The Colorado Music Festival is a classical music festival in Boulder, Colorado. It was founded in 1976 by the Vienna-born conductor and violinist, Giora Bernstein and presents an annual summer season of concerts in Boulder's Chautauqua Auditorium performed by the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra as well as visiting artists and ensembles. The festival runs from late June to early August with a focus on orchestral and chamber music. Orchestra members representing many of North America's best professional orchestras come to Colorado to participate. Its current music director is Peter Oundjian.
The festival began life as the Colorado Chamber Orchestra founded in 1976 by Giora Bernstein, the newly appointed head of the conducting program at University of Colorado. In 1977, its first series of concerts were given in Boulder's First Presbyterian Church. Guest soloists in the five-concert initial season included the soprano Judith Raskin, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, cellist Leonard Rose and violinist Sidney Harth.
Following restoration work in 1978, the Chautauqua Auditorium, a national historic landmark, became the festival's home. Its inaugural Chautauqua season brought the festival the first of five ASCAP Adventurous Programming Awards. [1] On Giora Bernstein's retirement in 2000, the American conductor, Michael Christie was appointed music director. After he stepped down, Jean-Marie Zeitouni was appointed to the position in 2014.
Under Christie's directorship, the festival's ticket sales increased by 42 percent and more new works were added to the programming such as the 2005 world premiere of Mark Grey's Pursuit. [2] He also initiated Intermission Insights, where guest artists come back onstage after the first half of their performance for a ten-minute conversation with Christie about their performance followed by questions from the audience.
In 2009, the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts merged with the Colorado Music Festival to become its Education Division. [3]
As of January 2019, Peter Oundjian is the music director for the Colorado Music Festival. [4] In 2024, Oundjian renewed his contract through 2029. [5]
Regional and world premieres at the festival include:
Boulder is a home rule city in and the county seat of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. With a population of 108,250 at the 2020 census, it is the most-populous city in the county and the 12th-most populous city in Colorado. Boulder is the principal city of the Boulder metropolitan statistical area, which had 330,758 residents in 2020, and is part of the Front Range Urban Corridor.
The American state of Colorado has many music scenes and venues, especially in the larger cities like Denver and Colorado Springs.
Peter Oundjian is a Canadian-American violinist and conductor.
Susan Starr is an American pianist.
The Colorado Chautauqua, located in Boulder, Colorado, United States, and started in 1898, is the only Chautauqua west of the Mississippi River still continuing in unbroken operation since the heyday of the Chautauqua Movement in the 1920s. It is one of the few such continuously operating Chautauquas remaining in the United States, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006. According to its governing body, the Colorado Chautauqua Association, it is also unique in that it is the only year-round Chautauqua.
James Zuill Bailey, better known as Zuill Bailey is an American Grammy Award-winning cello soloist, chamber musician, and artistic director. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School, he has appeared in recital and with major orchestras internationally. He is a professor of cello and Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at El Paso. Bailey’s extensive recording catalogue are released on TELARC, Avie, Steinway and Sons, Octave, Delos, Albany, Sono Luminus, Naxos, Azica, Concord, EuroArts, ASV, Oxingale and Zenph Studios.
Daniel Kellogg is an American composer. Kellogg is Assistant Professor of Music at the College of Music of the University of Colorado at Boulder, teaching music composition, counterpoint and orchestration.
Michael Christie is a Grammy-winning American conductor.
The Chautauqua Auditorium is a wooden building constructed for the first season of the Colorado Chautauqua in 1898, and through the years has been a venue for many lectures, musical performances, and motion pictures both primitive and modern.
Geraldine Lamboley Walther is an American violist. From 2005 to May 2020 she was a member of the Takács Quartet. During this time she also taught at the University of Colorado Boulder. She was also the principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony, a role she held from 1976 through 2005. Previously, she was assistant principal viola of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Miami Philharmonic. In 1979, she won the First Prize at the Primrose International Viola Competition.
Alisa Weilerstein is an American classical cellist. She was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.
Michaela Paetsch Neftel was an American violinist who was born in Colorado Springs. She was known for being the first American female to have recorded all 24 Paganini Caprices for solo violin. She was first prize winner in the 1984 G. B. Dealey Awards and a top prize winner in the 1985 Queen Elisabeth Competition and a special prize winner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition held in 1986.
Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.
Daniel Kobialka was an American violinist, composer, and music entrepreneur.
Jeffrey Alan Kahane is an American classical concert pianist and conductor. He was music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for 20 years, the longest of any music director in the orchestra's history. He is the music director of the Sarasota Music Festival, a program of the Sarasota Orchestra, music director-designate of the San Antonio Philharmonic, and a professor of keyboard studies (Piano) at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, California.
The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1958, is a professional symphony orchestra based in Boulder, Colorado. It is led by Music Director Michael Butterman. The Boulder Philharmonic's season at Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus and other venues includes classical music, pops, school and family concerts, as well as an annual production of The Nutcracker with Boulder Ballet.
Giora Bernstein is a conductor, classical violinist, and Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Colorado. He was the founder of the Colorado Music Festival and its Artistic Director for 24 years.
Fabian Müller is a Swiss composer.
Theodore Kuchar is an American and Ukrainian conductor of classical music and a violist.
A New Day is a cello concerto written in 2021 by the American composer Joan Tower. The work was commissioned for the cellist Alisa Weilerstein by the Colorado Music Festival, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra. It was given its world premiere by Weilerstein and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra conducted by Peter Oundjian at the Colorado Chautauqua on July 25, 2021.
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