Events

By J James McTigue

I love geeks; therefore I love Telluride Wine Fest. This year’s 30th festival was full of wine geeks and Pouring foodies, all intent on enthusiastically sharing the intricate technicalities and personal stories behind their artfully crafted creations.

It’s hard not to listen to a geek, because their passion carries their stories. Before you know it, you’re fully engaged, tasting their, let’s say… mezcals…noting hints of smoke in one and earthy minerals in the other.

This past weekend’s Wine Festival was nothing short of a geek-fest, celebrating some of the best food and wine in the country, and possibly the world. Keeping true to the spirit of Telluride, it was an anything goes affair, colored by educational seminars, blowout tastings and intimate meals carefully paired with specialty wines in chosen venues.

By Tracy Shaffer

Tracy at DAM The Denver Art Museum's current offering is a mud pie for the senses. With the most basic of themes, earth, this global exhibition brings together time and place to reveal how the artist deals with dirt. Curators from around the museum present their earthenwares in ways that honor the simultaneous beauty and function of the Coors Porcelain Company's vessels, the aesthic simplicity and eternal popularity of the blue & white ceramic, and the exquisite work of Native American potter, Nampeyo, who built a name for herself and a family legacy through her creations. 

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Josh Aronson and Adam Neiman]

 

Playinfg for Real poster Now in its 9th season, the Telluride Musicfest adds two new events to its 2011 lineup, a wine and dessert concert for all subscribers and sponsors to thank everyone for helping to ensure the Musicfest tradition of chamber music concerts in a private home continues – and a movie night.

Movie night takes place Wednesday, June 29, 6:00 at the five-star Wilkinson Public Library. The event features a screening of producer/director Josh Aronson's inspiring one-hour documentary, "Playing for Real," (2000), an intimate look at building careers in big-time classical music. The film showcases the extraordinary talents of 14-year-old Japanese violin prodigy Mayuko Kamio and 2011 Musicfest guest pianist Adam Neiman – when he was 22 and already one of the finest pianists in the world.

[click"Play" to hear Erik Dalton's description of River Festival]

 

RwayRiverFest11.jpg. Ridgway, Colorado, is so much more than a bedroom community for Telluride. The town is famous – or infamous – as the location for several movies, including "How the West Was Won," and one of actor John Wayne's latest and greatest, "True Grit," (1969), in which Wayne stars as Rooster Cogburn. Ridgway's True Grit Cafe is filled with John Wayne memorabilia, but as far as we know, no drunken, one-eyed federal marshals. And the Uncompaghre is a great source for trout fishing and the focus of Ridgway's fourth annual River Festival.

 

By Dan Collins

Monk_pouring-_sand_web Does Telluride really need another festival in the middle of the summer? Probably not. Do we really need more compassion? More sharing and caring? Yes. Why? Because it's good for us and for the planet.

"How so?" you ask.

Come find out at COMPASSION FOR A WORLD IN CRISIS, the Telluride Institute's Ideas Festival 2011, taking place July 8 - 10, at the Sheridan Opera House.

[click "Play", Chef Erich Owen talks with Susan]

 

Erich-owen-pensive Since 2008, Erich Owen has worked as the Executive Chef of The Chop House at Telluride's historic New Sheridan Hotel. His New American cuisine emphasizes quality fresh ingredients impeccably prepared with a light, deft touch in the French tradition for a simple but always elegant presentation. If you are a patron of the 30th annual Telluride Wine Festival, the proof of Erich's skills will be in the pudding – or whatever it is he prepares for the kick-off luncheon. Chef Erich Owen co-hosts the Telluride Wine Festival opening feast, Thursday, June 23, 11:30 a.m – 1:30 p.m. And that's big news. Here's why.

In the art world, there is a reflex known as The Cultural Cringe, an assumption that whatever anyone does in the arts – and we include the food arts here – is not validated until judged by those in the know from outside your world. We cry "foul."

By Jon Lovekin

A Tom Boy Ride
A Tom Boy Ride

Preparing for a festival as grand as the Telluride Bluegrass Festival takes time. For many Festivarians, the week to 10 day experience is their one vacation of the year. The excitement in the weeks before the Summer Solstice reaches a fever pitch the weekend before the music starts. In the early years, an entire festival was spent flopped in a tent in Town Park listening to the music from there, too sick from altitude, sun, and fun to be able to move.

As the festival caught on, pitching a tent in an empty lot or sleeping in a car late in the week ceased being possible. Prior planning became necessary and arrival in the campground early in the week morphed to getting there the weekend before. Town passes on the Landcruiser faded to no longer trying to leave town at all. We started working at the ticket booths, renting bikes, and moving in for the week.

Silent auction and more added to the fourth Annual Touch-A-Truck Fundraiser Saturday, June 25.

Mountain Munchkins Child Care and Preschool, operated by the Town of Mountain Village, hosts the fourth annual Touch-A-Truck Fundraiser in support of the childcare center’s infant, toddler, and preschool programs. The event takes place Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10 a.m.– to 1 p.m. in the Telluride Middle/High School parking lot. Admission is $5 per adult and/or child.

“My favorite thing about Touch-A-Truck is driving the school bus,” said three-year-old Gia Neyens.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer   ed. note: Maybe it's my age- though I think of myself as a very positive person, living pretty much in the now, and though I love the light on the longest day of the year, it brings with it the...

[click "Play" to hear Maria Bachmann speak with Susan about the Musicfest program]

 

Maria There's no judging this book by its cover. Although its cover is a thing of beauty. Tall and elegant, violinist Maria Bachmann has the look of cool patrician refinement but just beneath the surface, a red hot gypsy soul. In performance the combination intensifies the present moment. And those moments are upon us.

Maria Bachmann is the artistic director of Telluride Musicfest, an event that occurs annually in Telluride in June to celebrate chamber music in its intended form: first class musicians performing in an intimate home environment. (See related post for details.)