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Performing Arts

[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 /
[click "Play", Steve Gumble talks about "Blues on the Rails"]

 

Durango-Silverton train kicker: "Blues on the Rails" launches June 4


The name "Steve Gumble" rhymes with innovation.

Gumble's first party trick was to parlay the ownership of a liquor store into a world class festival: now in its 18th year, Telluride Blues & Brews is more robust than ever. Acts this year range from Willie Nelson (yes, the iconic country star also has a blues history), to The Flaming Lips, Big Head Todd and the Monster, Dweezil Zappa, Mavis Staples, Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band, and more.

Can you top that? Yes, Gumble has managed to pull another rabbit out of his hat – a big steel rabbit: The Telluride Blues & Brews Festival and The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad have joined forces to present the brand new Durango Blues Train. The inaugural ride for "Blues on the Rails" takes place June 4, 2011.

03 May, 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.)

Ranchland Clouds built over the plains as they always do each day this time of year.  The wind blew soft and hot keeping the gnats at bay.  Mud was deep around the building we were working on after the record setting 6 inch rain over the weekend.  The sun burned deep into the skin and I thought of that boy working on that ranch 29 years ago and only 30 miles away. I had thought of the Rancher now that I worked in La Junta again and looked up his name in the phone book.

I didn’t recognize him at first when I pulled up to the address in Fowler where the phone book said he lived.  There was an old man in a jump suit sitting in a porch swing connected to an oxygen tank who was staring at me as I looked again at the house number.  I got out, strode around the truck and said, “Hello, does Ken live here?”

“He used to” replied the man who I knew instantly was him.

02 May, 2011 /

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

(ed. note: After a devastating April around the country and the world, May is a welcome change. Rosemerry has sent three poems to welcome Spring in Telluride and Western Colorado. May 1 is also Kjerstin Klein's birthday. Happy Birthday, kid.)

Preparing the Garden for Spring


Spring Garden We pull up the old iron slabs I had used
as stepping stones for my garden. By we,
I mean I pull them up. My son takes
to raking the shriveled brown cords of melons,
pumpkins and squash. His interest wanes
soon enough and he leaves me with my hands
in familiar gray dirt. In my lungs, dust rises
like long-forgotten prayers. And I am alone,

though not alone. There are several of me here.
One woman who dreams of kissing in rain. One woman
who plots where new seeds will go. One woman
plants herself in this bed. One woman kneels
in the morning’s gold shrine. And one woman lifts
old iron slabs. She blossoms one now at a time.

01 May, 2011 /

Mother... set The day that ended with a bang with Duo Jalal's gig at Drom, began with meeting yet another Telluride friend, Diana Conovitz, and a Wednesday matinee. Bottom line: Run, don't walk to see the play, "The Motherf**ker with the Hat" at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. (Unless strong language offends.)

Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis's newest play, his seventh, with the bleeping wonderful name is a no-holds-barred knock out: script, direction, performances, sets, lighting, the whole enchilada, terrific. Exhilarating. The story about life, love, despair, longing, a vague scent of hope and, well, a hat, is raw, in-your-face, intensely poignant and caustically funny.

 "Motherf**ker" marks the Broadway debut of comedian Chris Rock as the health-juice-drinking, yoga-posing nihilist Ralph D. in what has to be one of the finest, five-person ensembles ever assembled by a director, in this case, the talented Anna D. Shapiro. Shapiro won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Direction for "August: Osage County" and might well dust off her shelves for a second statuette for this comedy-drama.

29 April, 2011 /