HEARING HISTORY

You can’t walk into Chautauqua Auditorium without feeling the grand sweep of history thrumming within its walls, according to local musician Nick Forster.

“Just seeing the wooden bones of the hall and the daylight coming in through the sides reminds you of all the people who’ve played at Chautauqua and attended events [here] for over a century and a quarter,” he says.

A diverse who’s-who of speakers, preachers, dancers and musicians from William Jennings Bryan to Lyle Lovett have stepped onto that stage. Forster himself has been a recurring performer at the auditorium since the 1970s, initially as a member of the Boulder band Hot Rize, opening shows for bluegrass legends John Hartford, Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley. Hot Rize started headlining annual shows there in the 1980s.

Forster may be best known as the co-founder and host of the nationally distributed eTown radio show, which has been taped in Boulder since 1991. His shows at Chautauqua over the years have included artists like Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Joan Baez and more.

Chautauqua celebrates 125 years of music at Boulder’s iconic hall on the hill

BY JOHN LEHNDORFF

“I was always proud to do shows [here] knowing that our guests would feel part of the shared history that Chautauqua embodies,” he says.

That legacy began on July 4, 1898, when 13,000 attendees came to Boulder for the grand opening of Chautauqua Auditorium. Early performers in the space ranged from magicians, jugglers and animal acts to cultural institutions like the Kansas City Orchestra, opera and folk singers, African American acapella vocalists and more.

The anniversary will be celebrated July 8 with a daylong festival at

Chautauqua Park, featuring local food vendors and outdoor live music by Dead Floyd, Banshee Tree, Chain Station and more — capped off with a sold-out auditorium concert that evening with Los Lobos and Ozomatli. The 125th birthday gathering is the first time a large, free summer event has been held on the site in decades.

Back From The Dead

Chautauqua Auditorium and other adjacent historic structures may be revered now as icons, but in the 1970s they had fallen into disrepair. The city of Boulder once actually considered tear- ing them down to put up a resort and convention center with a great Flatirons view.

“For close to 30 years before all that happened at the auditorium, every year [there] were a few movies and an annual barbershop quartet concert,” says Kate Gerard, a Boulder native and Chautauqua’s resident archivist.

A major community effort to landmark and preserve the property was undertaken, but the single biggest thing that saved Chautauqua from the wrecking ball was the sound of music in the resonant wooden hall, she says.

In 1978, the Colorado Music Festival — returning this summer with violinist and artist-in-residence Joshua Bell — started performing orchestral and chamber works in concerts that brought thousands of locals to the auditorium for the first time. Then, Gerard says, a series of primarily acoustic shows by international artists introduced the venue to many more concertgoers. Funds to rebuild the hall started flowing along with community support to preserve the remarkable cultural institution.

Boulder may have still been somewhat rural near the dawn of the 20th