Culture

[click "Play" to hear Michelle Curry Wright talk about her Wine Festival poster]

Web poster image wine fest Michelle Curry Wright is one of the faces regulars see when they visit the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art. She has worked at the gallery for six of the 25 years the must-visit art emporium has been in business. But what you see at the front desk is not all that you get.

Michelle Curry Wright is also a fine artist in the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art's stable and this year, the poster artist for the 29th annual Telluride Wine Festival. The original mixed media painting for the Festival poster is on display throughout the weekend at the Gallery, 130 East Colorado Avenue, open for bids through a silent auction. (Some of the proceeds from the sale go the the Tellluride Wine Fest.) Michelle signs poster, $25 each, during Friday's Toast of Telluride, 4 – 6 p.m.
[click "Play" to hear Lauren Metzger's debut effort podcasting with Telluride Inside... and Out.]

by Lauren Metzger
Marketing & Exhibitions Director
Ah Haa School for the Arts

IMG_5431 If you are anything like me, you go into every journey gung-ho on documenting the amazing and crazy experiences you will have; the sights, the smells, the people, the food...I last about 3 days of journaling my thoughts and observations in a small book before it becomes boring and confining. So when Laura Kudo, traveler extraordinare, proposed a travel journaling 2-night workshop at the Ah Haa School, I was first in line to sign up.

[click "Play" for Adam Neiman's conversation with Susan]

Photo 32 The gravitational center of the Telluride Musicfest, June 23 – July 3, is the founding trio, The Trio Solisti: cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, pianist Jon Klibonoff, and the event's artistic director, violinist Maria Bachmann. The group is renowned worldwide for sterling technical chops and no-holds-barred passion and lyricism. They play as one with perfect complicity.

"The most exciting piano trio in America," raved The New Yorker.

Like the Telluride Playwrights Festival, Telluride Musicfest is not a high profile event on Telluride's summer Festival calender: except like the heavies – Mountainfilm in Telluride and Telluride Film Festival – both attract world class talent. Case in point for Musicfest, pianist Adam Neiman. Adam joins Maria and the Trio for the 8th annual four-concert series: "From Russia with Love."
[click "Play" to hear Maria Bachmann's conversation with Susan]

TMF2010 final:highres Blame it on the the Russians. Telluride Musicfest's Maria Bachmann came to the States when her parents were forced to flee their homeland in 1956 after the revolution in her home country, Hungary, failed and the Red Menace tightened its grip. Eva and Tibor Bachmann's grit and self-sacrifice in their adopted country paid off. Son Peter became a dean of math and science at a college outside Philadelphia. And Maria grew up to be a world-renowned violinist, hailed recently (May 25) by The Philadelphia Inquirer for her:


"...near boundless expressive freedom...violinist Maria Bachmann projected the music's emotionalism, and dazzlingly attenuated the final movement in a mounting cauldron of rhythm."
[click "Play", James Vilona speaks about how he came to his art]

IMG_6131 Who'd a-thunk it? Telluride Inside... and Out and Donald Trump have something in common: we both own work by sculptor James Vilona. Only we don't own as much as The Donald, a major collector. (Two of Vilona's metal tables are on display in Trump Towers in New York and Chicago.)

James Vilona is in town over the Telluride Wine Festival weekend, June 24 – June 27, where he is the featured artist at Dolce Jewels, 226 West Colorado.

Telluride Bluegrass Festival may be over, but the beat goes on at Telluride's five-star Wilkinson Public Library. Monday, June 21, 6 p.m. Back for an encore performance, Raina Rose. This young vivacious songwriter from Austin will be performing original songs that speak to life, love and the human condition. 

Tuesday, June 22, 6 p.m.,The Telluride Music Lover’s Film Festival brings a feature and a short. Rachel Liebling, a student of Ken Burns, created a classic of Americana: “High Lonesome”  the Story of Bluegrass  (95 minutes). The music is perfectly synced with its images as in Bill Monroe's seamless walk from concert stage to his old front porch. Ralph Stanley singing "Man of Constant Sorrow". A young Alison Krauss at about the time she won the national fiddling contest. The film is not a complete compendium, a chronological survey, or a definitive look at Bill Monroe, or any of the individual artists, but it is an impassioned portrait of a true American musical art form.

[click "Play" to hear Peter Rowan's conversation with Susan]

Prowan This iconic performer is about to join the ranks of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival's 30-something club, an elite fraternity that includes among its members The King, Sam Bush, dobro king Jerry Douglas, and Grammy winner Tim O' Brien. He is Telluride Bluegrass veteran Peter Rowan.

Peter Rowan performs at the 37th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival Friday, June 18, 2:30 p.m., in Peter Rowan and Crucial Country with Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas. The event marks a reunion of musical titans.
[click "Play" to listen to Tim O'Brien's conversation with Susan]

Tim O'Brien 2010 Telluride is on a first-name basis Tim O'Brien. He's been here for so many Telluride Bluegrass Festivals, so many nights at the Sheridan Opera House as well. We all know by now, Tim O'Brien is an entire rhythm section unto himself. And a bandleader, songwriter, vocalist and mentor to boot. We know Tim's sound by heart, a hybrid of country, folk, bluegrass and swing often described simply as "Americana." Music with a comfortable, comforting old slipper feel. But with Tim as the filter, everything old comes out new again.

It's no big secret Telluride's on again, he's off again 30-year relationship with Tim is not exclusive: the Grammy (Traditional Folk Category) Tim won in 2005, not to mention countless nods from organizations such as the International Bluegrass Music Awards, is proof, positive his peers and the rest of the world love him too.
[click "Play" to hear Bryan Simpson talk about Cadillac Sky]

Cadillac Sky 2010 Promotional Photo Listen: Cadillac Sky comes straight from red dirt country to the Main Stage of the 37th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival, on a high from the heat their brand spanking new CD, "Letters in the Deep," is generating.

Telluride Bluegrass Festival's marketing guru Brian Eyster described "Letters in the Deep" as "one of the coolest bluegrass albums of the year."  He raves about Cadillac Sky's great songs, virtuosic picking (the band includes national champions on fiddle and banjo), and no-holds-barred delivery. Their stage setup includes lots of effect pedals (for distortion and other tricks of the trade), as well as a small drum kit one band member or another might sit at "when the energy needs to go to 11."

Sexandthecity2_smallposter Shrekforeverafter_smallposter The Nugget Theatre in the heart of beautiful downtown Telluride is showing two films for the week of Friday, June 18-Thursday, June 24, plus a Telluride Film Festival presentation of "City Island" on Thursday.

"Shrek" is back in another version of the old "be careful of what you wish for" we've heard all of our lives. Shrek is tired, tired of being king, so when he is offered a deal to just be an ogre again, well... How was he to know that history is about to be re-written? Rated PG.

If you can accept the concept of our four favorite New York friends striding across the desert in the United Arab Emirates in their Manolos, "Sex and the City 2" (rated R) may be for you. Hard to say, but make mine Manhattan.

Cityisland_smallposter "City Island" has one big secret: Everyone has secrets. Andy Garcia's Vince Rizzo is a corrections officer with a yen to be an actor. He would rather have his wife believe he is having an affair than admit he is taking acting classes. Audiences have loved the movie. This Telluride Film Festival presentation is rated PG-13.

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