Mike Hess, Director, Marketing and Real Estate Services at The Peaks Resort & Spa in Mountain Village is a man of few words. But he tells it like it is:
“We are really excited to have such a wide variety of entertainment of such high caliber for everyone to enjoy. No question about it: The Peaks is the Place to Be this winter."
At the time of his death in December 2010, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had had a 20-year relationship with the Telluride community. One fact that might be lost in all the ink spilled over his extensive legacy is this: Holbrooke was once president of the Global Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. As an AIDS activist, Ambassador Holbrooke summed up the Telluride AIDS Benefit this way:
In the program for the upcoming Telluride AIDS Benefit fashion show, there's a tribute to Ambassador Holbrooke and the evening is dedicated to the man. Which is a good and proper thing, but....
Is TAB still necessary?
Laura Linney
No doubt about it. The Telluride AIDS Benefit's fashion show is the insider ticket of the winter season. Both evenings, this year, the sneak peak Thursday night, March 3, and the gala on Saturday, March 5, sell out in the blink of an eye.
(However, you can still email TAB's executive director Stash Wislocki to get on the waiting list.)
But in the middle of the fabulous booty and threads, it is easy to lose sight of the goal: AIDS prevention education and helping those living with HIV/AIDS through TAB's beneficiaries, five non-profits in all, whose tireless efforts extend from Colorado to Africa. The only way that work continues is by keeping the pump (TAB) primed, which means raising money. Which is why the Telluride AIDS Benefit's fearless leader, board chair Jodie Shike Wright, works around the clock to develop packages to auction off on the runway after the catwalk at both shows.
Among the irresistible goodies for 2011:
[click "Play to hear Susan's conversation with WestCAP's Mary Beth Luedtke ]
Since getting off the ground in 1994, the Telluride AIDS Benefit has donated over $1 million towards HIV/AIDS education, advocacy and NGOs, from Colorado to Africa. Today, there are a total of six beneficiaries, including Denver Children's Hospital Immunodeficiency Program, Brother Jeff's Community Health Initiative, The Manzini Youth Care Center in Manzini (Swaziland) and the Ethiopian Family Fund. But the mother of them all, TAB's primary beneficiary, is the Western Colorado AIDS Project (WestCAP), a nonprofit that in its infancy helped support a man named Robert Presley in his battle against the virus. Presley was the Telluride AIDS Benefit's muse.
kicker: Show by artist who celebrated his homosexuality up for Gay Ski Week
A show of the poster art of David Hockney opens at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art this weekend and runs through Gay Ski Week. The exhibition features about 20 – 25 images, many of which are out of print.
Telluride Gallery of Fine Art opened for business 25 years ago in the tied-dyed era of hippies and miners, just as development of the new ski resort was kicking in. Owner Will Thompson arrived on the scene with years of experience in the art market.
In the early 1970s, Will represented a New York-based company, whose stable included original Hockney lithographs. Another London-based company, Petersburg Press, became the source of the poster art in the show.
Guess who's coming to Telluride? The answer is the word-famous Harlem Ambassadors.
Now guess why.
Last year, the Telluride-based One to One San Miguel Mentoring Program showed that it has what it takes to ride tough times: a healthy helping of imagination.
The creative non-profit earned its share of the (shrinking) pie by hosting the region's first ever Top Chef event. The community response was over the top: The Peaks Resort & Spa in Mountain Village, the event venue, was packed to the rafters with crowds of people partying hardy for a good cause.
To honor the Academy Awards in Telluride, Sunday night, February 27, the Telluride Academy hosts "A Very Special Oscar Evening." The benefit features Bruce Cohen, producer of the 83rd annual glam slam, who joins local Academy guests via a live broadcast from his Producer's Table at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre.
The event takes place at Telluride's historic Sheridan Opera House, with a Red Carpet Reception from 5:30-6:30p.m (Call 970-728-5311 for reservations or visit www.tellurideacademy.org)
Thursday, February 25, starting 6 p.m., Telluride's one and only KOTO community radio, heads uptown to the Mountain Village Ballroom (formerly the Telluride Conference Center), to host an evening of music to beat the band – featuring bands that can't be beat. "Elephant Revival" is on hand to warm up the crowd. The headliner is "Leftover Salmon."
"Leftover Salmon" was formed by a lucky accident in 1989, arising from the flatirons and granite of the Front Range. A local band, the Salmon Heads, asked members of the Left Hand String Band to fill in some blanks in its lineup for a New Year's Eve show at the Eldorado Cafe in Crested Butte. The end result of the mashup was a quintet that went on to pioneer its own genre: "Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass," a fluid, loose-limbed blend of bluegrass, Cajun, funk, Southern rock, boogie, Caribbean, Latin and jazz influences that is at once rootsy and daring.
OK, I'm a little nuts, but I've found another way living in Telluride is enhanced by my Vibram FiveFinger shoes. I bought my FiveFinger KSOs last Fall (they are now available at Jagged Edge in beautiful downtown...
The now legendary Leftover Salmon is the main event at Friday's fundraiser for Telluride's KOTO Community Radio. However, Elephant Revival, the opening act, is described by Suzanne Cheavens, KOTO musical director, as very "buzzy."
It is the elephant in the room.
Elephant Revival is a Nederland, Colorado-based neo-acoustic quintet. The band plays a unique blend of an emerging new musical genre which marries – somewhat improbably – the core ideas of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman about spiritual transcendence through intuition to original folk tunes, Scottish/Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, psychedelic country, indie rock, reggae, 40s/50s jazz standards, even hip hop. Friends and fans around Boulder/Ned describe Elephant Revival's sound "Transcendental Folk," shorthand for a rainbow of sonic colors. Peers and critics drop that idea and simply call it good:
