The Telluride Chamber Music Festival was started virtually simultaneously with the Telluride Film Festival and both were started under the umbrella of TCAH.

Barbara Martin, who was the Post Mistress at the Telluride Post Office also played the cello very well. She had schooling in classical music and like the rest of us had not planned on living in a town of 350 people without being able to listen and play live classical music.

Some of her old friends of friends included Roy Malan and RobinSutherland of the San Francisco Philharmonic.

Now that we had a template which was developed through TCAH’s participation in helping start the Telluride Film Festival and taking care of the logistics of staging the event in terms of volunteers, staffing, promotion and raising start up money, we were able to apply it to the Chamber Music Festival.

We had the same requirements which were: there had to be a free and open to all educational program, there had to be participation by local artists and musicians, there had to be a local discounted ticket and the event had to be held under the umbrella of TCAH so that we could use it on our list of achievements so we could get grants from the State and Federal Councils for the Arts and Humanities, so we could start up and fund more arts and cultural events in Telluride.

The first event was held in August, 1974 and the community was really thrilled. It wasn’t the Aspen Music Festival, but it was a beginning.

http://www.telluridechambermusic.org/