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Festivals

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with GM Ray Farnsworth]

Parlor This week, Telluride is positively a-glitter with gems, on screen and off.

Critics often describe Telluride Film Festival, this long Labor Day weekend, September 3 – September 6, as a "gem," even a "crown jewel" among the roughly 1,700 similar events around the world.

There are real gems at local galleries too: The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art (Hollywood fav Lori Rodkin for one), Lustre (Gurhan) and Dolce (Pamela Froman and Katey Brunini, also Tinseltown queens).

The historic New Sheridan Hotel is another sparkler. The Grande Dame of the town –  the heart and soul of the social scene 118 years ago, back in the days Telluride's streets were paved with gold –  was restored to her Victorian splendor by world-famous interior designer Nina Campbell a little over a year ago. And this year, once again, the New Sheridan is the place to be and be seen over the Telluride Film Festival weekend.
30 August, 2010 /
[for Kate Sibley's conversation with Susan, click "Play"]

IMG_6722 The Telluride Film Festival is renowned as much for what it is not as what it is.

The Telluride Film Festival is not about prizes or juries or press screenings or booty or paparazzi or yachts or swag. No one wins, so everyone wins.

The Telluride Film Festival is a celebration of the art of filmmaking, not the Industry. It is also the great equalizer: everyone talks to everyone on the streets and in the lines. And it is about location: Telluride has to be one of the greatest sets in the world. The Telluride Film Festival's education initiatives also put it at the head of class among the roughly 2,000 film festivals around the globe.
30 August, 2010 /

Sidebar_poster The official website of the Telluride Film Festival claims there is no better way to attend the event than as a passholder. Further, it states there is "no hassle" with a pass. True. Sorta kinda.

Here's why: Your pass entitles you to seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Even then, not so much, because passholders are not created equal.

Especially for big buzz movies in the smaller venues (the Sheridan Opera House, the Masons and The Nugget) first-come, first-served means if you are a plain vanilla passholder, your lanyard may not get in unless you arrive super early, as much as 1 1/2 – 2 hours in advance of the scheduled screening. Even then, remember you are behind sponsors, patrons, students, and Hollywood entourages, who can show up when they wish and jump the queue. When that happens, your treasured numbered Q becomes just another piece of paper to recycle.
29 August, 2010 /

IMG_5313 "This festival (the Telluride Film Festival) is characterized by its small size and friendly atmosphere. If there were a few key words to describe Telluride, they might include 'intimate' and 'down home,' just as easily as 'monumental' and 'important.'" (Elise Berlin, Boulder Daily Camera)

Even without a pass, the 37th annual Telluride Film Festival, 9/3 – 9/6, has something for almost everyone.

IMG_5328 The Telluride Film Festival opens with free films sponsored by Ralph and Ricky Lauren. The four film premieres, one each night starting Wednesday, September 1, just after dark, (and a day before the cat is let out of the bag with the official announcement about screenings on the long weekend to come), takes place in the Open Air Cinema or Elks Park, just across the street from the Courthouse. (Telluride Inside... and Out will be posting details about those films on or around September 1.)

28 August, 2010 /
[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 /