Music in the Mountains Celebrates 40 Years

Music in the Mountains is celebrating its 40th anniversary season this summer, running July 9th through August 2nd across the Four Corners region. What started in 1987 with just 11 musicians has grown into a world-class orchestra featuring performers from around the globe. This year's festival features free community concerts from Durango to Bayfield, Ignacio, Pagosa, and Mancos, along with full orchestra performances, family concerts, and chamber music. Tickets are on sale now at musicinthemountains.com.

By Sadie Smith. 

Watch this story at lnn.news.

This story is sponsored by FASTSIGNS Durango and Happy Pappy's Pizza & Wings.

Transcript

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For someone who's not familiar with music in the mountains, we are a classical music festival here in Southwest Colorado. We started in 1987 and this is going to be our 40th anniversary.

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You're watching the local news network brought to you by Fast Signs Durango and Happy Pappies Pizza and Wings.

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40 years ago in 1987, a small group of musicians, primarily from the Dallas area, was I think looking for a way to get out of the heat and come up and play in the mountains. And I think there was about 11 of them. And there was a small group of local people in Durango who rallied to make that happen. And so since then we've grown from 11 people to a full-blown, you know, world-class orchestra with the best musicians from around the world here in our community. Over the course of a four-week time frame starting July 9th and going through August 2nd, we're going to have free community concerts, family concerts, full orchestra performances, chamber music, world music. We just really have something for everyone. What I think is so important for people to understand is that music in the mountains is a real rare jewel for a community of our size. This is really one of the best orchestras in the country. The way our festival works is we start with free community concerts, and they're all over the region. We go from Durango to Bayfield, Ignacio, Pagosa, Mancas, and really what we're trying to do is bring classical music to you, the community. We're so excited to celebrate our 40th anniversary this season, and we're going to do it all season long. In fact, one of our performances is even called Happy 40th Birthday from Bach to Benny Goodman. And we've partnered with Steamworks. They're going to make cupcakes and we're going to have a birthday party at intermission, and one of the pieces is Happy Birthday Variations, which is actually a really beautiful and fun piece. We're so lucky to have Andrew Litton join us this year. He's our principal conductor in residence, and his resume is incredible. It's very, very impressive. Currently, he's the conductor for the New York Ballet. He was the music director for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for many years. Rather than have to get on a plane and go get a hotel room and buy really expensive tickets for a festival or orchestra performance of the same caliber, they get to just stay right here in our own community in their own backyard and enjoy this incredible music. People from all walks of life come together and can enjoy something no matter what their political affiliation is, no matter what their socioeconomic situation is, no matter how old they are, and just walk away feeling somehow transformed by the music, by what they saw on stage. And we're so proud to be able to offer that to the community.

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For more information, visit musicinthemountains.com. And for more stories like this, visit LNN.