Weekly Report from Boulder
Last week was strings week for me. Starting on Monday when two great local guitarists played on Kabaret, Ron Bucknam and Farrell Lowe.  It was far from traditional 4th of July music but great fun.  Afterwards I met up with some friends for fireworks at a park where the fireworks were to the south (and the southwest and southsouthwest….) and fireflies were to the north.

Tuesday night we made the attempt to hear the Turtle Island String Quartet at Chautauqua.  It's a lovely setting to meet friends and sit outside with a picnic and a bottle of vino.  And babies.  Who don't like to sit still.  The twins are working very hard on their sitting and standing and crawling so their agenda overtook the music and we had a nice picnic.  For some reason I love to make the twins (now six months old) do the hokey-pokey.  The good news is that they like music, even me making them hokey-pokey.

Friday it was off to Aspen for a grand weekend.  Two of the three things I was looking forward to came through in full force.  My mom accompanied me to the Kronos Quartet at the Benedict Music Tent.  She's not their biggest fan but was willing to humor me.  Interestingly she found the John Zorn piece to be her favorite in the first half.  The program also included a piece by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh off their newest release, a Sigur Ros, and Ethiopian music.  Their program was one that just kept getting better as it went on.

The second half featured Steve Reich's Different Trains.  Mom had said she didn't like this but we were both moved by hearing it live.  Kronos' performance was augmented by taped voices and prerecorded music, which becomes truly unsettling when the piece moves to the trains of the holocaust.  Kronos did three encores.  Starting with a Jimi inflected rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.  This had the dual role of harkening the acclaim they gained from their cover of Purple Haze and the parallels drawn between attitudes in this country in 1969 and today.  Next up was a stunning piece from Lebanese artist Fairuz.  And finally they left us with El Sinaloense, the opening track from their great Mexican tribute album Nuevo.

The rest of my weekend centered on getting in some good bike rides.  In summer, the road is closed to the Maroon Bells (the most photographed location in Colorado, and yes, I added to that honor) so it's a great bike ride.  Eleven miles gets you to the lake and visitor area, and while the elevation gain is only 1500 feet, it seems most of that is in the last mile or so.

Elaine C. Erb. KGNU Music Director. <º))))><
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