Music in the Mountains’ launched its 29th season Sunday with Summer Soirée at Purgatory Ski Resort, a private party for major donors that always offers something special.
This year, it was a performance by Inna Faliks, a talented pianist who heads Piano Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has won scads of competitions. She has a fascination with the relationship between poetry and music, showcasing that love in Clarice Assad’s “Godai – The Five Elements.” Way beyond walking and chewing gum at the same time, she recited Stephen Schroeder’s poetry while playing Assad’s composition. Wowzers.
As it is wont to do during monsoon season, which coincides with the festival season, it poured while the 200 guests were in the Festival Tent. Faliks joked that she was good unless it started to hail. Coming from drought-stricken Los Angeles, she was also enjoying the cool mountain air and some humidity for a change. (In a lovely bit of timing, the rain took a pause to allow partygoers stay dry while walking to their cars.)
Faliks played a wide variety from the piano canon, including Fantasies by both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, Ravel’s “Ondine” from “Gaspard de la nuit” and Liszt’s “La campanella” from “Grand études de Paganini.” But she did justice to modern composers, too. Assad is in her mid-30s, and she also played a work by another 20th-century composer, Rodion Shchedrin’s Basso Ostinato.
Greg Hustis, artistic director for Music in the Mountains, had said Faliks was on his wish list for Music in the Mountains, and after Sunday night’s bravura performance, he said she will definitely be invited back to perform with the Festival Orchestra in the 2017 season – he doesn’t like to repeat from one year to the next. So everyone will have the opportunity to see her for themselves in 730 days or so.
The evening began with appetizers and libations at Purgy’s Slopeside Restaurant, where chef Dan Furlong and his crew served seared buffalo-tenderloin crostini, bruschetta with a balsamic-reduction sauce, beef skewers with hoisin-mint sauce, honey-cured smoked salmon, baked Brie in puff pastry with apricot marmalade (apricots with thyme and honey, yum), crab-artichoke-stuffed mushroom caps and chilled jumbo shrimp with atomic horseradish sauce. For sweets, guests enjoyed handmade cheesecake bites and key lime, red velvet and molten chocolate cupcakes.
Furlong said the wines on offer were specifically selected to pair with his menu.
On Monday, donors enjoyed the Los Angeles Cello Quartet in another knock-your-socks-off night at the Glacier Club. At absolutely one of the most gorgeous venues anywhere – not just Southwest Colorado – guests enjoyed a buffet that was a veritable cornucopia of delights.
Passed appetizers included bacon-wrapped dates, caprese bruschetta and sweet potato chips topped with chevre and apricot chutney. At the cold station, guests could choose from vegetable crudités with herbed buttermilk and aioli for dipping; shrimp cocktail with both cocktail sauce and spicy mango sauce; smoked salmon, cream cheese and chives on cucumber chips; and tuna poke on wonton chips. The hot station featured grilled vegetable flatbread with chevre and fresh herbs; meatball sliders with marinara sauce and provolone cheese; chicken satay with coconut-red curry sauce; and a charcuterie board. Delish.
Greeting attendees were Glacier Club’s new Chief Operating Officer EJ Schanfarber, director of Glacier Realty Bruce Geiss and Lindsay Lubrant, who works at Glacier Realty and is one of MITM’s newest board members.
The quartet performed a 45-minute concert that included four composers I never heard of – which can be a problem for Music in the Mountains’ traditionally minded audience – but once again, the passionate and talented playing more than sold it to the audience. They played Wilhelm Fitzenhagen’s Concert-Walzer, “Opus 31,” David Popper’s “Suite for 4 Celli,” “Opus 16,” a transcription of Komitas’ Five Medieval Armenian Chants and Alexander Zemchuznikov’s “Correspondence of John Lee Hooker and Joseph Hadyn.” The standing ovations brought them back not for one, not two, but three encores, and that’s saying something.
The Quartet performed again Tuesday night at the Sunflower Theater in Cortez in Music in the Mountains’ first foray into our neighboring town. In a style that ought to shame Durangoans for their procrastination, the performance sold out a week ago. It was a wonderful welcome and bodes well for future collaborations.
