Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Thursday, October 5th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
Doors Open: 2:00 PM | Show Start: 3:30 PM
SOLD OUT
MUST PRESENT RSVP TO ATTEND
NO RE-ENTRY
Levitt’s Free Summer Series
Friday, September 29th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors: 5:30
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
FREE RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday April 28th at 10am MT
Lido Pimienta's new album 'Miss Colombia,' the anticipated follow-up to 'La Papessa,' which was awarded the Polaris Music Prize in 2017, is available now. The Colombian-born, Toronto-based global beats trailblazer recorded the album in her home studio, with some additional recording done in the historic Colombian town of San Basilio de Palenque. Miss Colombia boasts 11 new and original songs that boldly celebrate Lido’s ecstatic musical hybridity of electronic meets cumbia, and is at once defiant and delicate, exploratory and confrontational. All of the songs were written and arranged by Lido, and she co-produced the album with Matt Smith aka Prince Nifty.
The album title was partly inspired by the Miss Universe gaffe in 2015, when Steve Harvey mistakenly awarded the crown to Miss Colombia instead of Miss Philippines. It caused Lido to reflect on the anti-blackness she's experienced, and how she was viewed as an outsider in adolescence, a "weird artistic tomboy" for not adhering to the expected norms projected upon her. Lido - an Afro- Indigenous, queer feminist - created Miss Colombia as a canvas for introspection, with pieces about love (and self-love), and loss. Other songs confront divisive politics in Colombia, Indigenous inequality and racism, and ultimately to bring her closer to home.
Musically it digs deeply into the history of Afro-Latin musics, from Palenque to cumbia - styles that Lido embraced after being introduced to Sexteto Tabala, one of the most representative musical expressions of the African communities in Colombia (who are also featured on the album). The album also features Bomba Estereo’s Li Saumet. Lido has an affinity for acts like A Tribe Called Red and Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, but her work also resonates with British-Sri Lankan rapper MIA and she draws unabashed inspiration from the New York-bred Dominican-Trinidadian rap queen Cardi B.
Katiria is a Puerto Rican singer and songwriter known for her smooth Latin pop sound and soulful lyrics. She has been recognized as ”Colorado’s absolute best musicians” by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the top favorite local artist by 303 Magazine. With her distinctive voice and unique style, Katiria has demonstrated her ability to blend musical genres — from salsa, cumbia, R&B, and popular music— offering something fresh and exciting to music lovers around the world.
The singer and songwriter pursued her music career during the 2020 pandemic, when she bought a microphone, taught herself about music production, and recorded her songs in her own bedroom. Her first release Mientes became an immediate success when it grabbed the attention of many and was featured in various radio stations worldwide. Although Mientes was the beginning of her journey, she was discovered by many with her single Hypnosis, receiving a major spotlight in the Latin music industry and gaining invitation to the Latin GRAMMYs in 2021 & 2022.
Lolita is a Rising Mexican-American Latin Pop Artist who burst onto the streaming scene in 2018. Lolita combines a variety of compositional elements to form her unique and authentic sound. To date, Lolita has nine singles in her online discography, amassing hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify alone. Her latest release is a latin urban song titled, "Chi-Chi Suelta," a bass heavy club banger built to get the party started. You can listen to Lolita’s latest releases and stay up to date on her latest music, videos, events, & more by following her @lolitaworldwide.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Sunday, September 24th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 3:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 4:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens April 14th at 10am MT
Based in Denver, Colorado, USA, Gamelan Tunas Mekar is a community ensemble under the direction of Balinese composer and Artist-in-Residence I Made Lasmawan.
Tunas Mekar presents the traditional and new music for Balinese gamelan at music festivals, schools, private events, local venues, specially produced concerts, and by special invitation both internationally and nationally.
Modeled after typical village groups found throughout Bali, and learning by traditional methods, this community ensemble provides American audiences the rare opportunity to experience one of the world’s most beautiful and sophisticated performing arts.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Saturday, September 23rd, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, April 14th at 10am MT
Chali 2na and Cut Chemist have been inseparable for 35 years. It all started in 1987 when they formed their first group UNITY Committee just a couple years after Chali move from Chicago to Los Angeles.
In 1994 they combined forces with local rap group Rebels Of Rhythm to form Jurassic 5. Although J5 was in full swing making music and doing shows, Chali and Cut also were founding members of the fusion Latin group Ozomatli in 1995. Since then the two have been busy with both groups and still managed to find time to separate and embark in solo careers on the side. Cut Chemist went on to do remixes and features for such acts as DJ Shadow, Less Than Jake and Blackalicious. Chali also explored his rap prowess with such acts as Roots Manuva, Lyrics Born, Slightly Stoopid and Galactic just to name a few. Separately they also landed solo deals with Interscope and Warner Brothers.
The two have kept busy with their own separate careers while always finding time to collaborate. It’s a 35 year old friendship that manifests into music and art.
For the last three years they’ve been doing a special collaborative performance that tells the story of their lives in music together. The catalogue is as endless as the time they spent together creating over the years.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Friday, September 22nd, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, May 12th at 10am MT
The Regrettes
Further Joy
“There’s so much pressure to constantly better yourself,” Lydia Night, lead singer and songwriter of The Regrettes, says. “We’re obsessed with social media, which makes it easy to obsess over self-growth and unhealthy amounts of productivity. That phrase, ‘further joy,’ summarized what it meant to be on the hamster wheel of constantly chasing happiness, but in turn, that’s what makes you unhappy,” she adds, acknowledging the shared inner turmoil she, guitarist Genessa Gariano, bassist Brooke Dickson, and drummer Drew Thomsen were dealing with at the start of last year. “I was stuck in a loop of wanting to be better, wanting to be good, and therefore I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t be present.” The desire to break free of that cycle is what the band’s third album, Further Joy, is all about.
As the pandemic set in and Los Angeles shut down, The Regrettes were having a full-blown identity crisis. Lydia had been touring since she was 12-years-old, meeting guitarist Genessa when they were just teens in music school. As a band, they’d been on stage long before their 2017 debut, Feel Your Feelings Fool!. And, by the time they released their critically acclaimed LP How Do You Love? in 2019, they’d formed a cohesive lineup with Brooke and Drew, setting themselves on a steady upward trajectory. They’d spent the past two years headlining sold-out shows across North America and Europe, performing at mainstay festivals like Coachella and Reading and Leeds and playing their hit singles on Good Morning America, Conan, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. As NME said of their sophomore album, The Regrettes were “truly unstoppable” until they weren’t.
“So much of our identity is tied to music and performing,” Brooke says, adding that without the distraction of playing live, they were forced to answer the question: “Who am I when I’m not performing?” That shared inner inquiry can be heard in the band’s most actualized, collaborative, and vulnerable album to date, a self-aware soundtrack for those interested in what Lydia refers to as “dancing the pain away.”
