“For a season of transition, most of which will be led by conductors unfamiliar to the Colorado Music Festival audience, it was absolutely the right call to have the man who can now justly be called the most prominent face of Boulder’s classical music scene standing on the podium as guest conductor,” writes Kelly Dean Hansen in Monday’s Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado). “With the departure of longtime CMF music director Michael Christie, the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra’s Michael Butterman, who just completed his eighth season at the helm, is now the face of Boulder’s classical music scene. Boulder audiences know and trust both his commitment to the community and to his art. It was not a surprise, then, that Chautauqua Auditorium was packed almost to capacity on Sunday night. Butterman, usually loquacious in his interactions with audiences, held his brief comments until the last piece of the evening, letting the music do the talking beforehand. It was a program that was both full and light, both strenuous and relaxing,” comprising Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony, Richard Strauss’s Serenade for Winds and “Burleske” for piano and orchestra, and Brahms’s Second Serenade. Other guest conductors this summer at CMF include Steve Hackman and Lawrence Golan. The three finalists for music director at CMF are William Boughton, Carlos Miguel Prieto, and Jean-Marie Zeitouni.
Posted July 1, 2014
