Article by Rayna Bailey
Music – April 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
FROM THE HIGH MOUNTAIN Hayfever Blue Grass Festival in July, to Jazz in the Sangres in August, to Wet Mountain Western Days country and western music festival in September, it’s all about music and summer in the Wet Mountain Valley.
But for some Westcliffe residents, all that music and summer fun wasn’t enough. They asked: What about the long, dark, music-less days of winter, early spring and late fall? Why is classical music, the genesis for all of the other musical genres, unaccounted for in Westcliffe? Can’t something be done to brighten winter’s dark days and round out the musical repertoire in the Valley by presenting live classical music performances?
Finding answers to those questions resulted in classical music fans Jon and Linda Carmain, of rural Westcliffe, taking action. The couple joined forces with other classical music devotees in and around the Valley and founded “In Concert,” an organization with one purpose: warming up long winter days with a series of classical music concerts.
“We got the idea and then talked it up a little bit to people at cocktail parties” and other social functions, Jon said. After other people expressed an interest in the idea, “we got together to see what we could do to bring classical music to the Valley.”
Why hold performances in the winter? Jon explained that Custer County is a hotbed of musical performances that, along with the many other events taking place in and around Westcliffe during the summer, fill up weekends and leave little time to squeeze in a new entertainment format.
The Valley has “wonderful summer programs and we didn’t want to compete. But, there is nothing in the winter,” he said, “and there’s also the absence of one critical aspect of music: classical. But “We weren’t sure it [a classical music concert] would be a hit,” Jon said. “In fact, we thought the odds would be against it.”
Despite a sense of skepticism about the chances of success, the group proceeded with its plans and in February 2004 offered its first live performance. The program featured pianist Dr. Michael Beck, a music professor at Colorado State University in Pueblo who has performed with the Pueblo and Denver Symphonies; his wife Barbara Beck, an artist in residence at CSU who teaches applied voice; and the couple’s daughter Sharon, a music student at CSU who was a featured performer for the Pueblo Symphony’s 2003 Colorado Music Fest Broadway Concert.
The concert was held in the Jones Theater in downtown Westcliffe, where the trio performed a selection of music by Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Brahms, and Chopin, among others. A “meet the performers” reception in Studio 2, which adjoins the Jones Theater, followed the show.
To everyone’s surprise, the event was a hit. Before the event “we took bets about how many tickets we would sell,” Jon said. “The low estimate was 50, mine was the high guess at 125.” The Jones can seat about 170 guests and “to our surprise, it sold out.”
Commenting on the success of the first concert, Jon said, “One attendee, a local rancher, told me, ‘I’ve lived in the Valley 20 years and see people here I never dreamed would be interested in classical music.'”
WITH THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL CONCERT under their belts, the group scheduled its second concert for the following November, a performance by the Aries Brass Quintet. It was another resounding hit that played to a packed Jones Theater.
Following the performance of piano and vocals with a brass quintet was also in keeping with In Concert’s goals. “We wanted the concerts to be fun, educational, and to have the full spectrum of classical music to appeal to a general audience,” Jon said.
The Aries Brass Quintet also continued the theme of this first concert series, which was to introduce the audience to each section of the orchestra as a separate entity.
The next section of the orchestra to be featured was strings. In January the Veronika String Quartet brought their talents to the Jones stage. The award-winning group has performed in Russia, Australia, and the United States.
In April, the Scirocco Woodwind Quintet will round out the 2004-2005 winter concert series, by introducing the final section of the orchestra, woodwinds. The group has performed in concerts in Colorado Springs and, individually; each member is a sectional principal player in the Colorado Springs Chamber Orchestra.
With local audiences introduced to and familiar with all of the sections of an orchestra, Jon said the next step is to “eventually pull all of them together and bring a full orchestra here to perform classical-based themes from old Western movies and show clips from the movies….”
But there’s an obstacle that In Concert must overcome first: the lack of a facility large enough to host such an event. The big summer music concert performances are outside. High Mountain Hayfever is held at the Stampede rodeo grounds; Jazz in the Sangres is held in the Westcliffe town park; and Western Days is at Westcliffe’s event center, a large field at the west end of Main Street.
Since holding a concert outside in Westcliffe in the winter isn’t an option, organizers of the concert series have placed plans for a performance by a full orchestra on hold until a suitable venue becomes available. But other plans are proceeding.
Citing In Concert’s mission statement, Linda said, we want to “provide cultural and educational opportunities to Valley residents by presenting an annual series of live classical music concerts and offering youth workshops.”
THE CONCERTS ARE UNDERWAY and the first youth workshop, designed for youths who play string instruments, is tentatively planned for this summer. “We hope to hold the first classical strings camp in June with members of the Arapahoe Symphony Orchestra as instructors,” Jon said.
In Concert members are also looking beyond Westcliffe and the Wet Mountain Valley. “We would like to see about partnering with other organizations and facilities like Salida’s Steamplant to share performances,” Linda said.
“We want people to look forward to the classical series like they do bluegrass and jazz, and Western days, so we’ll have a different theme for each year’s series,” Jon said, adding, “We have a program committee that decides and some members of the steering committee are musicians and have contacts with orchestras.”
All concert performances are held on Sunday afternoons at the Jones Theater, located on west Main Street in Westcliffe. Each performance is followed by a reception with the musicians at Studio 2, which adjoins the Jones Theater. “The performances are all Sunday matinees to encourage families and we are trying to keep the prices down, too,” Jon said.
General admission tickets for each concert are $15; student tickets are available for $5. Tickets may be purchased in Westcliffe at Arterburn Fine Arts, Shoot the Moon, Candy’s Coffee, and the Chuckwagon Trading Post. Because the concerts are typically sell-outs, it is recommended that tickets be purchased in advance. Additional information as well as advance tickets are available by contacting the Carmains at 719-783-3300.
Rayna Bailey lives near Westcliffe, and operates a literary services agency, among other things.