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Performing Arts

[click "Play" for Susan's interview with Dan Hicks]

Panama_dan_sm Telluride Jazz Celebration impresario Paul Machado likes to push the jazz envelope, often inviting guests whose music, is not, strictly speaking "jazz." That is unless you define jazz as a labyrinth of styles, sounds and rhythms summed up in a one syllable word.

Check the schedule on the first full day of sounds, Friday, August 6. Machado features Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks in the 4 p.m. slot. The hodgepodge of genres Hicks melds into his own signature sound includes outlaw swing, folk, country, Django, blues, rock, and okay, jazz, a brew he himself has been known to describe as "folk jazz." Ok, the hipster is in by a nose.
25 July, 2010 /
[click "Play", Jackie talks to Susan]

[click "Play" to hear Jackie Ryan's "Doozy"]

JackieWhiteBlouse-Doozy2thm The sun will shine on the 34th annual Telluride Jazz Celebration – at least when vocalist Jackie Ryan steps onstage.

Jackie Ryan is widely regarded in inner circles of buffs and critics as one of the premier jazz singers out of North America, but one the general public is not well aware of. This despite reviews peppered with superlatives touting her "extravagant" range, both emotional and stylistic, her "sweeping vocal powers" laced with passion, her "savvy" vocalizing, her "magnetic" stage presence.
24 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to Toshiko Akiyoshi's conversation with Susan]

Akiyoshi The 34th annual Telluride Jazz Celebration welcomes Guest of Honor, award-winnning (Downbeat polls, Grammy nominations, etc.) arranger-pianist-bandleader Toshiko Akiyoshi.

Manchurian born Akiyoshi began her piano training at  the age of seven. Her career as a jazz pianist was launched in Japan in 1946. Be-bop pianist Akiyoshi made her first U.S. appearance over 50 years ago: in 1956 she appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival before touring top jazz clubs across the country.
20 July, 2010 /


When Telluride Inside... and Out first heard the term "Americana" attached to "music," the words were used to describe Grammy-winner and Telluride Bluegrass Festival regular Tim O'Brien's hybrid of country, folk, bluegrass and swing. Americana is music with a comfortable back-porch feel.

Co-producers (Barbed Wire Productions/Sheridan Arts Foundation) of the Telluride Americana mini-Fest, July 21-24 sum up their event this way: "Americana, roots, blues, folk with a kick, and country with a rock ‘n roll heart."

18 July, 2010 /
By Jennie Franks, founder/artistic director
 
IMG_4495 While our small band of Telluride Playwrights Festival participants were busy talking, plotting, acting and reading, the Telluride Rep has been quietly rehearsing the third play of the Festival – This Isn’t What It Looks Like, Philip Gerson's zany, political comedy that anyone who lives in today's America can relate to.
 
This year I knew I wanted to do something bold and different for the Telluride Playwrights Festival, and Philip’s play immediately caught my eye. The vitality of This Isn’t What It Looks Like  jumped off the page.
15 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's interview with Philip Gerson]

IMG_4517 Jennie Franks of the Telluride Playwrights Festival discovered the play in the process of creating her 2010 season. It was Franks who suggested the joint venture with the Telluride Repertory Theatre, the play's producer. "This Isn't What It Looks LIke" is being staged at Telluride's Palm Theatre, July 15 – July 18, with the audience sitting in the round on stage with the action. Show time is 7:30 p.m.

Written by Philip Gerson ( story editor, "Murder She Wrote," co-executive producer of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman")  "This Isn't What It Looks LIke" is billed as a "comedy about  everything you can't talk about at a dinner party: sex, religion and – oh no – politics." Franks experienced the play as "an hour of non-stop hysteria."
14 July, 2010 /

by Tracy Shaffer

One. But he really has to want to share.

For the past seven days, ten writers from around the country and within the Telluride community have been hunkered down at the Sheridan Opera House or gathered in Jennie Franks' living room for a post-supper salon and informal reading. The event is the Telluride Playwrights Festival, a glorious blend of featured playwrights and theatre professionals existing in a fluid blend of rehearsal, response, reflection and rewrites with the goal of making good scripts better. Now in its fourth year, Ms. Franks has made impressive strides, attracting extraordinary talented writers, garnering support of the community and providing an experience unlike any other. As we lean into our public readings, tonight James McLindon's DEAD AND BURIED and tomorrow's offering LOVE ME SOME AMNESIA by James Still, I asked our two Jameses about this Telluride experience:

12 July, 2010 /