[click "Play" to hear Gary Meyer talk about "the big picture"]Julie Huntsinger, Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer There are about 2500 film festival across the globe, of which about 1700 are similar to the Telluride Film Festival, still, TFF is widely regarded as in a league...
Art Goodtimes, Telluride local, poet, county commissioner, fungophile, and sometime correspondent on Telluride Inside...
Telluride's summer cultural season is winding to a close as the 36th annual Telluride Film Festival officially opens for business Labor Day weekend, Friday, September 4 and runs through Monday, September 7.
Thanks to Ralph and Ricky Lauren, however, the Telluride Film Festival kicks off unofficially for passholders and nonpassholders alike today, Wednesday, September 2, and Thursday, September 3, with two free al fresco screenings at the Abel Gance Open Air Cinema in Elks Park, beginning at sunset, around 8:30 p.m.
Wednesday's film is "Hidalgo," a 2004 film made by director Joe Johnston, based on a story from 1890 about an American cowboy, Frank T. Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen), the first outsider or infidel to be invited by a wealthy Sheik (Omar Sharif) to race in the greatest long-distance horse race ever run, the "Ocean of Fire," a grueling 3,000-mile survival horse race across the Arabian Desert with the winner receiving $100,000 as prize money and the honor of being the best in the world. When the sheik's emissary approaches him, Hopkins, once a dispatch rider in the U.S. Cavalry, is working Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The race itself, held every year for the last thousand years, has only been open to the purest line of Arabian horses ever bred. Hopkins' horse, Hidalgo, a small mixed-breed mustang, was regarded as impure, and therefore not fit to run wth purebred Arabian stallions.
The Telluride Film Festival opens this weekend, September 4 – September 7. The perfect warm-up is a trip to the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art to view the work of long-time Festival photographer John Fago.Fago claims to have been born at a very young age of artist parents: dad, an animator and mom, a painter/journalist. Growing up just outside New York surrounded by creative types, Fago never once considered a real job. At college, he studied painting but switched to photography in the mid-1970s. His robust career has included extended photographic journeys to Asia and North Africa. He is currently pursuing a multi-year project in Brazil.
In Telluridespeak, the event is known as Mushfest. The 29th annual Mushfest, aka Telluride Mushroom Festival – billed as "the nation's oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal" – happens this weekend, August 27 – August 30. In the context of the Telluride Mushfest, the world wide web takes on a whole other meaning: we are talking about mycelium, the sentient web of cells, which, in just one magical phase of its life cycle, fruits mushrooms. Shroom evangelists from writer Terence Kemp McKenna and avant garde composer John Cage to Paul Stamets, a Mushfest regular, filmmaker Ron Mann ("Know Your Mushrooms), and this year's special guest Gary Lincoff ("Mushroom Magick") head the list of true believers who contend fabulous fungi have the potential to save the planet.
The 29th annual Telluride Mushroom Festival takes place Thursday August 27th through Sunday the 30th with Fungophiles from around the world attending what has been dubbed as "the nation's oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal." MushFest, as Telluride locals call it, is part education and part outdoor fun, with daily workshops and lectures on a variety of topics as well as forays into the mountains to search for all types of edible and some not so edible mushrooms. There will be a tent in Elks Park, on Main Street, where anyone can bring their found mushrooms to have identified. There will be book signings, poetry readings, a vendor bazaar, drumming and dancing and the whimsical Mushroom Parade, which will take place Saturday at 5 pm beginning from Elks Park. Art Goodtimes, renowned performance poet and long time director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival, tells us what's in store this year and shares some special memories in this podcast.
A trifecta of the arts is taking place August 13th through the 16th in Mountain Village as Telluride celebrates it 2009 Festival of the Arts with a fabulous line up of food & wine, art and music. Top celebrated chefs will be on hand to showcase and demonstrate their culinary expertise. A gallery of more than 40 artists with national and regional acclaim will exhibit and sell their work throughout the weekend. Grammy nominated and multi-platinum artist, Joan Osborne will perform in a free live concert at the Sunset Stage on Friday the 14th.A highlight to Telluride’s Festival of the Arts is the ‘Celebrating the Arts ’ Celebrity Chef Dinner. Kenny Gilbert is executive chef of Telluride's five star ultra-luxury resort, Capella Telluride, and is one of the culinary experts taking part in the weekend festivities. Gilbert's celebrated international cuisine is showcased in all three of Capella's dining rooms including the fine dining restaurant Onyx, the casual Gray Jay Cafe and the popular Suede Bar.
Artist Bruce Gomez is the poster boy for the second year in a row for the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, this weekend, August 7 – August 8 and next weekend, August 14 – August 15.On Friday, August 14, 12 – 2 p.m. and Sunday, August 16, 10a.m. – 1 p.m., Gomez will be in the Great Room, at the Peaks Hotel, working at his easel, developing new paintings.
Johannes Brahms is the alpha and omega of the 36th annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival. The event opens on Friday, August 7, with Brahms closing the first big evening. The final concert, Saturday, August 15, is dominated by Brahms. In between, the venerable Festival, among the three oldest on Telluride's cultural calendar, celebrates two big birthdays: Felix Mendelssohn was born February 3, 1809, just a few days before Abraham Lincoln.Born to a poor but musical family in the slums of Hamburg, Germany, Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897), studied music as best he could, supporting himself by playing piano at bars and brothels and by turning out arrangements of light music. Eventually Brahms grew to become the brick of classicism in his country. His compositions showed no traces of extraneous – nonmusical – allusions, yet they resonated with strong personal statements. In chamber music circles, Brahms is the go-to guy if you really want to test your mettle and strut your stuff: often just a smattering of notes conveys a universe of emotion. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
My office window looks east, toward Telluride and the end of the upper San Miguel canyon. Cynthia Zehm photographs beautiful sunsets and storms over the La Sal range. I get sunrises and afternoon rainbows and alpenglow. I believe we are both lucky. This...
