Author: David Sckolnik

CENTRAL CITY • What did they do to the Central City Opera House? In its 145 years of existence, this acoustic and theatrical wonder never has been assaulted like this. This season’s production of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate” is dated, overamplified, oversexed and an embarrassment to the man it was intended to celebrate: William…

CENTRAL CITY • Perhaps no other work of art has inspired as many artists as Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” There simply is not a visual- or performing-arts form that has not paid homage to this play, first performed in 1597. Opera alone has inspired at least 24 works; Central City Opera chose Charles Gounod’s unabashedly…

With two Faculty Artists Concerts already in the bank, it was time for the 2022 Colorado College Summer Music Festival to make a deposit of its most valuable asset on Tuesday night in the Cornerstone Arts Center: the Festival Orchestra. In session for only 10 days, a top-notch performance from 54 aspiring young professionals would…

Maybe it was lingering COVID-19 concerns. Perhaps it was the recently minted regional obsession with the Colorado Avalanche’s seemingly unstoppable march to raise the Stanley Cup. Some thought the program itself was the culprit. Whatever the reason, it was a huge mistake to be absent from Packard Hall on Thursday night. For, in a hall…

Radar on. Six incoming entities detected. Alert! It’s the annual contemporary chamber-music program in Packard Hall at the Colorado College Summer Music Festival. In a classical-musical world dominated by DWEMCs (Dead White European Male Composers), this concert’s compositions were penned by five composers who are alive and thriving. The prevailing sentiment is that such a…

Scott Yoo has become the stuff of legend in Colorado Springs. Since 2003, he has been the sole conductor at the Colorado College Summer Music Festival, making him the longest serving maestro in the festival’s 35-year history. He has been largely responsible for producing a series of orchestral performances that, especially in the past decade,…

Divisiveness be damned. Whatever your political, social or religious beliefs, they hold no water at the Colorado College Summer Music Festival. Here, the rift that routinely polarizes our society is nowhere to be found. So it was as festival music director Susan Grace took the Packard Hall stage with the first ensemble to open the…