Now it’s time for what I, with a great deal of hubris, like to call my ode to classical music.
I don’t quite understand people who don’t like it. It’s part of our heritage, and there is so much to see as well as hear. I enjoy checking out all the different ways the female musicians find to create the “uniform” of black and white, and the soloists seem to dress in the spirit of the piece they’re playing. Last year, flutist Carol Wincenc shone in a beautiful pink gown to play a piece written for her called “Sunrise.”
It amazes me how Musical Director Guillermo Figureroa keeps track of all the different parts played by all the different sections.
And it’s fun checking out the biographies of the musicians in the program, picking them out of the orchestra and then imagining the journey they have taken to be delighting us here in Durango. Former Music in the Mountains President John Anderson began pulling one musician out of the orchestra before each concert, so we got to know them a little better, and that was fun, too. I will learn this weekend if new President Jill Ward will adopt the practice for this season.
Existential questions arise, such as how do the violinists, violists, cellists and bassists know which direction to bow so it’s in unison? (They probably learned how to do it in high school, but I studied piano, so what do I know?)
Just saying – give it a try, expose your children and think of it as a spectacle, not just a concert.
HHH
Trying to fit in a birthday hike or golf game for their birthdays before the afternoon rains arrive are Dick Imig, Cissy Anderson, Brian Shafer, Ken Fusco, Lora Woods, Holly Newby, Gay Robson, Carol Salomon, Jeff Haspel, Charlie Arbaugh, Chuck Williams, Kathy Burns, Ed Cotgageorge, Kristina Johnson, Colton Cheese, Shanna Stordahl, Margaret Hjermstad, Ozzie Goldman and Bill Donelan.
HHH
At many of the nonprofit fundraisers I attend, there is an auction. Who am I kidding, there’s an auction at most of them and sometimes two, silent and live. And more and more at these events, special, one-of-a-kind items are on offer, experiences provided by people based on special skills they alone have. I like to write about them so that the next time one is on the block, the interested parties know to bid it up.
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango Fall Frolic last year, Don and Judy Hayes offered a night of Tapas to Die For, and there was no deceptive advertising here. Guests had been advised to put their affairs in order before attending for a reason.
They worked on the menu for three months, with at least a couple of practice runs.
They served 10 - billed as nine – courses to more than 20 people. Alan Cuenca from Put A Cork In It had the challenge of pairing Spanish wines with every course, achieving ideal matches while taking guests on a tour of the Iberian country. The Hayeses had booked Tim Sullivan to provide several guitar interludes along with requests and singalongs.
The menu began with an aperitivo of a medley of skewers served with a Marques de Gelida Cava. The next course was crab cakes with a dollop of aioli on a bed of lettuce, paired with La Cana Albariño, followed by grilled marinated lamb lollipops with pickled beets and kale (sublime) served with Can Blau Rojo.
A radicchio salad with oranges and olives was paired with a Botani Dry Muscat that didn’t just work with the salad, the notoriously difficult course for wine pairings – but would be a delicious-anytime wine. It wouldn’t be tapas without jamón serrano, paired by the Hayseses with pears, herbs and blue cheese served with Muga Blanca.
Shrimp are another popular tapa in Spain, and these were skewered and prepared with a little heat and served on a bed of frisse, a course Cuenca paired with La Gitana Manzanilla Dry Sherry. Then it was off to a beef tenderloin with morel mushrooms served with Ramirez de la Piscina Reserva and plums stuffed with asparagus and prosciutto paired with Muga Dry Rosé.
Dessert, which was served with an Alvear PX1927 Solera sherry, was two plates, first Manchego cheese with quince paste and rosemary – a most Spanish of desserts – and almond cookies. Whew – I’m salivating just remembering.
The Hayeses were more than ably assisted in this massive endeavor by Tom McCampbell and Mary Hockett.
HHH
Ducking under an umbrella made for two for their anniversary are Arnold and Violet Trujillo.
HHH
Here’s how to reach me: neighbors@durangoherald.com or phone 375-4584.
