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Festivals

[click "Play" for Susan's interview with Gary Lincoff]

2010HarvestAug14Hollinbeck The Telluride Mushroom Festival, Thursday, August 26  – Sunday, August 29, bills itself as the nation's "oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal." Which is saying a tasty mouthful since fungi have been around for a very long time. A lot longer than people, perhaps 500 million years. (The earliest known picture of a mushroom was found on a wall painting in the ruins of Pompeii.)

Fungi used to be classified as part of the plant kingdom. They become a kingdom of their own because fungi differ in biochemistry and structure from plants and cannot synthesize their own food. The mushrooms people collect are just the fruiting bodies of mycelium, a sentient cobweb-like web of cells. These "fruits" are created in order to manufacture spores for reproduction. Because so much shroom activity occurs underground in the fungal version of the world wide web, mushrooms themselves appear to pop up quite suddenly over night.
25 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Art Goodtimes' take on the Mushroom Festival]

IMG_5180 "The mushrooms have two strange properties: the one that they yield so delicious a meat; the other that they come up so hastily, as in a night, and yet they are unsown," Francis Bacon, "Naturall Histories," 1624.

Probably the best mushroom harvest in years has upped the ante for the 30th Annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, Aug. 26-29.

Wild mushrooms have always prompted wild debate, because they make great eats, but also can kill you. In some parts of the world – Telluride is one such address - mushrooms are prized for their culinary properties. But elsewhere on the map, mycophobes associate fungi with witches and serpents oh my.
22 August, 2010 /
[to hear Erin Neff's conversation with Susan, click "Play"]

And now for something completely different.

Cabaret ad costume party The 37th annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival meets "Cabaret." The event takes place Friday, August 20, 7:30 p.m. at the historic Sheridan Opera House. In keeping with the decadence of the period in Germany before the rise of Hitler, the evening begins with a champagne reception and ends with sweets. Guests are asked to come in costume, although Telluride chic works just fine for the aristos in the crowd.

The culture of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918-1933, encompassed the political caricature of Otto Dix and George Grosz, the beginnings of the far-reaching Bauhaus movement in architecture and interior design and the decadent cabaret culture of Berlin, documented by Christopher Isherwood in "Goodbye to Berlin," the book that became the musical "Cabaret." Cabarets, concert halls and conservatories performed the atonal and modern music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill, like the other arts, declared decadent under the Reich.
18 August, 2010 /
[click "Play", Susan talks with Paul Machado and Terry Tice]

The history of the Telluride Jazz Celebration in digestible sound bytes.

Jazz 2010 Postcard Final The story begins in another tranquil mountain village in Yugoslavia. A young man named Nick Terstenjak, who was passionate about jazz, migrated to America, settled in New York for a spell, then moved on to Telluride in 1975. The Telluride Jazz Celebration was born out of Nick's KOTO radio show in 1976.

Over the year, the Telluride Jazz Celebration changed hands time and again, but the line-up remained star studded. In 1983, the Town of Telluride took over. By 1984, downtown clubs and bars as well as Town Park became event venues. When Lynn Rae and Buck Lowe took over the event, Paul Machado became their stage manager. He also worked for the Lowes' successor before accepting the baton in 1991.
04 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Raul Midon's conversation with Susan]

Raul 4 Telluride Jazz Celebration impresario Paul Machado is a champion of diversity. The line-up for the 2010 musical happening, More Than Jazz, may be his most imaginative and wide-ranging to date, moving across the cultural spectrum from Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks to Chuchito Valdez. The Guest of Honor is the 80-yer-old legend, bebop piano/bandleader/arranger Toshiko Akiyoshi, but the 30-year-old pianist Hiromi performs with Stanley Clarke. Another relative youngster in this crowd is also a rising star, singer-songwriter-guitarist Raul Midon.

Midon is on the Telluride Jazz Celebration schedule Friday night at The Nugget, Saturday afternoon on the Toshiko Akiyoshi Town Park Stage and Sunday for a late show at The Nugget again.

03 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Trevor Tice's interview with Susan]

Trevor1 Causes for celebration are few and far between these days, but Telluride has two great reasons to raise a glass.

Reason #1: The 34th annual Telluride Jazz Celebration.

The Telluride Jazz Celebration is a long weekend dedicated to celebrating the only indigenous American musical form to have exerted an influence on musical development throughout the Western world. The event takes place August 5 – August 8 in Town Park and venues throughout town.

Reason #2: Trevor Tice. (And the Telluride Jazz Celebration)

02 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Dianne Reeves' conversation with Susan]

Media02sm Double the pleasure. Double the fun.

This year, Telluride Jazz Celebration impresario/ Festival director Paul Machado welcomes two great female jazz vocalists to the Toshiko Akiyoshi Town Park Stage. Jackie Ryan performs Saturday night at the Nugget Theatre and again on Sunday in Town Park. And Dianne Reeves is the closing act on opening day, Friday, August 5: a good choice because Reeves has the star power and hardware (four Grammys, including the soundtrack for George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck") to deliver a very grand finale.

31 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to Larry Coryell's conversation with Susan]

Coryell Six years ago guitar legend Larry Coryell was honored at the 28th annual Telluride Jazz Celebration, where he performed with drummer Lenny White and bassist Mark Egan. Coryell returns to the 34th annual Telluride Jazz Celebration, August 5 – August 8, to time to honor a friend, former Telluride Jazz Celebration board member Chris Bou, who died in May 2009.


To tribute Bou, Coryell returns with Egan, changing the recipe on his aural elixir just a little bit with two special guests, Paul Wertico replacing White on drums, and saxophonist Karl Denson. The quartet is scheduled to perform Sunday, August 8, 3:40 – 4:50 p.m. on the Toshiko Akiyoshi Town Park Stage.

"Larry has style, awesome technique, a sharp wit and big charisma," said Telluride Jazz Celebration impresario Paul Machado of his friend and supporter.

27 July, 2010 /
[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 /