Weekly Report from Boulder
Today is the perfect weather for the mood of the day and the week.  It's overcast and wet, supposed to become snow down here, and it is snowing up higher.  It's perfect because of the "who likes a grey day, but who doesn't want the moisture" approach?  I feel like that about most of this week, evenings with mixed blessings are ahead.  You know the type, they'll be intense, and hopefully some good will come of them, but one is also be glad to have them over.

I kept busy last week.  We went to the Boulder Theater on Wednesday to see the Luna Film Fest, movies by and about women.  They ran the range from funny to sad, cute to intense.  Overall it was good and it was apparent some of these young directors show promise to grow into solid filmmakers.

Friday night was an amazing performance by Zakir Hussain with Charles Lloyd and Eric Harland at the Boulder Theater.  I have been familiar with Lloyd for some time and had never seen him before, but have seen Zakir quite often as he makes a few trips a year to Boulder.  I really liked how this arrangement allowed Zakir to be very playful and inventive and move beyond the structures of traditional Indian music.  I'd seen him in a jazz setting only once before, in Shakti, a show that didn't work for me as it was not one of their high moments but also it felt too much of a western visit to Indian music. 

This show used the full potential of the tabla and Zakir had great interplay with both Lloyd and Harland.  Lloyd was wonderful at keeping the evening moving along, never letting one individual dominate for too long.  He played a bit of piano, some shakers, flute, sax, and even oboe.  As he says, his music has "danced on many shores," so his work with Zakir fits in well with his musical influences of the last 50 years.  I particularly liked the flute piece where he really explored the low range of the instrument, nothing too frilly, but very expressive.

On Saturday a group of friends and I took the bus to Denver and grabbed a quick dinner downtown before heading over to St Cajetan's on the Auraria Campus to hear Elliott Sharp with Janet Feder and David Devine.  This was a very intense musical evening, wonderfully experimental, not dwelling too strongly on melodies.  My favorite part of the show was when Elliott took more advantage of his computer effects and really took the music out there.  Otherwise there wasn't much to emotionally connect with, though the quality of the musicianship was quite apparent.

All that and a bead show on Sunday kept me in the area rather than making the snowy trek to Durango to our area radio conference.  Mostly KGNU had news representatives there and I'm already hearing good stories of the networking as well as Sam getting on air at KDUR with a fellow Neil Young fan.

If you are or know someone in the Denver/Boulder area, check out the KGNU homepage.  We're raffling off a party at the Walnut Room for New Year's Eve!  Tickets are only $25 and we'll only sell 500 so chances of winning are pretty good.  You have to supply the band, it will be open bar but for the midnight champagne, but it's a great opportunity at a wonderful new space in Denver.  Yep, time to get holiday plans underway, (she says, barely knowing what she'll be doing in four days, much less late December!)

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