The Colorado Music Festival brings magnificent music right to the heart of Colorado. Under the guidance of renowned conductor Peter Oundjian, the Festival fills the summer with uplifting evenings in Boulder’s historic, all-wood Chautauqua Auditorium from July 3 to August 3, 2025. General admission tickets are $23. Youth and student tickets are $10.
Colorado Music Festival / Geremy Kornreich photo
Festival highlights include the following:
On July 3 and 6, pianist Hélène Grimaud opens the 2025 Festival season with Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. In celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth, this opening program also includes his famous Boléro and a suite from his ballet Daphnis et Chloé.
In 2025 the Festival also marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of American composer Aaron Copland with a performance of his seminal Appalachian Spring on July 17 & 18 and An Outdoor Overture on July 11.
On July 11, Grammy-winning composer Joan Tower bravely relates her personal experience of grief and remembrance after the loss of her husband in a new saxophone concerto, Love Returns. This raw and sentimental new work expands on the theme of A New Day, premiered by the Festival in 2021. Saxophonist Steven Banks returns to the Festival to perform this world premiere.
On July 17 & 18, Latin Grammy-winning violinist Anne Akiko Meyers performs Ravel’s fiery Tzigane as well as a new violin showpiece commissioned by Meyers herself: Murmur by composer Eric Whitacre.
On July 27, classical guitarist Xuefei Yang performs Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. In this work, Rodrigo set out to evoke “the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds and the gushing of fountains” of a royal estate in the Spanish city of Aranjuez.
On July 31 & August 1, Peter Oundjian conducts Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a bucket-list musical masterpiece featuring the iconic “Ode to Joy.” This program also includes Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael Abels’ Amplify, co-commissioned by the Festival.
The Festival welcomes some of today’s most talented musicians to create musical fireworks across the season: violinist Benjamin Beilman and conductor Chloé van Soeterstède (July 13); cellist Hayoung Choi and conductor Maurice Cohn (July 20); pianist Yeol Eum Son and conductor Ryan Bancroft (July 24 & 25); and more.
On Sunday, July 6 at 10:30 a.m., CMF will feature its Family Concert, “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Maestro,” conducted by Shira Samuels-Shragg. In this musical adventure, all of the musicians are suspects and Sherlock Holmes must investigate each of the instrument families to locate the Maestro before the concert can begin. Tickets are $10.
Find concert schedules and ticket information here.
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