Festivals

[Click "Play to hear Eileen's interview with festival director Art Goodtimes]

TMF_2009Poster 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. 

[click "Play" to hear Eileen's conversation with Kenny Gilbert]

Chef Kenny Gilbert Headshot - Capella Telluride 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.  

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Bruce Gomez]

TCMF Poster '09 Final 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 Thursday, August 13, patrons of the arts and the Chamber Music Festival can stop by Gomez's local gallery, the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, to view the original, a work entitled "Rudy's Ingram Falls," named in honor of the artist's pal, Rudy Davison. The pastel will be sold at a silent auction following the concert of the series.

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.

[click "Play" for Roy Malan's comments on Chamber Music Festival]

Malan 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...

_MG_9773 The Telluride Film Festival year-round office is now set up as your one-stop festival shop. Stop by upstairs at the Nugget Building (201 W Colorado Ave), Suite 207, to buy one of our iconic William Wegman posters, festival passes, to join us as a sponsor, and to ask any Festival-related questions you may have. And be sure to ask about our local Telluride Business Friends program, in which members partner with the Festival as a sponsor and receive tickets, event invitations, and great recognition both during the Telluride Film Fest and throughout the year. In choosing one of the program’s levels and signing on as a Telluride Business Friend, you are working with us to enhance and promote film and the arts in the Telluride community.

Acme Passes have already sold out, so the rush is on to get your Festival, Cinephile and Patron Passes.

Mannyshow208 Telluride Film Festival, September 4-7, 2009, presented by National Film Preserve LTD., and The Library of America, are pleased to announce a special program in honor of artist and film critic Manny Farber.  "The Celebration of Manny Farber," will be presented at this year's 36th annual celebration of the art of filmmaking.

The three-part program includes an intimate bookstore signing of The Library of America's September 2009 release "Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber," with editor Robert Polito and Farber's wife and collaborator, Patricia Patterson. An interactive panel discussion on Farber's life and contribution to film criticism is planned between the audience and special panel guests Jean-Pierre Gorin, Kent Jones, Greil Marcus, Patricia Patterson, Robert Polito, David Thomson and Robert Walsh. There is also to be a screening of one of Farber's favorite films with special guests in attendance, all of which will be announced with the rest of the program on Opening Day, September 4, 2009.

[click to hear Lanie Demas on Telluride Yoga Festival]

WelcomeParty_12 copy In the summer of 2007, Telluride local and Jivamukti instructor Aubrey Hackman had just returned from her third yoga teacher training, a four-week intensive taught by lineage founders David Life and Sharon Gannon. Her bum wrist, the result of years of cumulative stress from hitting it hard on the mat, was really acting up. The wrist is an extension of the heart chakra, the center of emotions such as love, happiness, compassion and loving oneself in a non-egoistic way. The message came through loud and clear.

Scott-2-IMG_0211e-print For Telluride Yoga Festival board member, teacher, and healer Scott Blossom and for his wife, Chandra Easton, also a gifted teacher and healer, 2009 was a transformative year. For starters, Scott and Chandra had a second child, Tejas, now nine months old.

Scott Blossom also experienced a major shift in direction in his professional life, a career change triggered by a trip to India with his long-time hatha yoga teacher, Shadow Yoga founder Zhander Remete, and his Ayurvedic mentor Dr. Robert Svoboda. The epiphany was related to a discovery: the synergy between Shadow Yoga and the two other disciplines in which he is highly trained, Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine.

One of the results? After five years as a rising star on the national teaching circuit  (last year, Yoga Journal named Scott Blossom and Chandra Easton two  of  the "21 under 40" Yoga teachers shaping the future of yoga)   Scott decided to significantly curtail his travel schedule both to be to be with his family and to be able to offer more focused and in-depth Yoga studies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[click "Play" to hear Richard Freeman]

Guruji richard virasana When Richard Freeman returns to the Telluride Yoga Fest this weekend, June 10 – 12, for his encore, legions of devoted followers will be lining up for his classes on alignment, mulabandha (not what you think), backbends, shoulder stand, and headstand – and with good reason: Richard Freeman is unique, even among  princes of the mat, a magnetic combination of guru, gumby, and wit.

 Freeman is a teacher's teacher, who lost his principal teacher last month, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, 1915-2009,  the smiling, pot-bellied man who favored Calvin Klein shorts and famously said, "Do your practice and all is coming." Yoga is 99 percent practice and 1% theory.

Yoga has entered the mainstream in the West, particularly in urban centers: everywhere people who drive Priuses and eat organic veggies are practicing one of the many flavors of Hatha yoga, the yoga of action. Devotees are divided into tribes: Iyengar students obsess about building precisely articulated poses with straps, blocks and bolsters.  Ashtangi just go for it: they tend to be ripped from all the stretching, toning and balancing moves of the six series. Freeman, originally an Astangi, is no exception – but with a mind as toned and flexible as his body.