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Performing Arts

[click "Play" to hear Susan's interview with Ben Kaufmann and Adam Aijala]

 

Yonder Mountain Telluride has its festivals. Nederland has Frozen Dead Guy Days. No kidding, celebrated annually from Friday – Sunday the first full weekend of March. A centerpiece of Frozen Guys Days is a screening of  the film "Grandpa's in the Tuff Shed," a magnum opus which premiered at Mountainfilm in Telluride in 1998. A centerpiece of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival is another Nederland import:  Yonder Mountain String Band.

Yonder  – banjoist Dave Johnston, mandolinist Jeff Austin, bassist Ben Kaufmann and guitarist Adam Aijala – is back again for the 38th annual event, June 16 – June 19, 2011, kicking off the long weekend with a Nightgrass set at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village and appearing again on the Main Stage on Saturday.

11 June, 2011 /

[click "Play", Michael Cleveland speaks with Susan, but notes the date of his performance is the 16th, not the 17th)

 

Michael There is a nice, alliterative quality to "fire" and "fiddle," two words that become one great big idea in the skilled hands of Michael Cleveland. Move over Nero. When Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper play the 38th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival Thursday, June 16, guaranteed Telluride Town Park burns.

The blind Henryville, Indiana native quickly became renowned as one of the hottest attractions in bluegrass for his blistering and unconventional fiddle style. By his early teens, Michael Cleveland had appeared on the Grand Ole Opry (as a guest ofTelluride Bluegrass regular Allison Krauss), A Prairie Home Companion, and before the United States Congress.

10 June, 2011 /

   Langhorne Slim returns to Telluride for an encore performance on Friday, June, 10, 8 p.m. at Telluride's historic Sheridan Opera House. The concert is a benefit for the Sheridan Arts Foundation's Wild West Fest, which includes the Chip Allen Mentorship Program (C.A.M.P.), special programs...

08 June, 2011 /

kicker: at Telluride's Steaming Bean Wednesday, June 8, 2011, 8 pm

Don'tChat_Gossipingbordersontreason Is gossip good or bad for the soul? Does it lengthen your life or shorten it?  The Telluride Playwrights Festival explores what exactly is the nature of gossip and why do we so like to gossip? Where does gossip end and propaganda begin?

A group of local actors explore the subject, taking their clue from the Bible to Shakespeare to Star Magazine.  In addition, local writers such as Bob Rubadeau, Jeff Price, Rob Schultheis, Devin McCarthy, John Sutcliffe all have something interesting to say on the subject.
 
The Telluride Playwrights Festival brings playwrights and actors to town once a year to explore and workshop new plays by acclaimed playwrights from all over the country.  This year, the Playwrights Festival has decided to expand the spirit of the Festival, which starts mid-July, to an early beginning on  Wednesday, June 8.

06 June, 2011 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Bob Schneider]

 

Bob-Schneider_picnik Telluride's Sheridan Arts Foundation opens the 20th annual Wild West Fest with a kick-off concert featuring alternative country artist Bob Schneider. Show time is Sunday, June 5, 8 p.m. All proceeds benefit the Wild West Fest mentorship programs.

The son of an opera singer, Schneider moved with his parents to Germany at age two. He learned to play guitar and piano as a young boy. His first live gigs were guest appearances at his parents' shindigs.

03 June, 2011 /

By Jon Lovekin

(Editor's note: One of the pleasures in publishing Telluride Inside... and Out is getting to know new  [to us] writers. Susan and I independently ran across Jon Lovekin on Twitter. She took the next step, checked out his writing, liked what she saw and asked if he would be interested in contributing to TIO. Herewith, another article from Jon.)

Chelsea Chelsea saved my life.

It was January in Boulder, Colorado and approaching 20 below zero. We lived in an old barn converted into a house sometime in the '30s or '40s. It was on a large plot of land two blocks in from Canyon Boulevard not far from the east end of the then new Boulder Mall. My roommates were in the trades and we had a lively bunch at the house each morning around 7 am discussing the coming day's work and drinking coffee. I was rarely at my best at that hour as I was merely a student at the University and typically got home well after midnight from my geology study group.

30 May, 2011 /

[click "Play" to hear David Feela and Kierstin Bridger talk about poetry and the prize]

 

Mark Fischer prize Telluride Arts (telluride council for the arts and humanities) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize. Join the poets for a special poetry reading and celebration. The event takes place Friday, May 20, 7 p.m., The Steaming Bean.

Started by former Telluride Arts director and Talking Gourds Grand Poobah Art Goodtimes in 1997 and sustained by Mark’s widow Elaine Fischer and the Fischer family, the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize is named in the memory of Telluride’s much-loved poet, lawyer, skier, and raconteur.

Mark Fischer was a daring experimenter, who combined a polyglot’s command of languages with a quirky sense of humor and a passion for obtuse words. In that spirit, prizes given in his name have been awarded to the entries whose work best exhibits the qualities found in Mark's "squibbles": originality, novelty, complex meaning, linguistic skill and wit. The wilder the better. Poet David Feela judged this year's winners from among the 70 entries submitted from the Four Corners.

18 May, 2011 /
 Rick Silverman, the former director of Mountainfilm in Telluride – the 33rd annual event starts next week, May 27 – really started something, when, in the mid-1990s, he showed a film by Adrian and Roko Belic. "Genghis Blue" is the heart-warming story of a Tuvan throat-singer Kongar-ol-Ondar and a blind San Franciscan bluesman, Paul Pena, who taught himself to throat sing, a popular form of entertainment in southern Siberia. In 2009, Mountainfilm's current director, David Holbrooke, asked the brothers and the "Elvis of Tuva" to return to town for a program encore.

Tuvan throat singing and the people who create the unique sound became a popular form of entertainment around these parts. Now it's the Sheridan Arts Foundation's inning.

 

On Thursday, May 19, 6 p.m., the Sheridan Opera House welcomes Alash, a quartet of Tuvan throat singers.

17 May, 2011 /

By Art Goodtimes Art Goodtimes  



 

 

After


Sometimes
the raw data of doing
just doesn’t jell

until way late
in the canning or
cleaning

or whatever
comes
after

cling peaches
blushing apricots
whipped cream

 

POEM OF MINE … I’m going to start each month with a poem of my own. I think  this one was in response to a poem of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer <www.wordwoman.com> – whose May Day and Mother's Day poems appeared here at Telluride Inside... and Out at the start of this month. She maintains a poem-a-day practice, and has done that for several years now …

09 May, 2011 /