In January of 2021, after more than a year apart, The Regrettes reconvened for a 10-day writing retreat in Joshua Tree. They went on hikes, stargazed, transformed their living room into a disco, and had candid conversations, some of which made their way into songs. They left the desert with a vision for the record and demos in hand, slowly bringing it to life through zoom writing sessions, and working separately with producers Jacknife Lee and Tim Pagnotta. They experimented with their sound, pushed their creative limits, and Lydia, who was once skilled in the art of “writing a song in 30 minutes and then not touching it” recalls writing then editing her deepest truths. Although the subject matter is anything but light, she still calls it the “poppiest, and danciest” album they’ve ever made.
You can hear that levity in “Monday,” an upbeat track Lydia wrote at the peak of her anxiety disorder. “Once you accept what’s going on with your mental health, sometimes it gets worse before it gets better,” Lydia says. “Accepting I had anxiety and depression was extremely scary because then it became real. This song comes from the validation of those feelings.” The song’s music video introduces the character “Joy” – a pink representation of the unattainable yet ideal self the album pushes against.
In “Out of Time” Lydia sings “all of these anxieties come over me/ just let me breathe” at a panicked pace, sonically capturing the feeling of running out of time. In “Barely On My Mind” Lydia replays scenes from “a really gnarly, abusive relationship,” she processed during the lockdown. On the song, Genessa turns up distortion, Brooke experiments with palm muting, creating a tight poppy sound, and Drew lives his ‘80s R&B pop dream thanks to the percussion overlaying his drum track. “We’ve all had terrible experiences with abusive men,” Brooke says of the track. “There’s no sweet way to put it, that one’s an angsty banger.” In, “Subtleties (Never Giving Up On You)” Lydia discusses her path to self-acceptance. “‘Subtleties’ in particular feels super pretty, and beautiful, but is one of the darkest songs of the album lyrically,” Lydia says. “I’ve struggled with eating disorders for a large portion of my life starting when I was 15, which eventually turned into body dysmorphia. Me singing ‘Never giving up on you’ is me singing to myself.” In “Homesick” Lydia taps into feelings of longing. “I’d been going through this whole pandemic process with my boyfriend and I hate feeling codependent but I felt so codependent when he left. I had gotten so used to, without even realizing it, having that person around and relying on that person.” Though it’s a love song, “Homesick” still captures the dangers of yearning too much. “There are moments and lyrics that still give you a glimpse into that dark place I was in, like the one-line ‘fetishizing the thought of you lying’ I love that lyric because I feel like that’s my anxiety to a T.”
For Brooke writing “You’re So Fucking Pretty” together was transformative. “That was a new experience for us, both sonically and emotionally,” she says. “We hadn’t explored that space together. That was a big moment for us and it’s a really special moment on the album. Lydia recalls the relief of being open with her bandmates without feeling embarrassed or scared. “It’s the first time I’ve ever written directly about a girl I had a crush on and it took me a while for me to even allow my brain to accept the fact that I’m bisexual,” Lydia shares. “Writing this was important for me because it just validated my own sexuality.” For Genessa, “You’re So Fucking Pretty” was an opportunity to write a song they wish they had when they were younger. “As a queer person growing up it definitely felt like there weren’t many songs I could relate to, and I feel like this song would have been something I would have held really close to my heart as a kid. I hope that happens with other people. I don’t think it necessarily has to be this queer anthem but I think someone else could listen to it and feel the same way, or a girl could feel that way about a boy she likes. Boys can be pretty too.”
The band wrote, “La Di Da” to capture what Lydia calls “the action a kid would have, of putting your hands over your ears and saying ‘la la la’ to block out everything.” The call to action was inspired by their impromptu desert dance party. “I have a playlist of 2000s songs and when we were in Joshua Tree, we had a dance party with these colored lights with gels,” Genessa says. “It may have been the Black Eyed Peas, some song telling us to put our hands up. You don’t have to think, you have no choice but to dance because it’s telling you what to do. That’s such a freeing feeling.” Drew remembers the song, being a “total departure” from the band’s typical path in the studio. “I was playing an organelle, this really cool synth with wooden buttons,” he shares. “That first thing that comes in on the song, that little synth part I was playing, Lydia heard that and loved it, so I kept playing and she started singing. It was one of those songs that came out very quickly.” Writing those songs together gave the band a newfound sense of ownership. “There’s a passion behind the actual music itself now that hasn’t been at that level before,” Drew shares, adding, “It’s the first album that feels like our album.”
The song “Nowhere” draws inspiration from an Alan Watts quote, “You can’t live it all unless you can live fully now.” The line left a lasting impression on Lydia. “What Further Joy means, that chase for happiness, that quote sums it up,” she says. “You’re never going to experience real life if you’re chasing something.” It’s the lesson that allowed The Regrettes to pause, go inward separately, and still land in the same place together, becoming a tighter unit than they’ve ever been. “So fucking much has changed on a personal level which translates into my lyricism and the way we are with each other, how close we are with each other,” Lydia recognizes. “We’ve bonded so much.” It’s also the lesson Lydia hopes listeners walk away with. “We all deserve happiness and to be present, and we’ll never get there if we feel so much shame and guilt for not being there already,” she adds. “Don’t get caught in the hamster wheel of chasing joy.”
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Thursday, September 21st, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, April 14th at 10am MT
Trumpeter and vocalist, Jennifer Hartswick is one of the most exciting performers in music today. She exudes confidence and joy and brings her own refreshing spirit to the stage every time she performs. Jennifer’s music is honest, soulful and comes with a maturity far beyond her years.
Hartswick is an original member of the Trey Anastasio Band and has recorded/shared the stage with Herbie Hancock, Phish, Christian McBride, Tom Petty, Aaron Neville, Carlos Santana, The Rolling Stones, Big Gigantic, Dave Matthews and countless others.
Jennifer’s live performances are renowned as spontaneous, joyful and contagious. Her natural charisma and sincerity shines through, and each performance is a celebration of musical collaboration. And whether she is wailing on the trumpet or singing an intimate vocal solo, her performance is all part of a single seamless instrument, one that is played not only with astounding technical proficiency, but also with sensitivity, conviction and heart.
Levitt’s Free Concert Season
Saturday September 16th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:00 PM
Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
FREE RSVP / VIP On Sale Friday, April 28th at 10 AM MT
The Latino Cultural Arts Center (LCAC) along with the Metropolitan State University Music Department proudly announce that the Viva Southwest Mariachi Festival is returning to Levitt Pavilion Denver. Join us on Mexican Independence Day (September 16th) for a spectacular night of Mariachi. Come celebrate the best Youth talent from across the state with the Mariachi Estelares de Colorado.
Headlining the festival is Latin Grammy Award Winner Flor de Toloache. The all-female group mixes tradition and innovation, breaking boundaries with its edgy, versatile, and fresh take on traditional Latin American music. Like the legendary love potion that the Toloache flower represents in Mexico, the talented New York ensemble casts a spell over audiences with soaring vocals and elegance.
