City: Boulder, CO

Category: Shopping

Telephone: (303) 545-6924, ext. 18

Description: Summer in Boulder wouldn’t truly be summer without Chautauqua, which features a series of popular-music concerts and performances in addition to the classical Colorado Music Festival. This historic music venue has been an institution since 1898, when Boulder’s Chautauqua first opened as part of a national movement that brought the arts to numerous summer camps around the country. Today, many concertgoers enjoy dinner on the lovely old veranda of the picturesque Chautauqua Dining Hall or bring a picnic to enjoy under the shady trees on the green. The Summer Festival Concerts have featured such groups and performers as Shawn Colvin, Rosanne Cash, Los Lobos, Peter Kater, Michelle Shocked, Richard Thompson, Joan Armatrading, Laurie Anderson, The Persuasions, and the delicately named Mother Folkers. Some folks picnic into the night and enjoy the music (for free) from outside the concert hall. Dance fans can see performances by Cleo Parker Robinson and Danielle Helander. Chautauqua makes it a point to feature quirky performances such as the Reduced Shakespeare Company, “the Bad Boys of Abridgement,” and The Barbershoppers, a large barbershop chorus. Among the many others who have appeared here are Karla Bonoff, Spaulding Gray, and Hunter S. Thompson.