Culture

[click "Play" to hear Charlie Hunter talk about his music with Susan]

 

 

CharlieHunterPressPhoto2010 Any time guitar phenom Charlie Hunter shows up in Telluride, the producers have to shoehorn his fans into the room.

The Telluride Jazz Celebration welcomes Charlie Hunter back to town for two encore concerts, Friday, March 4 and Saturday, March 5, at The Llama, where he performs with his trio: Eric Kalb (Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and John Scofield) on drums and John Ellis on sax, bass clarinet, and Wurlitzer. The concert will be streamed live, part of the Telluride Jazz Celebration's Live from the Llama webcasts to give music lovers from around the world a chance to enjoy concerts emanating from one of Telluride’s premier live music venues.

Reddrumandtambourine Sponsored by the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities, the last First Thursday Art Walk of the winter season 2011 happens this Thursday, March 3. At the Ah Haa School for the Arts, 300 South Townsend, the spotlight is on Telluride local, painter Ron Patterson and his show, "Black & White in Colors."

Anyone who looks at a Patterson image is first struck by the riot of color on canvas. But color is not the point. Color is in the service of what is the point: relationships. Relationships with pets, with the natural world, with others. And because the relationships Ron depicts tend to be joyful, so are the colors: reds, purples, yellows and oranges dominate, lifting the more somber blues and restful greens.

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Ben Schatz]

 

 

Kinsey Sicks Don we now our gay apparel. It's Gay Ski Week in Telluride, when the town pulls out all the stops as the week builds toward the Telluride AIDS Benefit art auction and gala fashion show, Friday, March 4, and Saturday, March 5. En route, there's a nonstop line-up of what to do, starting with something really b-a-a-a-d.

And Telluride likes it like that: here, really good is really b-a-a-a-d. We are talking about America's favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, "The Kinsey Sicks," scheduled for scandal at the historic Sheridan Opera House, Wednesday, March 2, 7:30 p.m. The event is co-production between telluride.arts and Gay Ski Week.

TFF's Gary Meyer at TFF,2010
Gary Meyer, TFF 2010

What happens in Telluride does not necessarily stay in Telluride. Buzz from the Telluride Film Festival is one great example. And buzz from the Telluride Film Festival generally winds up on the stage of Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, the scene of the biggest glam slam on the winter season in Tinseltown. We are talking, of course, about the 83rd annual Academy Awards. The golden boy. Oscar.

The moment of truth is Sunday evening, February 27.

In one incarnation or another, we have covered the Telluride Film Festival every year since 1993. In every review, we have predicted which films, which actors, etc. should take home a statue. And we've rolled sevens almost every year.

kicker: Show by artist who celebrated his homosexuality up for Gay Ski Week

Hockney A show of the poster art of David Hockney opens at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art this weekend and runs through Gay Ski Week. The exhibition features about 20 – 25 images, many of which are out of print.

Telluride Gallery of Fine Art opened for business 25 years ago in the tied-dyed era of hippies and miners, just as development of the new ski resort was kicking in. Owner Will Thompson arrived on the scene with years of experience in the art market.

In the early 1970s, Will represented a New York-based company, whose stable included original Hockney lithographs. Another London-based company, Petersburg Press, became the source of the poster art in the show.

by Jim Bedford

The-kings-speech-poster-2 True-grit-poster-coen-brothers-1 The Nugget Theatre in beautiful downtown Telluride has two great movies on the bill for the week of Friday, February 25 through Thursday, March 3, 2011.

Yes, it's a rarity at the Nugget, but both the brilliance of THE KING'S SPEECH (R) and the continuing popularity of TRUE GRIT (PG13) have convinced us to keep them around for another week. Look for two new films next week but here's your last chance to catch these great Oscar contenders in Telluride.

Don't forget the Academy Awards on Sunday, February 27 with Anne Hathaway and James Franco as MCs.

See the Nugget website for trailers and reviews, and below for movietimes.

 Thursday, February 25, starting 6 p.m., Telluride's one and only KOTO community radio, heads uptown to the Mountain Village Ballroom (formerly the Telluride Conference Center), to host an evening of music to beat the band – featuring bands that can't be beat. "Elephant Revival" is on hand to warm up the crowd. The headliner is "Leftover Salmon."

"Leftover Salmon" was formed by a lucky accident in 1989, arising from the flatirons and granite of the Front Range. A local band, the Salmon Heads, asked members of the Left Hand String Band to fill in some blanks in its lineup for a New Year's Eve show at the Eldorado Cafe in Crested Butte. The end result of the mashup was a quintet that went on to pioneer its own genre: "Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass," a fluid, loose-limbed blend of bluegrass, Cajun, funk, Southern rock, boogie, Caribbean, Latin and jazz influences that is at once rootsy and daring.

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Elephant Revival's Dango, Bonnie and Bridget]

 

 

Elephantrevival_annestavely_2-199x300 The now legendary Leftover Salmon is the main event at Friday's fundraiser for Telluride's KOTO Community Radio. However, Elephant Revival, the opening act, is described by Suzanne Cheavens, KOTO musical director, as very "buzzy."

It is the elephant in the room.

Elephant Revival is a Nederland, Colorado-based neo-acoustic quintet. The band plays a unique blend of an emerging new musical genre which marries –  somewhat improbably –  the core ideas of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman about spiritual transcendence through intuition to original folk tunes, Scottish/Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, psychedelic country, indie rock, reggae, 40s/50s jazz standards, even hip hop. Friends and fans around Boulder/Ned describe Elephant Revival's sound "Transcendental Folk," shorthand for a rainbow of sonic colors. Peers and critics drop that idea and simply call it good:

Kinsey Sicks Wednesday, March 2, 7:30 p.m., telluride.arts (Telluride Councils for the Arts & Humanities) presents "The Kinsey Sicks: Americas Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet". The event, in collaboration with Gay Ski Week, takes place at Telluride's historic Sheridan Opera House.

The Kinsey Sicks began in 1993 as a group of friends who attended a Bette Midler concert in San Francisco dressed as the Andrews Sisters. Assuming they'd be among many drag queens, they found themselves to be the only ones – other than Bette, of course. The group were approached that very night to perform at an upcoming event. Their reply, "We don't sing," was quickly debunked when everyone realized they all had musical backgrounds. The group began singing and harmonizing that night, and the seed for the Kinsey Sicks was planted.