Culture Gulch - The Durango Herald

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

In Pagosa play, madness and obsession reign

Between Macbeth and Thomas Magill there’s a certain madness. The question is: What’s the difference between a man who kills for personal ambition and one obsessed by a soiled Ede...

DATE: Oct 13, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

‘Boomtown’ and ‘Pants on Fire’ here Friday

When Creede Repertory Theatre’s improv troupe, Boomtown, riffs on a single word, the players make high-flying connections. Like trapeze artists, the young, energetic actors toss words and id...

DATE: Sep 7, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Public-art uproar the latest in a long history

Not again – the uproar over “Arc of History” has an upside, a funny bone and a deep history. Every public-art installation in Durango has brought out complaints, jokes and the al...

DATE: Aug 10, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Tavern songs and musical spirits in ‘Carmina’

There’s nothing like a good drinking song. From the corner pub to grand opera, it’s meant to stir the blood. The tenors and basses of the Durango Choral Society, with help from th...

DATE: Jul 7, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

CSWS launches new summer lecture series

I hope everyone knows Center of Southwest Studies is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Situated on the southern end of the Fort Lewis College campus, the center contains a spacious gallery, ...

DATE: Jun 9, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Conductor Fomin brought passion and glory to Music in the Mountains

News of Arkady Fomin’s death on May 5 in Dallas has taken many of us by surprise. The ebullient founder and director of Conservatory Music in the Mountains filled many of our sum...

DATE: May 12, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

An architectural stroll down Main Avenue

A Medici palace on Main Avenue? Yes, indeed. Recently, I showed a picture of the Newman Building, 801-813 Main Ave., in my series “Art as a Matter of Life and Death” at the Durang...

DATE: Apr 7, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Surrounded by sound in sacred space

Last weekend the Durango Choral Society gave its winter concert, “Saints and Sinners,” at First Methodist Church, which is possibly the best surround-sound space in town. The Fort...

DATE: Mar 9, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

Guest soprano will warm your winter souls

It wasn’t long ago that soprano Veronica Turner, 30, dismissed Puccini. “When I started college,” Turner said “I didn’t like his music at all.” At the turn of the mille...

DATE: Feb 10, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch

A festival reinvented

Last weekend at the corner of Ninth Street and Third Avenue, a quiet revolution took place. An exploratory jam session turned St. Mark’s Episcopal Church into a cool jazz club. Lo...

DATE: Jan 12, 2014 | CATEGORY: Culture Gulch