There are two very different ways to experience live music this summer. You could, potentially, shell out hundreds of dollars for a stadium nosebleed seat and spend the evening dodging stale beer spills from your inebriated neighbors while squinting at a heavily produced pop set through a pixelated video screen, all to watch a stadium headliner who isn’t even singing live. Or, for a fraction of that cost, you could sit inside a historic mountain auditorium while a teenage violin prodigy who recently debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic performs Sibelius as a full orchestra tears through Tchaikovsky.
For those opting for the latter, the Colorado Music Festival officially kicks off its landmark 50th season Thursday and Friday at Chautauqua Auditorium. The opening concerts feature 15-year-old violinist Himari performing Sibelius’ technically demanding Violin Concerto, alongside a world premiere by University of Colorado Boulder composer Carter Pann and Tchaikovsky’s heroic Symphony No. 5. Running through Aug. 9, the month-long celebration brings an expansive lineup of orchestral masterworks, chamber series and world-class guest artists to the historic stage.
The anniversary season arrives as Boulder is leaning harder into its identity as a performing arts city, with the Sundance Film Festival headed to town in 2027 and to prepare, Chautauqua Auditorium is in the middle of major upgrades aimed at making the famously rustic summer venue more usable outside its traditional warm-weather season.
Peter Oundjian, the festival’s music director, said the improvements at Chautauqua have already prompted early conversations about what else Colorado Music Festival could do there in the future, including the possibility of a winter week of programming…