MUSIC
Mile High Music Festival adds Colorado acts to lineup
At this year’s Mile High Music Festival, Tool fans are sure to show up on July 18 when that band plays; followers of the Fray are buying tickets for its appearance July 19.
But promoter AEG Live has added even more bands to Colorado’s largest music festival to ensure that it isn’t only Widespread Panic fans buying two-day passes. (The jam band is playing both nights.)
Just added to the bill: Down-tempo/ world music heavyweights Thievery Corporation, Colorado’s own Big Head Todd & the Monsters and DeVotchKa, along with modern rock groups Pepper and Jack’s Mannequin. Add to that Matt Nathanson and Lukas Nelson & the Promise of the Real.
For more, go to milehighmusicfest .
Ricardo Baca
SINGING
It’s self-improvement with a tune
If it seems like no one around you can stop singing, here’s why: It’s the most popular form of participation in the performing arts, according to a study released last week from Chorus America.
An estimated 32.5 million adults regularly sing in choruses, up from 23.5 million in 2003. When children are included, that number jumps to 42.6 million — or one in five households that have at least one singing family member.
Even better, the study found that singing in one of the 270,000 choruses in the U.S. — think the community chorus, church choir or school choir — is strongly correlated with greater civic involvement, discipline and teamwork — in other words, qualities associated with being successful in life.
Choral singers also donate 2.5 times more money to philanthropic organizations than the general public and are twice as likely to attend other fine-arts performances, the study found.
Unfortunately, the study also found an alarming decline in the number of singing groups for children at schools, suggesting missed opportunities for involvement and advancement.
John Wenzel
STAGE
More drama at the Civic Theatre
Ownership of the now closed New Denver Civic Theatre has transferred to the Evergreen National Bank.
When landlord Zbigniew “Greg” Mania declared bankruptcy, the bank foreclosed last month. When the public trustee of Denver County took bids on the property, only the bank submitted one, for about $1 million. It was approved May 21.
Bank president David Brewick said he hopes he can work out terms so that local businessman Richard Bernstein, who has managed the property at 721 Santa Fe Drive since 2002, can purchase the building from the bank. But in the past eight months, he said, Bernstein fell $100,000 behind on back rent, and still owes about $55,000.
John Moore
FILM
Movies, fun and French
This week, the Denver Film Society announced series old (and loved) and new.
The familiar: The 10th year of Film on the Rocks kicks off June 16 with “The Big Lebowski” onscreen and The Wheel onstage. It ends with Maverick, not the movie but Tom Cruise’s hot-dogging fighter pilot in “Top Gun.” Harmony soaring band Paper Bird will also take flight.
The fresh: Tickets for the Denver French Film Festival went on sale Wednesday. The festival of 15 films opens June 17 with Remi Bezançon’s “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life.”
While at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, DFS executive director Bo Smith launched the Boston French Film Festival, which became one of the MFA’s bigger annual events. “While I’m not thinking that big,” Smith said “I’d like to think this festival could become one of the nation’s leading showcases of French cinema.”
More info at .
