[click "Play" to hear Eileen's conversation with Emma Hill Telluride's Sheridan Opera House will host rising folk star Emma Hill and her Gentleman Callers tonight, Saturday July 18th at at 7pm. Hill was born in a small Alaskan village with virtually no cultural influences. For...
Meredith Nemirov is among the more than 100 artists featured in the silent auction at Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts' 17th annual fundraiser, Friday, July 24, 5 p.m., 300 South Townsend. Meredith Nemirov has inspired Ah Haa students for years, teaching them...
[click "Play" to hear Michael Dobbins on urban design and people] Michael Dobbins, long-time Telluride part-time resident, and author of Urban Design and People, will be speaking in the Program Room at the Wilkinson Public Library in Telluride, Monday evening, July 20, at 6:00...
Travel writer Maribeth Clemente will be doing an event Tuesday, July 14th, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Between the Covers Bookstore. July 14th is Bastille Day, the French equivalent of our 4th of July, and Maribeth, our resident French expert, feels it’s a...
The play's the thing....
Jennie Franks and Sparky Productions brings the 3rd annual Telluride Playwrights' Festival to town this week. The idea is to get playwrights and actors working together to develop new plays. The general public is encouraged to attend workshops and readings to give the playwrights the feedback they need to refine their scripts.
Last week was the preview. The Telluride Playwrights' Festival opened with a reading at the historic Sheridan Opera House. Written by Jennie Franks, the one-act black comedy, "Dr. Freeman & Hilda," is ostensibly about the famous lobotomist Dr. Walter Freeman. Jennie, however, is a keen, sometimes harsh chronicler of society's foibles, and she generally paints with a much broader brush.
Yes, Telluride funksters and funksterettes, the godfather of Funk himself, George Clinton will headline the 13th annual KOTO Doo Dah today, in Town Park, with opening act Rusted Root. The legendary architect of P-Funk has also been called one of the most important innovators of funk music, next to James Brown and Sly Stone. Clinton came from a background in R and B and went on to create a new genre of music. His leap from doo wap to psychodelic space rock was influenced by many artists, including James Brown, Jimi Hendrix. According to his bio, "Parliament and Funkadelic dominated and revolutionized the music scene in the latter half of the Seventies—particularly in 1978 and 1979, when they racked up four #1 R&B hits: “Flash Light,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” Aqua Boogie” and “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” Clinton’s main collaborators during Parliament-Funkadelic’s heyday included keyboardists Bernie Worrell and Walter “Junie” Morrison and bassist William “Bootsy” Collins." George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on May 6, 1997. Clinton recently released a solo album titled George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love, which is largely a cover with many great songs such as Fever, Gipsy Woman and Let the Good Times Roll. Gangsters features guest appearances from many artists including Sly Stone, Santana and Red Hot Chilly Peppers and gospel great Kim Burrel.
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. 
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.
by Eileen Burns
There may be another tarp run in Telluride Town Park on Saturday, July 11th. Rusted Root rolls into town kicking off an evening of invigorating and energetic music that promises to leave townies dancing all night long. Gates opening at 3 P.M. with the ultimate jam band, Rusted Root, taking the stage at six followed by the Godfather of Funk, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.
Rusted Root’s bluegrass/rock sound has always been heavily influenced by world music such as African, Native American and Latin America, and their long awaited new release Stereo Rodeo is climbing the charts.
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.