Pre-show + Concert VIP Tickets $65
Elevate your experience by purchasing a VIP ticket to celebrate the best of Mariachi culture and Mexican cuisine. Tickets include a pre-show private reception, along with specialty food and drink that are sure to satisfy the most discerning of tastes.
Flor de Toloache, es una agrupación femenina ganadora de un Latin Grammy®. Ellas combinan tradición con sonidos innovadores rompiendo fronteras y con sus versiones vanguardistas y versátiles dan un nuevo giro a la música tradicional Latino Américana. Sus diversos orígenes y antecedentes musicales trascienden la cultura y el género para forjar nuevos caminos. La agrupación ha aparecido en escenarios internacionales desde México hasta Japón incluyendo una gira extensa los Estados Unidos. "Las Flores", como las llaman sus fans, han publicado cinco discos hasta la fecha y recientemente lanzaron "Motherflower", descrito como un mosaico de géneros inspirados en mariachi, "con una carga feminista como nunca antes se había sentido".
The Latin Grammy Award–winning, all-female Flor De Toloache mixes tradition and innovation, breaking boundaries with its edgy, versatile, and fresh take on traditional Latin American music. Like the legendary love potion that the Toloache flower is used for in Mexico, the talented New York ensemble casts a spell over its audiences with soaring vocals and physical elegance. The members’ diverse ethnicities and musical backgrounds transcend culture and gender by forging new paths. The group has graced international stages from Mexico to Japan and has extensively toured to cities in the US, Europe, and Latin America. With a total of five studio albums to date, “Las Flores,” as their fans call them, recently released Motherflower, described by the artists as a fiercely feminist mosaic of genres inspired by mariachi.
Presented by The Colorado Sound
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Thursday, September 14th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, March 31st at 10am MT
Steeped in tradition but with an urgent, contemporary edge” (The Guardian), singer, songwriter, and blues guitar wizard Buffalo Nichols brings an urgent, modern consciousness to the artform, presenting music from his 2021 self-titled debut and other treasures.
Raised and based in Milwaukee, the artist born Carl Nichols found solace and inspiration in the guitar at a young age, raiding his family’s record collections for musical truth and splitting his time as a young man between local bars and the church, honing a sound that matured and developed through soul-seeking sojourns to West Africa and Europe.
Southern Colorado trio the Hardly Nevers are fueled by the daydreams of 90s latchkey kids, catchy pop ditties, and the syrupy vocals/guitar of Chela Lujan (Haunted Windchimes), bolstered by Charlie Hayden’s keen-eared melodic bass licks and the breaking heartbeats of Tim Kelley on drums (Back Pages).
Levitt’s Free Concert Season
Soul Rebel Festival presents Grammy Award Winner Black Uhuru
Saturday September 9th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30pm
Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
FREE RSVP / VIP On Sale Friday, April 14th at 10 AM MT
Derrick “Duckie” Simpson the “Gong Gong Gullie” is the founder and leader for reggae’s BLACK UHURU. Although going through numerous lead singers and musicians they have remained to be one of the most recognized and prolific reggae band for over 50 years.
The roots of BLACK UHURU were formed in Kingston Jamaica’s Waterhouse district also known as “Firehouse” in the early 60′s. Though considered to be one of Jamaica’s toughest neighborhoods it’s home to several other reggae singers and musicians. It was where Duckie Simpson grew up and learned to sing from boyhood friends Winston “Pipe” Matthews and Lloyd “Bread” McDonald of Wailing Souls and Bob Marley. He recorded four tracks with Wailing Souls before forming his own group. The original Uhuru’s (Swahili for freedom) were Derrick “Duckie” Simpson, Euvin “Don Carlos” Spencer and Rudolph “Garth” Dennis. They only recorded a few singles “Folk Songs” “Time Is On Our Side” and “Slow Coach” before separating. Don went solo and Garth joined Wailing Souls.
Duckie reformed the group adding Michael Rose & Errol “Tarzan” Nelson, both from Waterhouse. They recorded their debut album “Love Crises” in 1977 at Prince Jammy’s famous studio in Waterhouse on St. Lucia Road. It was later re-released as “Black Sounds Of Freedom”. Errol later left to join The Jayes. He was soon replaced by American female singer & dancer Sandra “Puma” Jones. They teamed up with drummer Sly Dunbar and bass player Robbie Shakespeare. Together they developed a musical style full of deep bass thumps, loud drum slaps, sharp keyboards, long instrumentals with guitar riffs, whirly back round noises, echos and the signature”woh oh oh’s” creating they’re “classic” sound. Producing hits like “I Love King Sellassie, “‘Shine Eye Gals”, “General Penitentary” and “What is Life”.
BLACK UHURU released the albums Red, Chill Out, Sensemila and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and began to tour the world bringing them to international audiences. It was during this period they started to gain rapid popularity.
They opened live shows for the Rolling Stones and the Police. They began to work with other well accomplished producers and musicians. Keith Richards played guitar for the “Shine Eye Gal” track. Dennis Brown “The Crown Prince of Reggae” produced the tracks “Rent Man” and Wood For My Fire”. The track” Spongi Reggae” appeared on an episode of The Bill Cosby Show and “Party in Session” in the movie 1980′s North Shore. BLACK UHURU made reggae history when they won the first ever Grammy Award for reggae music in 1984 for the album Anthem Shortly after the grammy Michael Rose went solo.
Then the original three re-united. They released four albums Now, Iron Storm, Mystical Truth and Strong. Each album was nominated for grammy. They made an award winning music video for the track “Tip Of The Iceberg” featuring rap star Ice-T in 1992. Eventually splitting up again. Carlos & Dennis left again & Duckie stayed again. This time there was a lawsuit brought amongst the group over the band’s legal rights in Los Angeles county court. Derrick Simpson won.
As the new millennium approached there came a new lead singer yet again from Waterhouse named Andrew “Bee’s” Beckford. They released two albums. Unification was produced by King Jammy & Dynasty was produced by Fitzroy Francis & Duckie. They went on a worldwide tour featuring Sly and Robbie and had the famous producer Scientist as its road engineer. Andrew Bee’s then went solo.
In 2007 Duckie & Michael Rose reunited after twenty years. They performed in Jamaica and did one international tour and released the single “Dollars”. In 2011 Duckie reunited with Andrew Bee’s after ten years. He added female backing vocalist Kaye Star and began touring again performing in South America & America.
BLACK UHURU recently performed in a Broadway Musical. The red carpeted event “Loving the Silent Tears: A New Musical” premiered October 27th 2012 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Ca. They were invited to represent reggae music and performed a new track “Make A Deal”. And in Las Vegas Nevada BLACK UHURU was recently honored for its contribution to the entertainment industry. August 31st if now officially “Black Uhuru Day” in the city of Las Vegas.
