ALAMOSA — In a final musical spring offering, Performances at Baca welcomes back to Crestone faculty of the Mt. Blanca Summer Music Conservatory performing a potpourri of traditional and new classical works. The venue is the Baca campus of Colorado College at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 23.
The chamber ensemble includes violinist Sarah Off, artistic director of the Mt. Blanca Conservatory; composer and musician Dylan Fixmer, cellist Mathieu D’Ordine, and pianist Randy Macy, a collaborative pianist at Adams State University, which has hosted the summer conservatory.

In addition to the first and third movements of Beethoven's “Spring Sonata” (a tentative as of this writing), they will perform works by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959), Alan Hovhanness (1911-2000), an American composer of Armenian ancestry; Latvian composer Peteris Vasks (b. 1946), and American composers Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) and Dylan Fixmer (b.1987). The program includes instrumental arrangements of "Stormy Weather," the 1933 torch song written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehl; “Stardust” by Parish and Carmichael, and “Milonga del Trovador” by Astor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer.

Sarah Off, who comes from a musical family in Del Norte, completed her doctoral studies in music at Arizona State University with a thesis on “Building Musical Communities in Rural Areas.” She currently teaches violin and music at University of Northern Colorado in Greely and has established herself as an innovative and passionate performer both as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States and abroad. Her performances abroad include the International Kondo Festival, which showcased the work of Japanese composer Kohei Kondo; Iceland’s Harpa International Music Festival; and the world premiere of Dylan Fixmer’s Concerto for Violin in London in September 2022. She has been featured in The Times of London, on Radio Classique – Paris, and on Colorado Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and “All Thing’s Considered.” Sarah holds that creativity, advocacy, business skills and community engagement are vital for the sustainability and progress of the arts in today’s world. She is currently working on a book addressing the challenges of fostering entrepreneurial spirit in traditional schools of music pedagogy.

Dylan Fixmer is a passionate artist and composer whose works reflect his diverse music career. Classically trained at University of Colorado and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Dylan’s music, inspired by the beauty of nature and the human spirit, draws on many musical styles and traditions. As a multi-faceted and imaginative composer, Dylan writes orchestral and traditional solo and ensemble works, including for theater, choir, film, and narrative, the latter including the soundtrack for the audio book “Adventures of a Mystic Warrior” by Robert Rocco D’Ordine. He has recorded numerous albums including with Embodying Rhythm Marimba Ensemble’s “Music for Everyday Life.”

Mathieu D’Ordine is a devoted interpreter of a wide variety of music from the last four centuries of the Western canon including music from living composers. Mathieu received his Master of Music degree from CU Boulder in 2011, where he was a long-time student of Judith Glyde. He also had the privilege of being a featured soloist with the Boulder Symphony and having two remarkable pieces dedicated to him by acclaimed composer Anthony R. Green: "...On top of a frosted hill..." (2011) and “Colorful Open Space” (2023). He entertained the idea of becoming a novelist, or a poet, or a classicist, and still considers those careers monthly.

Randy Macy, a resident musician in the Valley, has worked as a salaried church musician in the Denver metro area and taught music at community colleges. He has served the last fourteen years as a collaborative pianist at Adam State University’s Music Department. Randy is a founding member of Performances at Baca.

Tickets, $20 for adults and $10 for youth-students (ages 7-21), may be reserved through [email protected], payable in cash or check at the door, which opens at 6:30. All are invited to a reception for the artists in the lobby following the performance. The entrance to the CC Baca campus parking is off Road T less than a mile from Crestone.