Body/Mind
A concert exploring the vulnerabilities, limits, and joys of the human experience.
Sunday, November 17 at 7:30pm
MSU Denver School of Music Kalamath Building
ADVENTUROUS MUSIC NOW
Our Story
The Playground Ensemble, in Residence at Metro State University of Denver, is the Rocky Mountain Region’s premier new music group. We are professional musicians, composers, educators and fans dedicated to presenting chamber music as a living art form.
In addition to concert seasons that feature the work of recognized composers, we work to cultivate a thriving local composition community. With exciting outreach programs like our innovative Young Composers Playground we are showing young people that classical music is vibrant, adventurous and relevant. We hope to inspire our audiences to not only listen, but to create!
Collaboration is at the heart of the Playground’s artistic vision. We commission new works by living composers, perform in support of touring improvisors, and perform regularly. We work with dancers, poets, spoken word artists, visual artists, and multi-media artists, finding inspiration across disciplines and exploring new, hybrid artistic forms.
The Playground has performed at many notable venues and festivals including the Biennial of the Americas, the National Performing Arts Convention, the International Society of Improvised Music Annual Conference, Mile High Voltage Festival, MCA Denver, Boettcher Hall, the Clyfford Still Museum and the Denver Art Museum.
We have performed with, or worked directly with a diverse cast of new music luminaries including Eyvind Kang, Morten Lauridsen, So Percussion, Evan Ziporyn, Roomful of Teeth, Caroline Shaw, Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture) and Tatsuya Nakatani.
Our efforts have been recognized and supported by numerous regional and national organizations including the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Chamber Music America, The Amphion Foundation, The American Music Center, New Music USA, the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, the Singer Foundation and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.
The Playground Ensemble promotes the music of our time through performance, new music commissions, education, and community outreach. Our goal is to provide stimulating performances, expand common perceptions of both contemporary music and the chamber ensemble, and nurture a community around this music that we love.
VISION
We will establish ourselves as a new music ensemble of national prominence. We will do so with superior quality performances and adventurous programming.
We dare to take programming risks; both of repertoire and venue and do so unashamedly and without fear.
We believe in the power of a positive musical experience over the perfect musical performance. We do not support low standards or poor performance practice. We believe that musical pretension, ideas of genre superiority, and “we’re trained professionals, don’t try this at home” arrogance must not just be abandoned but actively destroyed. We empower our audience to believe in their abilities as musicians.
We imperatively urge young classical musicians to participate in music composed in their lifetime.
We continue to expand our program offerings in the public schools and reach out to youth in schools with and without music programs.
We maintain working relationships with all higher education music programs in the Denver greater metropolitan area. We will work to establish and maintain these relationships throughout the state of Colorado and throughout the nation.
We are a service organization to all of those creating new music in Colorado. We are also a resource for all organizations, media, press, and educators interested in modern music. We wish to share our knowledge and experience in more ways than just concertizing. We believe that this music is for everyone and that community building is an important role of any performing ensemble. We will continue to develop new and continuing audiences for this music that we love.
The personal fulfillment of our performers, the camaraderie and enjoyment of working together and personal growth through playing this music we that love is a primary focus of our ensemble.
The Playground Ensemble acknowledges the harm perpetuated by systems of oppression that disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, brown, disabled, queer, transgender, immigrants, low income, & other marginalized people, and is committed to dismantling these systems. We recognize music as a way of speaking truth to power, and as a way of envisioning liberatory futures, free from racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, classism, and all the various and insidious forms of oppression.