BLACK UHURU’s long success has allowed them to become ambassadors of reggae while earning several achievements in the music industry. With 14 full length albums, 7 instrumental dub albums, and 4 live albums they have the highest record sales in reggae music behind Bob Marley. The album Red was voted #23 for Rolling Stone’s list of “100 Greatest Albums of the 1980′s. Aside from winning the first reggae grammy they have been nominated 5 more times. They are the only reggae group to have won the Diamond Awards of Excellence in 1994.
Despite all of BLACK UHURU’s change of different singers and musicians the one thing that has always remained is Derrick “Duckie” Simpson. Much respect to a legendary figure for Reggae Music. In 2018, Black Uhuru released “As The World Turns” featuring Duckie on lead. In December 2018 “As The World Turns” was nominated for the 61ST Annual Grammy Awards.
Levitt’s Free Concert Season
Jawbreaker
Friday September 8th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
Member Doors Open: 5:30 PM
Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Levitt’s Free Concert Season
Bodies of Culture Presents: Sunday Sounds
Sunday September 3rd, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
4:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Bodies of Culture is a diverse group of musicians and professionals advocating for equity in Colorado's music Industry. Bodies of Culture is dedicated to evolving the local music ecosystem to create a more equitable future for young artists and our peers by identifying and closing EID gaps and establishing a culture of belonging and solidarity. We are committed to supporting BIPOC youth in music participation and community programs that celebrate cultural identity and self-expression, understand the healing power of music, and empower musical self-discovery and exploration.
Bodies of Culture Presents: Sunday Sounds heads to Levitt’s Plaza this September 3rd from 4-7 pm. This event will center around the BOC board members’ experiences in the local music industry of Denver. Join us in introducing the BOC’s artist survey meant to help advocate for those underrepresented and misrepresented in the music and entertainment industry in Denver. Live performances are lined up for the evening by members of the board including Ana Luna Uribe, Miguel Avina, Kayla Marque, Claygo, and DJ Stevie Selby. Food from Maiz will be provided!
Levitt’s Free Summer Series
Friday, September 1st 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors: 5:30
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
FREE RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday March 31st at 10am MT
Mariachi Sol de Mi Tierra was established in 1999. Under the direction of Juventino Romero, a new group was formed through his leadership, musicianship and determination making his group one of the best mariachis in the United States today. They have accompanied the most famous artists from Mexico and represent the beautiful Mexican culture in National Western Rodeo and El Grito de Independencia in partnership with the Mexican Culture Center and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Mariachi Sol de Mi Tierra presents a love and passion for their music for all people to enjoy.
The Fiesta Colorado Dance Company is the premier and most recognized Hispanic Dance Company of Colorado Fiesta Colorado celebrates 45 years of Mexican and Spanish dance in Denver. The Fiesta Colorado Dance Company was awarded the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2006 for its service to the community and for excellence in the preservation of the Hispanic Arts. Artistic Director, Jeanette Trujillo-Lucero has been recognized as an Outstanding Woman of Jefferson County and is considered as a “Living Legend of Dance in Colorado” She received the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1997 and was featured as one of Colorado’s People in 1995 by the Rocky Mountain News. Most recently, Jeanette received the Latina Trailblazer Award, the Luminaria Recognition Award and the Teaching Artists Award by Think 360 Arts.
Ballet Folklorico Baile Caliente is a Lakewood/Denver folkloric dance group that has been sharing the art of folklorico with audiences since 2010. We take pride in the fact that we all joined together for the simple love of dancing, love for community, and eagerness to grow and learn. We strive to bring energy and culture to every stage and performance!
Levitt’s Free Summer Series
Sunday, August 27th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors: 3:30
GA Doors Open: 4:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
FREE RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday April 28th at 10am MT
Levitt Pavilion in partnership with Japanese Arts Network presents Japan Fest 2023 - a community-driven and multi-disciplinary festival of Japanese culture in Colorado featuring headliner, Japanese American Hip-Hop artist Lyrics Born. Performances will open with JA-NE Cultural Mix-tape - celebrating music, cultural traditions, and heritage through genre-bending live music, dance, and aerial performance. Featured artists include emcee and beat-maker 3Two, taiko drummer Courtney Ozaki, and aerialist Leilani Rose with special guests, hybrid folk and street dance from locally grown crews, Okinawan sanshin player Gabriel Batmanglidg, and more. The festival will also feature a market of artists and vendors, community organizations, and food trucks representing the multi-faceted cultural diaspora of Japan in Colorado.
Lyrics Born relocated to the United States from his birthplace of Toyko, Japan right around the time Hip Hop was exploding on the East Coast. From the moment he heard Sugar Hill Gang’s 1980 classic “Rapper’s Delight,” the Bay Area Hip Hop luminary knew he’d found his calling. Twenty-five years later, LB has obliterated the stereotypes of what an MC is “supposed to” look like and captured the hearts of countless fans who gravitate to his distinctive voice. He’s now the only Asian-American MC to release 10 studios albums and the first to play major music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza.
From his Quannum Recordings debut with Latyrx, 1997’s The Album, to 2003’s seminal solo album Later That Day, he’s consistently pushed the boundaries of his craft. His newest project, Quite A Life, is like the exclamation point on his milestone year. “Ten albums is a lot for any artist, let alone an indie artist who colored outside the lines, so to speak,” LB says. “I'm just appreciative there was always somehow a path for me, no matter how impossible it seemed — either on paper or in practice.”
As the first Asian-American to release a greatest hits compilation, he’s pumped out multiple smash singles across four official studio albums. From “Stop Complaining” to “Callin’ Out” and “I Like It, I Love It” and “I Changed My Mind,” his material has always retained a musically eclectic feel. The self-proclaimed “funkiest rapper alive” carries on his tradition of weaving funk and soul into classic, boom-bap Hip Hop on Quite A Life. Without the influence of icons like James Brown, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Zapp and Rogers, LB admits he wouldn’t be who he is today. Coupled with his love of rap pioneers such as KRS-One, Rakim and Snoop Dogg, LB’s music is the perfect Hip Hop and funk-flavored gumbo. For live shows, LB often recruits a full band to “keep it all the way funky” for his audience. Coupled with wife / singer Joyo Velarde’s powerful voice, the unrelenting energy of his performances electrify every crowd.
Since establishing himself among the upper echelon of indie Hip Hop artists, LB has expanded his empire into film. This year, he has roles in Boots Riley’s critically acclaimed film Sorry To Bother You and the Netflix movie Always Be My Maybe starring comedian Ali Wong and Keanu Reeves. “I'm funny, or so I’m told [laughs],” LB says. “I absolutely love comedy and being ridiculous. These past couple films have been an incredible experience. I'm especially proud to be a part of films that challenge norms, and it doesn't hurt to work with your friends either. I really love comedic acting. As an artist, it's like another color on my palette. I will be doing more advocating for the underserved in the arts as well, particular for Asian Americans and other people of color. The world needs the same diversity in the arts as we do in real life.”
As LB continues the next chapter, he jokes that he’s become that “old stubborn Japanese man” who says what he wants and he’s not planning on going anywhere. In fact, his goal over the next 25 years is to make another 10 albums and more films. Most notably, he wants to continue providing a platform for other Asian-Americans, a slice of the population that is consistently underrepresented in pop culture. When he looks back on the last 25 years, he has nothing but gratitude for his position in the Hip Hop space, and life in general. “I'm just blessed and grateful to be alive and pursuing my passion after 25 years,” LB says. “That’s mind-blowing for me when I really think about it. All the obstacles I've faced and accolades I've received, I can only be thankful.”
Levitt’s Free Concert Season
Oakhurst
Friday, August 25th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30pm
Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
FREE RSVP / VIP On Sale Friday, April 14th at 10 AM MT
Oakhurst is an American bluegrass-rock band from Denver, Colorado. Founded by singer/songwriter AP Hill and bassist Johnny James Qualley in 1999, Oakhurst became a full-time internationally touring act in 2005 and has produced six records. Their most recent album is Barrel (2012), which was produced in Nashville, Tennessee by Joe Pisapia and ToyBoX studios with. The band spikes traditional bluegrass with folk and rock with a kamikaze rhythmic sensibility and pointed harmonies. The band has shared stage performances with Zach Brown, The Infamous String Dusters, and Green Sky Bluegrass Band -- among many others -- and has an uncanny drive to keep the listeners seatless, engaged, and fullly wrapped up in the lyrical twist. Band members Chuck Hugenberg (Fiddle), Matthew "Coop" Cooper (Banjo) and long-time drummer Andrew Clapp (the most influential members over the years) have shaped the sound of one of Denver's bluegrass performance staples.
Levitt’s Free Summer Series
Saturday, August 12th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
ALL Doors Open: 3:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
FREE RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday April 28th at 10am MT
2023 festival featuring:
Harry Mo Reggae Band
Romo Ethiopian Dancers
Starlight Afrobeats Band and more!
Colorado African Cultural Center(CACC) is an NGO established in 2017 to empower the African and African American communities and to foster unity, diversity and inclusion between different communities in Colorado. We are committed to organizing events and campaigns that are centered around diversity, inclusion and celebration of cultural heritage. We use entertainment, culture, food, music and art to bring people together. CACC also provides youth empowerment, financial literacy and business development programs.
In 2023, CACC is organizing a special event - Colorado Dashiki Festival at the Levitt Pavilion in Denver. The festival is going to be one of a kind in Colorado. It is going to be completely free and accessible to all ages. It will feature musical performances from several trending African artists as well as African food, fashion and art.
The Dashiki Festival is an African event that has been celebrated consecutively for 7 years now in Colorado. It is a dynamic cultural event designed in a way that celebrates all aspects of African heritage. Dashiki Festival usually features African music, cultural performances, African food, and arts with the highlight of an African fashion show . Everyone comes dressed in African attire and wearing African jewelry and prints. People spend hours enjoying African music, eating delicious African delicacies, exploring vendor stands and interacting with and meeting new people. The night ends with a fashion contest, where people get to display their unique African attires and win awards for best dressed dashiki Queen of the year.
The Dashiki Festival has garnered an attendance of approximately 3000 attendees from various parts of Colorado and neighboring states. It has typically been a paid event with an age restriction of over 21. From 2023, CACC intends to make the Dashiki Festival more accessible to the entire Colorado community. The festival is going to be entirely FREE and FAMILY-FRIENDLY. People of all ages, races, genders will be able to attend, regardless of their financial conditions, religious, nationality and political views or physical disabilities. By doing this, we hope to attract people from all over Colorado to come, celebrate and learn more about our culture.
The festival is going to be the most vibrant and entertaining festival Colorado has witnessed. There will be several performances from some of our local artists, dances and other renowned African artists of this generation. There will also be a variety of food, art and business vendor stands at the festival. We will have a variety of food from various African vendors, African art and fashion vendors and also many interesting stands for small businesses.
It will be held on the 12th of August, 2023 at the Levitt Pavilion in Denver.
The goal of the festival is to celebrate African people and their culture while increasing awareness about our culture and fostering unity, integration, diversity and inclusion between different communities in Colorado. The festival is also going to serve as a means of empowerment for our community demographics and businesses in Colorado
Levitt’s Free Summer Series
Presented by KGNU 88.5 Community Radio
Friday, August 11th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors: 5:30
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
FREE RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday April 14th at 10am MT
Started by four friends from Lima with a shared passion for traditional Afro-Peruvian music and global DJ culture, Novalima stands in the common ground bridging past and future, uniting tradition and innovation.
From their humble start, file-sharing musical ideas and producing their first album in separate countries at the dawn of the internet, Novalima is now a live musical force revered worldwide for breaking boundaries and uniting seemingly irreconcilable genres, communities, and generations. They have created an inspiring movement and revolutionized the music scene in their native Peru by bridging a longstanding divide between the mainstream and the minority Afro-Peruvian community, who have struggled against discrimination and cultural dissolution for generations.
During their career, Novalima has garnered worldwide critical acclaim from mainstream (NPR, UK Guardian, Wall Street Journal, La Presse, Metro, Billboard), delivered legendary performances around the world at festivals such as Roskilde, WOMAD, NYC Central Park, Montreal Jazz Festival and Chicago’s Millennium Park, earned a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Album, and were featured in cult filmmaker Robert Rodriguez’s hit Mexploitation movie Machete.
While their sound is futuristic and cutting-edge, the roots of Novalima’s music reach back hundreds of years. In a far-too familiar tale, African slaves were brought to Peru as early as the 1500s until the middle of the 19th Century, establishing an outpost of the African-Diaspora on the Pacific coast of South America. Over the years, the soul and rhythms of Africa melded with the melodies and instruments of Europe and the Andes. The result is rich musical repertoire that existed for generations on the periphery of Peruvian popular culture.
During their early experimentations blending Afro-Peruvian sounds with electronica, the four founders, Ramon Perez-Prieto, Grimaldo Del Solar, Rafael Morales, and Carlos Li Carrillo, were living in different parts of the world. From their homes in London, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and Lima, they emailed song ideas to each other. These long-distance recordings resulted in their 2002 debut album, the self-titled Novalima.
The reception to the album exceeded their wildest expectations, eventually reaching platinum sales status in Peru, and for their next album they invited more Afro-Peruvian musicians to join their recording sessions. The outcome was Afro, an album that was released worldwide in 2006 to tremendous acclaim and put Novalima on the international music map. The London Metro Evening Standard raved, “Novalima has more than succeeded in bringing the spirit and soul of Peruvian blues into the 21st century.” Afro held the #1 spot on the US College Music Journal Latin Alternative and New World Radio Charts for ten weeks combined.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Presented by KGNU 88.5 Community Radio
Thursday, August 10th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:00 PM
GA Doors Open: 5:30 PM | Show Start: 6:30 PM
FREE RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday 4/14 at 10am MT
All My Relations Celebration is a music festival meant to celebrate indigenous artistry through music, dance, and art by bridging cultural heritage with a contemporary lens. In partnership with Denver Indian Center, this festival aims to highlight native creatives through a mixture of performances from native musicians, a live painter, vendors and artisans, informational resource booths, food to share, youth programming and comedic medicine.
