Culture Gulch - The Durango Herald

Catch one of the greatest comic operas ever

MET Live returns to Fort Lewis with the whimsical ‘Magic Flute’

DATE: Feb 11, 2016 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Gratitude and ‘the givens’in the new year

“It’s a given,” Denzel Washington said in an interview a few years ago. He was talking about racism in America. He calmly said that racist remarks and experiences were simply a given for Afr...

DATE: Jan 14, 2016 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

A traveling grand piano. Who would have thought?

A lot of people wanted to see, hear or maybe just touch Vladimir Horowitz’s piano. The nine-foot black Steinway grand, known as CD 503, came to Fort Lewis College as part of an unusual Ameri...

DATE: Dec 10, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Really, this requiem was marvelous

How do you avoid purple prose when reviewing a splendid concert? Answer: It’s not easy, and that’s the theme of this column. The concert in question is last weekend’s ...

DATE: Oct 15, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

The life of a critic: When art lingers

When music lingers in your mind long after a performance is over, it’s telling you something. It may be a jazz riff or a blooming Puccini aria. It may be a little nothing, or it may lead to ...

DATE: Sep 10, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Repertory companies rethink classics

How do you perform comedy for an audience with no sense of irony? In Jerry Seinfeld’s case, you don’t – because you’ve stopped performing on college campuses. America’...

DATE: Jul 9, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Summer lecture series is picture-perfect

As surely as the Snake River pulses through the Tetons, the bloodstream of the mythic West runs through Ansel Adams’s photographs. America’s most famous nature photographer died in 1984, but...

DATE: Jun 11, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

High-octane percussion rocks the Fort

“White Knuckle Stroll” is a title that makes me sit up and pay attention. Last Sunday, percussionist Kyle Hollerbach started his senior recital at Fort Lewis College with a solo ...

DATE: Apr 13, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Student recitals kick off Durango Bach festival

The eighth annual Bach Festival got off to a spectacular start Sunday. In a week full of musical surprises, C. Scott Hagler, Durango’s own impresario, has organized a winning sel...

DATE: Mar 9, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Charlie Hebdo and the high cost of humor

“Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.” – Mark Twain Written in a notebook some time in 1888, Twain’s simple sentence appears to be a casual thought, s...

DATE: Jan 12, 2015 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

A bit of Scrooge creeps into holiday cheer

How do you reconcile holiday cheer, societal anger and consumer frenzy? I’m not sure. December serves up a murky platter of expectations, larded with real-time events that are dif...

DATE: Dec 7, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Friday recital promises pure piano magic

If you love piano music, there’s a recital Friday that will rattle your bones and shake your imagination. At the heart of a program that spans two centuries of music, Marilyn Gar...

DATE: Nov 10, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch