performed by first-rate talent.

Program details as follows:

Roy Malan, artistic director & co-founder, Telluride Chamber Music Festival.

Friday, August 12 Sheridan Opera House, 7:30 p.m.

Trio in F Major, Saint-Saens
String Quartet in D flat, Dohnanyi
Viola Quintet in C, Mozart

Sunday, August 14 Sheridan Opera House 2:30 p.m.

Three Rags for String Quartet, William Bolcom
Serenade Op. 1, Samuel Barber
Piano Trio, Rachmaninoff

Friday, August 19, Christ Presbyterian Church, 7:30 p.m.

“Dynamo: Thomas A. Edison, a life overheard, “a song cycle by Larry London with words by William Smock

Sunday, August 21 Christ Presbyterian Church 2:30 p.m.

Sonatine for Piano, Ravel
Piano Quartet no 2, Faure
Piano Quintet, Dvorak

The players: Roy Malan, Robin Sutherland, Susan Freier, Nancy Ellis, Polly Malan, Stephen Harrison, Larry London, Keisuke Nakagoshi, Eileen Morris, John Duykers