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Best Supergroup

Moonspeed

Being dubbed a "supergroup" can be a bit of a curse, but when your band includes members of local luminaries such as Bright Channel, Space Team Electra, Moccasin and Monofog, that term seems somewhat justified. But it would be meaningless if the resulting music was one iota less powerful, uplifting or sonically inventive than the music of Moonspeed. With eleven members, this band could easily have been an unholy mess ready to go off the rails. Instead, the group is a well-orchestrated affair, with all members contributing significantly to the beautifully textured, soothingly hypnotic yet exhilarating tapestries this outfit weaves at every performance.

Best Supporting Actor

Ian Merrill Peakes in Glengarry Glen Ross

In the Denver Center's sizzling production of Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's play about a shabby, ruthless subculture, Ian Merrill Peakes played conscience-less super-salesman Roma, and he had every gesture, every seedy predictable inflection down exactly right. This was the salesman of your nightmares, callow and impermeable but wielding a perverse and frightening kind of power.

Best Supporting Actress

Kim Staunton in Doubt

Kim Staunton had only one brief scene in Doubt, as the mother of a boy who may have been abused by a priest at his Catholic school, but it proved pivotal. This mother's response to the accusation was both surprising and inevitable. She had been so beaten down by life that she had learned to accommodate in ways most of us could never imagine. Kim Staunton gave a subtle, multi-layered and deeply moving performance, communicating both the mother's love for her son and a slow, sad, inexpressible truth that was all her own.

Best Temporary Museum

Denver Community Museum

The DCM is dead. Long live the DCM! In actuality, the Denver Community Museum is on its last legs, but that's part of its beauty. The brainchild of design-community mover and shaker Jaime Kopke, this pop-up museum was never meant to last, at least not in its present form. Yet in its short lifetime, the DCM, which debuted in a Platte Valley storefront just last fall, has given a creative voice to people who wouldn't normally think of making art (and, conversely, to some who do), through monthly themed "challenges" and their resulting exhibits, as well as participatory community events. The last exhibit, Wonder Room, a subjective celebration of Denver the city, will open and close in April, with a gala silent auction of donated artifacts topping the whole thing off. And Kopke hints at plans to stage a collaborative show with folks from San Francisco sometime this summer, if the funds and space become available. The DCM is dead. Long live the DCM!

Best Textile Show — Contemporary

Magnolia Tapestry Project

The brainchild of artist John Nava and printmaker Donald Farnsworth, California's Magnolia Editions has been creating tapestries using digitized looms for the last ten years. During that time, Magnolia has produced works by significant artists such as Chuck Close, Deborah Oropallo, Lewis deSoto and Leon Golub. The results of translating paintings or prints into tapestries are stunning, and the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art wowed us by putting more than a dozen of them on view last summer.

Best Textile Show — Modern

Designing Women

Over the past few years, collecting couple Jill Wiltse and Kirk Brown have assembled a definitive group of fabrics documenting the significant role women played in post-war Britain. Designing Women, organized by Wiltse and Brown's personal curator, Shanna Shelby, and Tariana Navas-Nieves of the CSFAC, showed off this collection in spectacular fashion and lured textile curators from Europe and across the United States to Colorado Springs.

Best Theater Fundraiser

Modern Muse Theatre Company

First of all, Modern Muse is an interesting, adventurous company. Artistic directors Gabriella Cavallero and Stephen J. Lavezza work with local playwrights and make their decisions based on artistic rather than commercial considerations. Some of their productions are among the gutsiest and most thoughtful the city has to offer. Secondly, the fundraiser they held last August brought Jamie Horton back to Denver. Yes, that Jamie Horton, the guy we've all been missing since he pulled up roots after decades with the Denver Center and took an academic job back east. Horton reprised a number of his best roles, assisted by John Hutton, Kathy Brady and Randy Moore, and gave us one of the finest evenings of theater we've had for a long while — all in an atmosphere that pulsed with warmth and camaraderie. The take: $10,000. The experience: priceless.

Best Theater Production

Eurydice

Find a terrific script, gather together a first-rate cast and a group of talented technicians, direct with a mix of meticulousness and wonder — and lo and behold, you get Curious's magical production of playwright Sarah Ruhl's take on the age-old myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. We're at a loss to decide what to praise first and most: Chip Walton's direction; Michael R. Duran's set; Shannon McKinney's lighting; Brian Freeland's sound; Janice Lacek's costumes; the choreography of Garrett Ammon; or the dedicated work of the actors: Tyee Tilghman as Orpheus, Karen Slack as a lively and expressive Eurydice and Jim Hunt as the father everyone wishes they had. You can still catch this wondrous show (it runs until April 18).

Best Theater Season

Buntport Theater Company

Originality, playfulness, a bit of brain food (but not enough to ruin the fun), surprises and lots of laughter. These are the things we expect from Buntport, and the group unfailingly delivers. This season began with a spoof on The Three Musketeers in which Alexandre Dumas was joined in his coffin by an argumentative, small-town librarian, and ended with the fizzy hijinks of Buntport's first musical, Seal. Stamp. Send. Bang. The company's tech is always amazing — low-cost, high-effect — and the scripts, developed by the members themselves, are clever and sometimes brilliant. But what makes Buntport (which weathered a financial crisis with its usual effervescent practicality) our hands-down winner was the group's ensemble work and the way the members' acting skills have sharpened and deepened over time.

Best Unconventional Club Night

New Music Mondays Larimer Lounge

Jeff Davis
Though the idea of inviting completely inexperienced musicians, journalists, promoters and scenesters to get behind the decks seems like a bad one — especially at the Larimer Lounge, a venue that rarely showcases dance music — DJ Hot to Death (aka Monolith Music Festival's Matt Fecher) has turned his weekly event into the place to be on Monday nights. Sparkly electro-clubbers rub elbows with gritty rocker dudes and earthy singer-songwriters, while the music runs the gamut from contemporary country to hip-hop to metal. It's part dance party, part Denver music industry networking event and part DJ training ground. The drinks are cheap, the music selections are unique, the conversation is good, and you'd be hard-pressed to find more fun on a Monday.

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