Classical music, intimate environments | Arts and entertainment

The High Country Sinfonia will perform its fall 2024 concert series with two concerts taking place Friday and Sunday in Aspen and Carbondale. The ensemble will feature Aspen High School senior Kurt Kowar, who will also perform as a soloist.

Friday’s concert will take place at Christ Episcopal Church in Aspen at 6:30 p.m., and Sunday’s show will be at River Valley Ranch Old Thompson Barn in Carbondale at 4 p.m. Both concerts are free to the Festival and School of Aspen Music and for the Kinhaven School of Music. Please attend, with a suggested donation of $20 per person to support the orchestra’s operating costs and mission of providing music to the Roaring Fork Valley.

The High Country Sinfonia is a professional, musician-led chamber orchestra that was founded in 2015 by Wendy Larson, a musician, teacher and conductor in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. Larson recruited local musicians to form the group of volunteers to rehearse and perform works of classical string orchestra literature.

The Sinfonia has performed a wide range of music, from Renaissance to Contemporary, from Matthew Locke to Piazzolla, with Bach, Mozart, Debussy, Elgar, Holst, Britten and many others.

Guests and members have performed solo works from the Sinfonia, including works for solo voice, piano, organ, trumpet, cello and violin. The Sinfonia has also collaborated with other groups, including two long-standing local organizations, the Aspen Choral Society and Symphony in the Valley.

This weekend’s series will be the 16th in HCS history. According to a statement, the ensemble’s goal is to “deliver high-quality concerts in intimate settings that engage and inspire audiences of all ages and enrich the Roaring Fork Valley community with accessible performances of diverse classical music.”

The highlight of this weekend’s program will be Kowar’s solo performance of “Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33.”

“This will be Kurt’s debut concert with the Sinfonia,” Larson said. “Tchaikovsky’s piece is a virtuoso piece that shows his technical expertise and highlights his maturity as a performer.”

Kowar has been a member of the local music community since he was 7 years old. Kowar’s first instrument was the piano, which he began playing at age 5. He attended the Suzuki Institute of Colorado in 2017 and has been a student in the PALS program at the Aspen Music Festival and was a member of the Roaring Fork Youth Orchestra from 2014-2019. .

Kowar began performing with High Country Sinfonia in 2021 and attended the Kinhaven School of Music in Vermont in the summer of 2022 and the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina in 2023, where he studied and performed cello during six-week intensive courses.

For the summer of 2024, Kurt attended the Aspen Music Festival and School studying with Professor Richard Aaron.

When asked what his goals are for the cello in the future, Kowar responded, “I want to attend a music school or conservatory with the ultimate goal of becoming a soloist and traveling the world to play the cello.”

The fall program also includes JS Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 6” and Antonin Dvorak’s “Serenade for Strings.”

HCS’s goal is to produce accessible and intimate performances. To encourage engagement between musicians and audiences, there will be a reception following each concert with light refreshments provided by Local Spirits and Paradise Bakery.