If you are interested in vending, please apply with the link below. Vendor Applications are open until Monday, July 24th. Please note there are a limited number of spaces!
As they enter a new cycle, Bear Witness and Tim “2oolman” Hill of A Tribe Called Red are reintroducing themselves as The Halluci Nation, to reflect the evolution of their music and mission. The Halluci Nation, takes its name from a phrase coined by John Trudell, to describe the vast global community of people who remember at their core what it means to be human. As a visionary artist and activist, Trudell recognized the connection between his accomplishments and what ATCR did intuitively through music and art.
Trudell’s voice was the first heard on Tribe’s last record, We Are The Halluci Nation, and will, fittingly, be the first you hear on The Halluci Nation’s upcoming record, One More Saturday Night. The album is a love letter to the Electric Pow Wow gatherings launched at Ottawa’s Babylon nightclub in 2007. It represents an imagined denouement to the biweekly Saturday-night parties that ended abruptly in 2017, without ever getting the proper send-off. One More Saturday Night thus pays homage to the parties’ energy and momentum that elevated The Halluci Nation to this pivotal point in their career of fully mastering their own music style while also moving beyond club music; or “mixing dance music with dance music,” as Bear Witness succinctly puts it.
Samantha Crain is a Choctaw singer, songwriter, poet, producer, and musician from Oklahoma. She is a three-time Native American Music Award winner and winner of an Indigenous Music Award. Her genre spanning discography has been critically acclaimed by media outlets such as Rolling Stone, SPIN, Paste, No Depression, NPR, PRI, The Guardian, NME, Uncut, and others. She has toured extensively over the past 15 years nationally and internationally, presenting ambitious orchestrated shows with a band and intimate folk leaning solo performances. She has toured with First Aid Kit, Neutral Milk Hotel, Gregory Alan Isakov, The Avett Brothers, The Mountain Goats, Brandi Carlile, Langhorne Slim, The Staves, and many other bands and artists. With her new album, “A Small Death”, and newer EP, “I Guess We Live Here Now”, she continues her tradition of keeping things close to the heart and the ground by leaning into the fulfillment of affinity with an audience and the satisfaction of a song with a memorable melody and an honest story.
Frank Waln is a Sicangu Lakota public speaker, multi-genre music artist and curator from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He received a BA in Audio Arts & Acoustics from Columbia College Chicago where he was given the Mayor’s Award for Civic Engagement upon graduating. He has won several awards for his work including four Native American Music Awards and international film festival awards for his music videos he filmed at home on the Rosebud Reservation.
Frank Waln has received several artist fellowships and residencies for his work and has performed and presented his work at universities, museums and art institutions around the world including Harvard University, the Smithsonian Museum National Museum of the American Indian, the Linden Museum in Germany and the University of Paris in France. Frank Waln has also performed and facilitated music workshops for youth including Native youth reservations and non-Native youth from various communities around the world. Frank Waln has appeared on radio and television including MTV, The History Channel, ESPN and NPR. Frank Waln recently curated a new music interactive exhibit in the Field Museum's new renovated Native American Exhibition Hall which will be up for 3 years. Frank Waln’s music is available on all streaming platforms.
Presented by The Colorado Sound
Levitt’s Free Summer Series
Sunday, August 6th, 2022
All Ages | Rain or Shine
GA Doors Open: 4:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
FRE RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, March 31st at 10am MT
Wallace Stenger may have captured the spirit of the west in his 1971 novel Angle of Repose. Jim Thompson surely exposed the lurid underbelly of the Western experience. Cormac McCarthy definitely evoked the conflicted, tortured spirit of small town life on the frontier. William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor informed all of them with a humor and soulfulness. It is that literary tradition that imbues the harrowing and celebratory sound and riveting stories of Slim Cessna's Auto Club. Throughout its long and illustrious history, it is largely in that realm of art that the Auto Club reveled and garnered a loyal cult following well beyond the boundaries of The Queen City of the Plains.
Slim Cessna's Auto Club was originally formed in 1992 in Denver, Colorado by its namesake after he parted ways with The Denver Gentlemen, that grand progenitor of the peculiar strain of Gothic Americana unique to the Mile High City that also featured Jeffrey-Paul and David Eugene Edwards who’d go on to form 16 Horsepower, the latter then founding Wovenhand. Slim’s longest running collaborators in the Auto Club have been Munly Munly and Lord Dwight Pentacost who’ve contributed both material and affected the ensemble’s stylistic vision. More recently there’ve been greater creative contributions from longtime collaborator Rebecca Vera, drummer Andrew Warner and now the inclusion of Slim’s son George Cessna on bass.
In 2016, the band released it’s most current album after a five-year hiatus The Commandments According to SCAC. The album encompassed both the heady darkness and celebratory intensity with which the group made its name. That charmingly dusky and spare sound breathed with a new color and delicacy of feeling that perhaps sat in the background in times past . The Commandments According to SCAC, was the first full length album of original material released on the Auto Club's own imprint, SCACUNINCORPORATED. The title evokes the themes of cosmic punishment and redemption that have served the band's songwriting engine so well in the past. But this set of songs sounds more hopeful and expansive, a quality that was always there but this time out the brighter sides of the songwriting are emphasized. Hints of this saw early full-flown expression on 2008's Cipher and Unentitled from 2011. With The Commandments, however, the Auto Club seems to step forward into the promise of its own possibilities. It remains capable of the heady darkness and celebratory intensity with which it made its name. Now that charmingly dusky and spare sound breathes with a color and delicacy of feeling that perhaps sat in the background in times past. Maybe it's partly due to the greater creative contributions from longtime collaborator Rebecca Vera; the core of the band's songwriting and sound has always been anchored firmly in the vision of Slim, Munly Munly and Lord Dwight Pentacost.
Slim Cessna's Auto Club also re-released their fourth album Cipher on June 2, 2018. This re-issue will be a double vinyl LP in a gatefold sleeve. Originally released in 2008, Cipher is the most cohesive SCAC album but also the most mysterious. Cipher is a deliberate puzzle loaded with coded language. The idea that braces are used to straighten crooked humanity provides a structure, but this code rewards effort to unpack the many messages it contains; many more relevant now than ever. Compared to its predecessors, this set of songs sounds more hopeful and expansive, a quality that was always there but this time out the brighter sides of the songwriting were emphasized.
When you get to see the Auto Club live, you'll see an already mighty band reinvigorated by a new spirit of excitement as well as by the fire that has long burned in its collective belly.
