There is good reason the Denver Chamber Music Festival has completed five successful seasons but not all classical fans know about it. The fest competition in Colorado is enormous, with events in Vail, Aspen, Boulder and Central City lighting up the terrain for more than a month each summer, and bringing with them an extended history of playing and a long list of global stars.
The Denver fest performs publicly for less than a week, and there are only three main concerts on the program. While the musicians can come from far and wide, there simply are not that many of them to get attention. The fest also takes place at a time of year when other classical performances have died down — after the big orchestras and opera companies, like the Colorado Symphony, have ended their seasons, and before the major summer events start up around July 4.
Music consumers are not used to hearing Beethoven or Bach or the premiere of new chamber compositions in mid-June, when the Denver fest begins the show.
“And that is exactly why we started at this time of year,” said festival executive director Alix Corboy. “We’re not conflicting with any of them. There’s still snow in the mountains in June.”
Not that the weather is a concern in this case. All of the festival’s concerts take place indoors at the Newman Center on the University of Denver campus. The center’s Hamilton Recital Hall, with about 220 seats, is widely considered the best place to hear small ensembles in the city.
“It’s such an intimate place,” said cellist and co-artistic director Matthew Zalkind. “You can see everybody, and you’re very connected to the artists on stage.”
Zalkin founded the fest, along with his wife and fellow cellist Alice Yoo. Both have busy and established careers as players performing across the globe. They also teach — Yoo at DU’s Lamont School of Music and Zalkind at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
After her career brought them to Denver, they were surprised, Zalkind said, that there was no regular chamber fest in the city. So they started one.
Crowds came, sponsors signed on and the fest got a strong early foothold. And it started to grow slowly, honing programming and building an organization. That includes bringing on Corboy as executive director in August. Corboy has a long history as a board member and programmer with Denver Friends of Chamber Music, the nonprofit group that has been presenting classical concerts since 1954.
Starting this year, the Denver Chamber Music Festival has its first composer-in-residence with Grammy-nominated Tessa Clark, who is in demand as a classical soloist, but also acclaimed as a fiddler in the traditions of bluegrass and the Appalachian music of her native Kentucky. She will write a new piece and perform during concerts.
This year’s fest has other known names as well, including busy touring violinist Yura Lee, who will perform Beethoven’s Sonata No. 10 for the opening night on Tuesday, June 9. The festap artistic directors also perform major pieces that evening, with Yoo featured on Luigi Boccherini’s Sonata in G major, and Zalkind on Harry T. Burleigh’s “Southland Sketches.” That night will have Lark performing a set of her existing compositions.
In true fest form, the musicians will collaborate on other pieces during events. Lee returns for the second concert on Friday, June 12, joining Yoo to accompany pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute on Haydn’s Piano Trio in G major. Zalkind joins them for Brahms’ Piano Quartet.
The event also features tenor Nicholas Phan, who will sing composer Nico Muhly’s 2019 “Strangers.”
The final regular concert takes a different turn, with tenor Phan featured on a selection of Beethoven’s “Irish Songs” and a sampling of Rebecca Clark’s “Irish Country Songs.” The program also has work by Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn and the premiere of a new piece by Clark, titled “Octet in E flat major.” Octet performances are rare in Denver, and this one features two quartets working together: the Colorado Cello Quartet and the Koa Quartet.
The Koa Quartet is the current student quartet-in-residence at the music school at the University of Colorado Boulder, and its members have the distinction of being the Denver Chamber Music Festival’s first class of fellows, a new tradition the organization hopes will become a regular thing.
The Denver Music Festival does have one more quirky element to it: Each year, it produces a two-day Adult Music Workshop that allows members of the local community — mostly non-professionals — to come together to play and perform as an ensemble under the tutelage of professionals. Itap a serious endeavor. This year, the master clinician will be András Fejér of the Takács Quartet, one of the most popular ensembles in the country.
All together, the events make for a unique event, not just in Denver but in the industry of music festivals as well.
The Denver Fest has another benefit for fans of summer classical who spend a great deal of time driving across Colorado to hear their favorite music, much of it outdoors. Itap right in town for most people, and weather is not a factor.
And it still has the potential to produce the unpredictable magic that can make the best music fest feel like a treat.
“It’s this fleeting, one-time-only musical experience that you get by bringing world-class musicians together to create something unique and special that’s just for that moment,” Zalkind said.
Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts.
IF YOU GO
The Denver Chamber Music Festival takes place June 5-13 with performances at the Newman Center on the University of Denver campus. Info: denverchambermusicfestival.org
