#75: Conrad Kehn

The opening sentence of Conrad Kehn's professional bio kind of says it all: "Conrad Kehn is a composer, improviser, performer, educator, writer and artist." But that's the glib definition of a guy who, under the skin of his basic vita, is hellbent on spreading the joy of making and sharing and being a part of music that is sometimes difficult, all while never assuming that any audience is too dumb -- or immature -- to appreciate it.

See also:
- Soundpaint with Walter Thompson and the Playground tonight at the Auraria campus
- With its Mile High Voltage Festival, the Newman Center makes classical music more accessible to the masses
- 100 Colorado Creatives: Mark McCoin

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The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain doesn't have a flashy name or even a flashy look. But don't let that fool you. While the ensemble takes its collective picking skills quite seriously and its vocals are better than average, its real strength is in doing exactly what the audience doesn't expect.

See also:
- Ukulele player Aldrine Guerrero performs "Schizophrenic Snowflake" for us at Ukefest
- The Denver UkeFest: Pluck You!
- The Colorado Ukulele Festival: Ukes and You

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Oh, goody! More Fifty Shades stuff!

Ever since E.L. James' first rectal-extraction, the book Fifty Shades of Grey, hit the market like a drunken Rip Torn ramming his car into a tractor-trailer, the merchandise spin-off has been explosive -- or catastrophic, depending on your point of view. Stockings, garters, underwear, pajamas, robes, kitchen and bath décor: all offshoots of the book's mild BDSM themes.

And now a collection of fifteen classical music pieces that the author swears she was "inspired by" while she wrote the Fifty Shades trilogy will hit stores tomorrow, September 11.

See also:
- I was a human dessert tray and it was BDSM-delicious
- Fifty Shades of Grey means business for Fascinations chain
- Kink of the Jungle: A Field Guide to Denver's wild side

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The Colorado Symphony Orchestra was clearly looking for a high-profile name, and it got one: This morning the CSO announced the appointment of Andrew Litton as its Artistic Advisor, bringing the superstar in as something less than a full music director, but more than a guest in the ranks.

Litton will officially come on board as bench coach for at least three years on September 1, just in time to help the CSO navigate its way through a new season at Boettcher Concert Hall.

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Natalie Gonzalez

Whirl of Woodwinds in Skyline Park.

The 16th Street Mall was buzzing with music last week as artists of all shapes and sizes filled the air with their collective auditory gifts for Make Music Denver. This was the first time that Denver participated in World Music Day; it joined 450 other cities thanks to the efforts of the Downtown Denver Partnership.

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Kenji Bunch with Coffee, a rescued pitbull mix.

The EarWarp chamber concert series -- which regularly spotlights some of Colorado's best classical musicians -- is still growing, but it helps to have friends like Kenji Bunch, a nationally recognized violist and modern composer, whose work is derived from contemporary folk/roots music, as well as the classical canon. Bunch returns to play with EarWarp tonight at 7 p.m. at the Denver School of the Arts Concert Hall

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The new heads of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra -- returning CEO/President Jim Copenhaver and returning board co-chairs Mary Rossick Kern and Jerome Kern -- want to prove that the CSO will be all right. After reducing the symphony's October and November shows by half to help solve a cash-flow problem (the musicians also saw their pay cut in half during that same period), the CSO is now adding six shows for early next year, including a performance of never-published music by George Gershwin in May.

Two of these will replace already scheduled programming: Cleo Parker Robinson Dance's Romeo and Juliet will replace a "Litton on Piano and Pulcinella" concert on March 31; and Inside the Score: Shuffle, which discusses the connection between classical and popular music, will replace a Tchaikovsky event on April 27. No other concerts will be cancelled.

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The three performers of EarWarp's show tonight.

"I like the idea that music is somewhat ear-bending or mind-bending," says Erik Peterson, a Colorado Symphony Orchestra violinist who founded the chamber music group EarWarp. He'll be taking the stage at the Concert Hall at the Denver School of the Arts at 7 p.m. tonight, along with Abby Raymond, principal clarinet with the CSO, and Dr. Tamara Goldstein, an associate professor of piano at Metro State University.

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Colorado Symphony

The 79 full-time musicians of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra have been taking steep cuts. They collectively agreed to give up $530,000 in September, and they took another hit when fall programming was trimmed back. To help soften the blow, the CSO Musicians Assistance Fund was created on October 6.

The fund is administered not by the CSO, but by Our Musical Heritage, a non-profit run by the Denver Musicians Association. "We're looking at who's in the most need," explains Thomas Blomster, vice president of the DMA.

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Colorado Symphony

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra has made a lot of changes over the past few weeks, including hacking almost half of its performances in October and November. In September, more than twenty members of the CSO's board of trustees resigned; Jerome Kern and his wife, Mary Rossick Kern, have been brought back as board co-chairs, the same role they held from 2001 to 2006. And last Wednesday, the CSO announced that former executive director Jim Copenhaver, who was there in 1989 when the orchestra rose from the ashes of the Denver Symphony, will return as the interim president and CEO, replacing James Palermo.

Copenhaver "pioneered a more collaborative style of managing an orchestra," says Tom Blomster, vice president of the Denver Musicians Association. "There was a sigh of relief that Palermo has left."

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