Snakes are a five piece rock n'roll band from the city of Baltimore, MD.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Saturday, August 5th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, March 31st at 10am MT
For over 30 years, Shakedown Street has been performing the immense catalog of the Grateful Dead. The ever-shifting repertoire draws from homegrown idioms steeped in traditional Americana, folk, blues, jazz, and rock and roll, with a healthy dose of the avant-garde. Dig deeper into the songs, their storylines, and the characters inhabiting them, and you’ll find enduring tales of murder and intrigue, gamblers and thieves, sinners and saints, tales of everyman, mythic and surreal, blue-collar rhapsodies in a kaleidoscopic tapestry awash in color, sound, and light.
Shakedown Street’s own story finds them continuing to play to enthusiastic sold-out audiences, while marching up and down, going around and around their beloved home in the mountains of Colorado. The band happily finds itself in the trusted role of connecting past, present and future Grateful Dead fans with the vital and vibrant energies of improvisational live music. Endlessly fun, exciting, dramatic, uplifting, inspirational. The band and audience in concert. A reset for the soul!
The Band:
Peter Czolowski: rhythm guitar, vocals
Edwin Hurwitz: bass
Josh Rosen: lead guitar, vocals
Joel Zeiner: drums
Joe Weisiger: keyboards, vocals
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Presented by 105.5 The Colorado Sound
Friday, August 4th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP/Limited VIP Opens Friday, April 21st at 10am MT
No salve soothes quite like music does. Like the ultimate balm, it releases tension and stress and reinvigorates the spirit. With a warm patchwork of rock ‘n’ roll, psychedelia, folk, alternative, and blues, Heartless Bastards unlock healing and catharsis within their music. Whether in the studio or on stage, the Austin-based band fronted by vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Erika Wennerstrom calm as they captivate. After generating over 100 million total streams and enrapturing audiences at legendary venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the group continue to connect with listeners everywhere through boundary-breaking sonics and straight-from-the-heart lyrics.
“Music is medicine,” observes Erika. “It gives me a sense of purpose beyond just creating art. The idea someone might find comfort in it or it can actually help another person is incredible to me. I don’t know if I ever thought about it in those terms when I was younger. I’ve realized it over the years though.”
At the turn-of-the-century, Erika founded Heartless Bastards in Cincinnati, OH. Inspired by the likes of Joan Jett, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and more, she cut early demos in 2003, performing the bulk of the instruments herself. A bartending gig inspired the name Heartless Bastards. The bar’s touch screen game posed the question, “What is Tom Petty’s backing band?” and offered “The Heartless Bastards” as an answer option, so she accepted this humorous twist of fate and adopted it as her band’s moniker.
The band initially came to life with Stairs and Elevators in 2005, building a discography of fan favorites highlighted by All This Time [2006], The Mountain [2009], and the seminal Arrow [2012]. The latter captured #2 on the Billboard Top Independent Albums Chart, went Top 10 on the Tastemaker Albums Chart, and even cracked the Top 200. “Only For You” notably amassed north of 42.6 million Spotify streams and 17.2 million YouTube views. In the wake of the album, Time attested, “Wennerstrom’s voice is one of the cornerstones of their success. It is tender even when it is severe, and she is unabashedly soulful even when she rocks, almost as though she were at once performing a slow country ballad and singing alongside Mark Bolan from T. Rex.”
Meanwhile, 2021’s A Beautiful Life arrived to widespread praise from Uncut, Glide, and Classic Rock with Pitchfork going as far as to claim, “A Beautiful Life is her best album as a vocalist, as she finds new ways to bend her voice to different styles and sounds.” In addition to sharing the stage with The Flaming Lips, The Decemberists, Wolfmother, Lucinda Williams, and The Avett Brothers, they lit up festivals a la Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Newport Folk Festival, High Sierra Music Festival, and more. Through it all, Heartless Bastards constantly evolve.
“The vibe is pretty eclectic,” she goes on. “My voice ties it together. The earlier albums were a bit more garage- and punk-influenced. We’ve drawn from classic rock, indie, and folk too. I love music, and I’m always exploring sounds.”
In 2022, they celebrate the 10th anniversary of Arrow with a special limited-edition re-release on vinyl, new acoustic recordings, and the addition of the previously unavailable “Got to Have Rock and Roll,” “Parted Ways,” and “Bye Bye Baby Blues” originally by George “Little Hat” Jones.
"Arrow is the album that reached the most people,” she smiles. “It’s cool to celebrate the success of it and give fans something else. The response to ‘Only For You’ made me feel connected to people everywhere in a beautiful way. I’ll always be grateful for Arrow.”
In the end, Heartless Bastards might just be able to heal what ails you.
“Ultimately, I hope people enjoy themselves when they’re listening to our records or seeing us live,” she leaves off. “Playing shows really brings me a lot of joy. I hope the connection translates. I’m ready to tour a lot and release more music.”
Best-known as the co-founder and frontman for shape-shifting heartland indie rockers Delta Spirit, Matthew Logan Vasquez's fiery delivery and thought- provoking lyrics draw from a huge and versatile well of influences, including Gram Parsons, Kurt Cobain, Neil Young, and Iggy Pop. As a solo artist, he juggles elements of indie rock, electronic pop, R&B, and soulful Americana, flirting with despondency, but ultimately succumbing to beatitude, especially on 2017's home-recorded yet vibrant sophomore effort, Does What He Wants.
Into the Wide
After releasing Delta Spirit's critically acclaimed fourth studio album, Into the Wide, in 2014, Vasquez moved with his wife and newborn son to Austin, Texas and began working on what would become his debut solo outing. The resulting Austin EP, which finds Vasquez manning every instrument and offering up a blistering set of outlaw psych rock, arrived in 2015, with plans to issue his debut long-player, Solicitor Returns, in early 2016. In January 2017, Vasquez issued "Same," the driving single from his sophomore solo outing Does What He Wants, which arrived later that April. The following year another side project appeared, the tequila drenched super group Glorietta, as well as another MLV EP, Texas Murder Ballads. Vasquez fourth LP Light'n Up was released in February 2019 and was followed in 2020 with Delta Spirit’s What is There.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Sunday, July 16th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 3:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 4:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, May 5th at 10am MT
On their Dualtone Records debut Sticking With It, Seattle-based seven piece The Dip deliver the kind of unbridled rhythm-and-blues that hits on every emotional level. Inciting everything from raw catharsis to heavy-hearted reckoning to wildly exuberant joy, the self-produced album marks a major creative breakthrough for the band. To that end, Sticking With It fully channels the vitality of the freewheeling live show that’s earned them an ardent following over the last decade, matching their sophisticated musicianship with a fantastically loose energy. When met with The Dip’s reflection on matters both timely (the crush of late capitalism, the glaring need for true community) and irrefutably timeless (the vast complexities of love and loss), the resulting body of work captures the mood of the current moment while offering immediate escape into a more elevated state of mind.
