Building Excitement

"I would call it serendipity," says Colorado Chamber Players artistic director and violist Barbara Hamilton, explaining how this month's program came about. "About a year ago, I met Dean Sobel at the Clyfford Still Museum, and we realized we could have a great collaboration." Around the same time, she heard...

By Patricia Calhoun

January 4, 2007

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"I would call it serendipity," says Colorado Chamber Players artistic director and violist Barbara Hamilton, explaining how this month's program came about. "About a year ago, I met Dean Sobel at the Clyfford Still Museum, and we realized we could have a great collaboration." Around the same time, she heard from Bruce Adolphe, a composer with whom her group has worked over the past five years; he'd just finished a new piece, The Tiger's Ear: Listening to Abstract Expressionist Painting, with six movements, each based on a specific artist. One of them was Still, and the work of several others — Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock — is now back on display at the Denver Art Museum's Frederic C. Hamilton Building.

"It's a very interesting project," Hamilton continues. "One of the things Bruce Adolphe does so well is tie together chamber music with another discipline. You learn about contemporary music as well as these paintings." And the CCP will throw even more into the mix at tonight's performance, which starts at 7:30 p.m. at the King Center Recital Hall on the Auraria campus. In addition to slides that illustrate the music, creating a "sonic landscape," the evening will feature a panel discussion with Sobel, Adolphe and Christopher Rothko, son of the artist. The panel won't repeat on January 21, when the CCP presents The Tiger's Ear at the Foothills Art Center in Golden, but the group will add a second piece to that night's performance. For ticket prices and more information, go to www.coloradohamberplayers.org.
Wed., Jan. 10, 7:30 p.m.

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Patricia Calhoun is editor-in-chief of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in September 1977. She’s been inducted into the Colorado Press Association Hall of Fame, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Hall of Fame and the Colorado Restaurant Association Hall of Fame. She’s also received dozens of local, state and national awards for writing, including first place for feature writing and first place for column writing with the Society of Professional Journalists. Patricia is a weekly commentator on Colorado Inside Out, PBS 12's public affairs roundtable, which has won two Emmys.

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