New Boulder Composer Premieres Flatiron Escapades for Chautauqua's 125th Anniversary

Composer Jordan Holloway used to hate playing the piano. He started tickling the ivories in middle school, but he persistently avoided practicing for his lessons. Then he discovered sheet music for video game soundtracks — up-tempo, funky themes from Super Mario Bros. and whimsical Zelda soundscapes — and he was hooked.

Video game music gave Holloway the inspiration he needed, and his determination to be a musician grew. He picked up the viola and joined a weekly composition club in high school organized by his orchestra director. "That was the first time I had really thought much about [composing]," he says. "At first I wanted to write music for games, and I didn't really know anything about classical music. But then about a year later, I started falling in love with the classical people and getting more into that."

Holloway graduated in 2021 with a double degree in composition and viola performance from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he worked with composer and Eastman School of Music graduate Carter Pann. Now the 23-year-old is pursuing a master's degree in composition at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studies with Nancy Galbraith.

There are around thirty pieces in Holloway's portfolio. Much of his music is heavily influenced by French impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, but he also draws inspiration from composers known for massive orchestral works, such as Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich. His compositional process is very melody-driven — he'll hum, play the piano or fiddle with his viola to find the initial tune. "Once I have that written down — usually that's a pencil-and-paper-type process for me — after that it can start to go onto the computer and become expanded," he explains.

In August 2022, the Colorado Music Festival reached out to Holloway with an exciting request: to compose a piece in honor of the 125th anniversary of the historic Colorado Chautauqua and Chautauqua Park, an expansive, otherworldly park nestled at the foot of Boulder's Flatirons. In the late 1800s, the term "chautauqua" (a word of Iroquois origin) was used for family and church retreats that focused on connection, music, nature, religion and culture; it also became a social movement focused on adult education. In 1898, Boulder residents marked the land stretching below the Flatirons as an area for the Colorado Chautauqua, and it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Holloway is familiar with Chautauqua Park and the vast beauty of the Flatirons — he lived just a ten-minute walk from the Chautauqua trailhead during three years of his undergrad at CU. "I was constantly going up trails whenever I felt the need to do so, and I didn't even know what trail I was on. I was just like, 'Okay, I know I need to walk in that direction, then eventually I'll be in the woods,'" he recalls, reflecting on his many trips meandering through the park.

His composition for the anniversary, Flatiron Escapades, is a love letter to the towering mountains and the immersive nature of the park. "It's basically a synthesis of my various experiences there, which are not all positive," Holloway says. "For example, in 2020, when it was just tumult and chaos, I would always go up there when I was mad to cool off...so there's a bit of that [anger] in the piece, as well."

The nine-minute work is a collection of musical ideas that Holloway describes as 'volcanic,' 'woodsy' and, at some points, 'misty.' "The word 'volcanic' comes from the opening," he explains. "I wanted to write specifically about the shape of the Flatirons as you see them from a distance and...the severity that they have."

After the piece's booming, brassy opening, it transitions into a nature-infused section that evokes images of hiking or jogging through the forest. "It's a little more carefree and fond and nice," Holloway notes. The orchestration thins and the piece slows and quiets, transforming into a thoughtful, nocturnal segment. "It's like a drive to Flagstaff Road that I took and then sat on the rocks and looked at the city," he reflects. "Images like that, where it's not a coherent narrative, it's just these memories I have of [Chautauqua]."

Despite its modernity, Flatiron Escapades pays tribute to Holloway's compositional idols: He directly quotes a Mahler symphony in one section and sprinkles impressionist themes throughout the work. The Mahler quote "is very hidden, but it's my way of paying tribute," Holloway says. "And some people might notice it, but probably not."

Holloway will debut Flatiron Escapades at Chautauqua Auditorium on Sunday, July 16. He'll share the stage with his former professor, Carter Pann, whose composition Dreams I Must Not Speak will be the second commissioned piece in the program. "[Pann] and I studied together at CU, so that's going to be pretty special for me, for people to be able to see that and to be able to share that premiere with him," Holloway says.

The program's finale, Adolphus Hailstork's JFK: The Last Speech, is yet another world premiere. It comes from a project by members of the 1964 Amherst class, who witnessed President Kennedy deliver his last major speech on October 26, 1963. "I'm a huge fan of [Dr. Hailstork's] music," Holloway says. "I'm just really blown away that I'm part of this at all."

Celebrate Chautauqua 125th Anniversary Concert, 6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 16, Chautauqua Auditorium, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder. Tickets are $18-$75.