Best Directorial Achievement 2010 | Israel Hicks | Best of DenverĀ® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Directorial Achievement

Israel Hicks

With last spring's Radio Golf at the Denver Center Theatre Company, director Israel Hicks completed August Wilson's magnificent ten-play cycle, which took audiences on a decade-by-decade journey through the black experience in the United States during the twentieth century. Over the years, Hicks had assembled an extraordinary array of acting talent for these rich, multi-textured productions, and Radio Golf was no exception: The powerful Terrence Riggins played an ambitious, Ivy League-educated real-estate developer; Kim Staunton was his upwardly mobile wife; and the production also featured Charles Weldon and Harvy Blanks. The show was a triumph for Hicks and the Denver Center, and a fitting farewell to one of our greatest playwrights.

Best Unsung Arts Series

Newman Center for the Performing Arts

Not only is the Newman Center a jewel box of a venue, with its three intimate performance spaces and elegant balconied plaza, but it also plays host to one of the finest college concert series nobody ever heard of, thanks to the often adventurous programming of center director Stephen Seifert. In a world where such arts mainstays as dance and baroque music remain hard sells, Seifert fights back by bringing in Pilobolus or the thoroughly different Mile High Voltage Festival, featuring world and avant-garde artists on the Cantaloupe Music label. It's a crapshoot for DU — some acts sell out, while others play to empty houses — but give Seifert a hand for putting a beautiful facility to worthy use. Better yet, buy a ticket and see what it's all about.

Best Side Trip by a Pop Band

Flobots.org

In the public realm, they go by the names Jonny 5, Brer Rabbit and Andy Rok, but off stage, Flobots Jamie Laurie, Stephen Brackett and Andy Guerrero are looking for ways to put their ideas to work on a more human level. Through their non-profit Flobots.org, the local-rock-band-made-good brings some of the power back to the people by offering at-risk youth a second chance through music therapy; by supporting grassroots activism through workshops and actions instigated by their Fight With Tools Institute; and by providing a physical space in which to get all that good work done, at the Flobots.org headquarters. Like the song goes: "We need heroes/Build them. Don't put your fist up/Fill them/Fight with our hopes and our hearts and our hands/We're the architects of our last stand."

Best Audio-Visual Performer

CacheFlowe

On the audio side, CacheFlowe produces dense, intelligent and profoundly weird music. His style incorporates IDM, glitch, dubstep and hip-hop to create a beat-driven, brain-warping and brilliantly creative sound. Then he adds custom, real-time-generated visuals, synced to and driven by his music via custom software he wrote himself. The result is an incredible audio-visual synthesis that will make you wonder if someone slipped one of those drugs that's known by just initials into your drink when you weren't looking. As it turns out, though, you'll be enjoying yourself so much you won't even care. This simply has to be seen — and heard — to be believed.

Best Hip-Hop Producer

Boonie Mayfield

How dope are Boonie Mayfield's beats? Consider this: Mr. J. Medeiros from the Procussions sought out Boon Doc (aka Solomon Vaughn) after stumbling across a clip of him rocking his MPC on YouTube one morning. Medeiros ended up working with Boon on his five-song EP, The Art of Broken Glass, and last summer the burgeoning producer pretty much slayed the competition at the Red Bull Big Tune tournament to move on to the finals in Atlanta (where he and runner-up DJ Psycho ended up losing out to Frank Dukes). Besides having nice beats, Boonie is also gracious. At the beginning of the year, he put together a kit for fellow beatmakers to purchase/download that contains over 350 samples of various drums, percussions and effects. It's a pleasure to watch the man work and even more gratifying to listen to his smooth, fluid and always banging beats.

Best Concert

My Bloody Valentine

No band could possibly live up to the hype surrounding My Bloody Valentine's landmark recording, 1991's Loveless, in a live setting, but Kevin Shields and company come close. Somehow, their handful of 2009 North American dates included a gig in Denver, and after a rocky start in the house mix, My Bloody Valentine performed a show that was, at times, as much a physical experience as a musical one. And to close out the night, the band assaulted the audience with a cascading avalanche of sound that made clothes flap with the sheer force of the clamor. Denver hearts MBV.

Best Musical Re-Partnership

Le Divorce

Not nearly enough people remember the band Facade. The act was a charming mixture of dream pop and jazz that played low-key shows for a couple of years right after the turn of the millennium. Then the band's singer, Kitty Vincent, dropped out of music for the better part of the decade, while guitarist Joe Grobelny went on to Jet Set Kate and the highly lauded Everything Absent or Distorted. Vincent and Grobelny really had something as a musical unit, though, and after EAoD disbanded, Grobelny and Vincent got back together as the atmospherically bombastic, energetic and engaging Le Divorce.

Best Unxpected New Venue

Theory + Practice

Like some kind of superhero venue, Theory + Practice lives a double life. By day, it masquerades as an art gallery, but once night falls and a sound system and a few lights are added, it transforms into the sweetest underground dance venue in town. It has a central location, nice acoustics, a fine floor for dancing — and it's just the right size to feel both intimate and spacious. Of course, the real kicker is that the promoters who favor it have done a fine job of bringing in top talent from the real underground, making for some great experiences at this dark knight of dance venues.

  • 738 Santa Fe Dr., Denver, 80204 Map

Best Dance Club

Beta

You want a top-notch clubbing experience in Denver, Beta is the first place you should look. It's been around long enough now to lose that new-club smell, but it's still got an unbeatable tandem of the finest sound system and best talent bookers in town. That means you're going to see the world's best DJs and dance artists here, and they're going to sound just about as good as they possibly can. Add in a bevy of beautiful people and maybe some bottle service, and you've got a recipe for a great night on the town.

Best Halloween in a Cemetery

Halloween Cemetery Tour and Spirits of Riverside Art Show

When the Friends of Historic Riverside Cemetery wanted to raise money to help restore Denver's oldest cemetery to its former splendor, they brought a host of historical city figures back to life on Halloween. Period-clad reenactors revived such characters as Sand Creek Massacre good guy Silas Soule, turn-of-the-century temperance worker and police matron Sadie Likens, African-American social climbers Barney and Julia Ford, brewer Philip Zang and many others as tour participants trekked through the burial ground; afterward, an FHRC-sponsored Spirits of Riverside art show reception at the Wynkoop Brewing Company featured Riverside RIP Ale and Riverside-inspired works by local artists.

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