Breckenridge Music Festival

AWAKENING

Come Alive with Breck Music.

In celebration of the 40th Breckenridge Music Festival, we are not imagining how we will return to business-as-usual after the pandemic; we are eager to embrace a new future, with new music, new projects and a new sense of dedication to our listeners. We are eager for a new awakening!

Built around themes of optimism and new beginnings, we are creating new initiatives as well as spiffing up much-loved traditional aspects of past festivals. We’ll be more mobile, more flexible and more inventive than ever before. On our new AirStage—a high-tech retrofitted Airstream trailer with a built-in stage—we’ll present small ensemble versions of our innovative Tiny Porches and Family concerts. On the stage of the Riverwalk Center, we’ll offer our trademark combination of beloved classical music and new work. You’ll hear a stellar ensemble of 15 professional musicians from across the country perform lots of music that you already know and love from Brahms and Wagner to Debussy and Stravinsky. And you’ll make some new composer friends from Steve Reich to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

We’re not going back; we’re going forward! Join us for our 2021 season—An Awakening!

Steven Schick

Festival Artistic Director + Conductor

Guests are greeted by sounds of the BMF’s new partnership with the National Repertory Orchestra. Three NRO percussionists extend their residency in Breckenridge to learn alongside Artistic Director + Conductor Steven Schick who is hailed by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as, “one of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion but of any instrument.” This week, as doors open at 5:30pm, a combined percussion ensemble performs soothing contemporary works to elicit the great outdoors on the Riverwalk Lawn.

Festival Opening Night: Awakening

Thu, Aug 5 | 6pm FREE (Reserved Seating) | Riverwalk Center

Pre-Concert on the Lawn

Steve Reich Music for Pieces of Wood

Carlos Chavez Toccata Frederic Chopin Ballade No. 1 2021 Schmitt Piano Competition Winner Astor Piazzolla Tango Ballet Jacques Ibert Trois Pièces Brèves Igor Stravinsky Elegie Richard Wagner Siegfried Idyll

First Light

Sat, Aug 7 | 6pm FREE (Reserved Seating) | Riverwalk Center

Preconcert on the Lawn

John Luther Adams Songbird Songs Claude Debussy Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (arr. Sachs/Schoenberg) Andy Akiho to wALk Or ruN in wEst harlem Johannes Brahms Serenade No. 1 in D major, Op. 11 (arr. Stangel)

The Play of Light and Shadow

Thu, Aug 12 | 6pm FREE (Reserved Seating) | Riverwalk Center

Osvaldo Golijov Tenebrae

Guo Wenjing Parade

Ludwig van Beethoven Septet

Nightfall

Sat, Aug 14 | 6pm FREE (Reserved Seating) | Riverwalk Center

Lili Boulanger D’un soir triste

Igor Stravinsky Suite from L’Histoire du Soldat

Osvaldo Golijov Mariel

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Nonet