In a final musical spring offering, Performances at Baca welcomes back faculty of the Mt. Blanca Summer Music Conservatory on Sunday, June 23 at 2 p.m. on the Colorado College Baca campus. The group will perform a potpourri of traditional and new classical works. The chamber ensemble consists of violinist and Mt. Blanca Conservatory artistic director Sarah Off, composer and musician Dylan Fixmer, cellist Mathieu DāOrdine and pianist Randy Macy, a collaborative pianist at Adams State University, which has hosted the summer conservatory.
Among composers featured in the concert are Beethoven, Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959), Alan Hovhanness (1911-2000), who was American of Armenian ancestry, Latvian composer Peteris Vasks (b. 1946) and American composers Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) and Dylan Fixmer (b.1987). The program includes instrumental arrangements of such well-known tunes as “Stormy Weather” and āStardust.ā
Sarah Off, from a musical family in Del Norte, earned a doctorate in music at Arizona State University with a thesis on āBuilding Musical Communities in Rural Areas.ā She currently teaches violin and music at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and has established herself as an innovative and passionate performer both as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States and abroad. She has been featured in The Times of London, on Radio Classique ā Paris, and on Colorado Public Radioās Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Off is currently working on a book addressing the challenges of fostering entrepreneurial spirit in traditional schools of music pedagogy.
Dylan Fixmer is a passionate artist and composer whose works reflect his diverse music career. Classically trained at the University of Colorado and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Fixmer draws on a multitude of styles and traditions to create music inspired by the beauty of nature and the human spirit. As a multi-faceted and imaginative composer, he writes orchestral and traditional solo and ensemble works, including for theater, choir, film, and narrative, and has recorded numerous albums.
Mathieu DāOrdine is a devoted interpreter of a wide variety of music from the last four centuries of the Western canon including from living composers. DāOrdine received his Master of Music degree from CU Boulder in 2011. He has had the privilege of being a featured soloist with the Boulder Symphony and having two remarkable pieces dedicated to him by acclaimed composer Anthony R. Green.
Randy Macy, a resident musician in the Valley, has worked as a salaried church musician in the Denver area and taught music at community colleges. He has served the last 14 years as a collaborative pianist in Adam State Universityās Music Department and is a founding member of Performances at Baca.
Tickets, $20 for adults and $10 for youth/students (ages 7-21), may be reserved through bacaperformances@gmail.com, payable in cash or check at the door. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. All are invited to a reception for the artists in the lobby following the performance. The entrance to the Baca campus parking is off Road T, less than a mile from Crestone, on the south side of the road.