The Violin Experience
Get to know the violin and what it takes to be an orchestral musician. No musical background necessary (violins provided); limited to 8 participants.
The Festival performs in beautiful Boulder, Colorado ā a breathtaking location full of nature, culture, cuisine, art, and more.
We present a wide array of educational programs in celebration of our whole organization, the Colorado Music Festival and Center for Musical Arts.
Meet the Festival Fellows: eight aspiring professional musicians who receive coaching and performance opportunities through the Festival and its guest artists.
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Gala
Get to know the violin and what it takes to be an orchestral musician. No musical background necessary (violins provided); limited to 8 participants.
Music Director Peter Oundjian helms one of musicās grandest spectacles: Holstās The Planets. From the hammering āMars, the Bringer of Warā to the ethereal āNeptune, the Mystic,ā this seven-planet suite lures the heavens into Chautauqua Auditorium. Electrifying pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii performs Rachmaninoffās dreamy Second Piano Concerto. This monumental program begins with the world premiere by Leigha Amick, a composer who aims āto spark intellectual curiosity and express human experience.ā
Conductor Gemma New returns to lead a varied program, beginning with Prokofievās cheerful āClassicalā Symphony, which he referred to as āa symphony as Mozart or Hayden might have written it.ā Ricardo Morales joins the Festival Orchestra to perform Coplandās Clarinet Concerto ā penned during a four-month tour of Latin America, the pulsing rhythms of Brazil are woven throughout Coplandās trademark jazz and lyricism. Morales continues with one of musicās finest showcases for the clarinet, Rossiniās challenging Introduction, Theme, and Variations. The program concludes with Ravelās beloved Ma mĆØre lāoye (Mother Goose) suite, where we meet Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, Beauty and the Beast, and more.
āNone of us have any memory of our lives without the string quartet,ā claims this highly sought-after ensemble of energetic musicians who met each other at music camp as teenagers. By audience request, the Danish String Quartet returns to the Robert Mann Chamber Music Series with a delectable program including works by Mozart, Shostakovich, and Ravel.
Audiences raved about pianist Michelle Cannās Festival debut in 2023; now Cann returns to Chautauqua to perform the world premiere of a piano concerto by esteemed composer Valerie Coleman. After intermission, Berlioz invites us on a psychedelic romp: his Symphonie Fantastique is a musical hallucination that evokes dark revels, an execution, and a visit to the underworld.
Audiences raved about pianist Michelle Cannās Festival debut in 2023; now Cann returns to Chautauqua to perform the world premiere of a piano concerto by esteemed composer Valerie Coleman. After intermission, Berlioz invites us on a psychedelic romp: his Symphonie Fantastique is a musical hallucination that evokes dark revels, an execution, and a visit to the underworld.
Music Director Peter Oundjian continues his tradition of closing the Festival season with a massive Mahler symphony. Mahler referred to his sunny Third as āA Summerās Midday Dream,ā and was aware he was defying symphonic convention as he wrote it, saying, āBut to write a symphony means, to me, to construct a world with all the tools of the available technique.ā Grammy Award-winning mezzo soprano Fleur Barron and the Boulder Childrenās Chorus join the Festival Orchestra to give this epic symphony its voice.