The third full-length from The Dip, Sticking With It came to life at their studio in Seattle’s Central District, a modest but meticulously outfitted space the band built entirely on their own. Although the album features a small number of guest musicians (including a Macedonia based string ensemble and background singers Vanessa Bryan, Dasha Chadwick, and Nic Jackson), The Dip crafted each extravagantly arranged track according to a self contained process that allowed for a rare depth of exploration and spontaneity. “It’s really important to us to catch those lightning-in-a bottle moments when you can feel the momentum of a song taking shape,” says drummer Jarred Katz. “At the same time, it makes a huge difference to have this homebase where we can take our time with the sounds and not worry about that precious studio clock ticking away.”
Kicking off with a magnificent bang, Sticking With It opens on “Paddle to the Stars”: a prime introduction to the groove-heavy and richly detailed sound The Dip have embodied since playing house parties in the early 2010s. The first song recorded for the album, “Paddle to the Stars” arrives as a striking departure from the reverb drenched aesthetic the band’s favored in the past. “We’d gotten some nicer gear to play with, and wanted to try something completely different in terms of our guitar sounds,” notes guitarist Jacob Lundgren. “We ended up going with a very dry sound with no reverb behind it, which allows you to really hear the room and feels so much more like the live show.” And as lead vocalist Thomas Eddy reveals, the song’s stark quality is perfectly suited to its candid declaration of devotion. “It’s about being in relationship with someone who’s emotionally in touch beyond your own abilities, but recognizing that and wanting to invest in opening up,” he says. “I liked the idea of playing with the image of the immensity of the ocean, how it’s sustaining but also dangerous— and if you don’t watch out, it’ll get you.”
In its intimate examination of the human heart, Sticking With It also includes tracks like “Sleep On It” (a delicately layered love song about “someone who only gets to see the object of their affection in their dreams, so they’re just waiting until they can go to sleep again,” according to Eddy). One of the album’s most profoundly moving moments, “When You Lose Someone” brilliantly contrasts its meditation on grief with the rapturous harmonies of Bryan, Chadwick, and Jackson. “They’ve been singing together for over a decade and they’ve got an impeccable blend in the room, so we captured that by recording the trio gathered around one microphone,” recalls trumpet player Brennan Carter. “They were on board with whatever was required to elevate the music, and the results are undeniable.” And on “Real Contender,” The Dip present a bold but bittersweet standout built on a blues-country groove and shapeshifting arrangement courtesy of tenor sax player Levi Gillis. “It’s about someone who’s always been there as a friend but who now wants to be considered in a romantic way,” says Eddy. “I was really inspired by how Levi’s intro was upbeat but sorrowful, which is a compelling thing to work with as a songwriter.”
While Sticking With It endlessly spotlights each member’s exceptional craftsmanship, The Dip embraced a sort of anti- perfectionism in every step of the process. “One of the main goals for the album was to create that feeling of all of us in a room together, instead of worrying too much about everything lining up perfectly,” says Katz. Not only essential in shaping Sticking With It’s sense of abandon, that approach echoes the uniquely communal spirit at the heart of the group. “In other bands there might be a hierarchy as far as who’s in charge and who writes the music, but we make sure to keep everyone involved,” says Katz. “With seven people it can be hard to agree on anything, but to me all the success we’ve had so far has to do with being very democratic and letting everyone have equal say,” Eddy continues. “We all believe in doing it our way, handling everything ourselves and making sure we’re choosing the right songs for the right reasons.”
After years of defying trends and following their own distinct vision, The Dip have steadily amassed a passionate fanbase (an element reflected in their tremendous organic success on Spotify). In the making of Sticking With It, the band kept their ever-growing reach in mind, ultimately creating their most impactful work to date. “With the lyrics I tried to evoke certain emotions that aren’t often showcased in popular music, with the hope that people will come away feeling validated or understood,” says Eddy. Indeed, the title to Sticking With It partly refers to the joyful sense of gritty perseverance The Dip hope to impart to their audience. “We’re in this strange moment when sometimes it’s difficult to even get out of bed because of what’s going on in the world,” says Katz. “But over the years we’ve had so many people tell us that our songs have helped them get through a rough patch, or break through to a new beginning in their lives. That’s something we’re honored to provide for everyone, and hopefully these songs will do the same.”
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Sunday, July 9th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 3:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 4:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, April 14th at 10am MT
The Denver Municipal Band is the second oldest, continually-performing, professional band in the U.S. (behind the U.S. Marine Corps Band) and the oldest, professional ensemble in Colorado. For decades our concerts have been free to the public. We've been bringing the Denver-area community together through music for more than 160 years.
Their mission is to:
Entertain residents by providing free professional, positive, relevant, and exhilarating musical performances, largely in the Denver metro area.
Unites diverse audiences and builds community through our music and performances.
Inspires young people’s creative pursuits and helps them on a path of lifetime participation in the arts through professional musical workshops, clinics, mentoring, and concerts for Denver metro area students and schools.
The Band accomplishes its vision by partnering with governmental agencies, educational institutions, neighborhood groups, foundations, other performing arts organizations, and interested individuals.
Born in Taiwan, Tien Hsieh began early musical training with her mother, Sylvia. Currently residing in Folsom, CA she has enjoyed a far-ranging career with recital appearances in Hungary, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, China, England & throughout U.S. Accolades include Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, Li-Ching Cultural & Educational Foundation Grant, Distinguished Artist Award from Artists International Presentations, solo recitals at Carnegie Hall, cover of Sacramento Talent Magazine & recital selected by The San Francisco Examiner’s Memorable Concerts. Recital highlights include Salle Cortot-Paris, St. Martin in the Fields-London and all-Liszt program recital tours. As a concerto soloist, she has played with Roswell, Redlands, Folsom Lake, Spokane Symphonies, Oregon Mozart Players, Manhattan Philharmonia and Houston Civic Orchestra. Academic honors include recipient of the Roy M. Rubinstein award, Bettingen Corporation Grant and scholarships from Manhattan School of Music & University of Houston. Tien’s recording of Bach & Beethoven: Mostly Transcriptions 2 received praises from the press, reaching #1 twice on Amazon.com & remained best seller for 2 consecutive months in 2015.
Presented by The Colorado Sound
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Saturday, July 8th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens March 31st at 10am MT
Born in the fertile breeding grounds of the mountains of Colorado, Tenth Mountain Division is continuing the musical legacy set down by their forefathers in Colorado. Like those that came before, Tenth Mountain Division is pushing the sound found in the mountains into bold, new directions with their exploratory take on Americana that dips freely in the well of all their diverse influences, classic Southern Rock, the progressive bluegrass that was born in their backyard in Colorado, the adventurous spirit of sixties psychedelic blues, and straight ahead driving rock ‘n’ roll.
Much like their Colorado predecessors, Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, and Yonder Mountain String Band, they defy simple categorization; instead they reference their musical history with their high-energy shows as they blaze new musical paths every night. As they do so they have become the new voice of the Colorado music scene, taking their Ski-party sound around the country and making every show feel like a night in the mountains.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Presented by KGNU
Friday, July 7th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / VIP Opens March 10th at 10am MT
The Wailing Souls, Legendery Roots Group
February 15th, 2009 The Wailing Souls are part of the small surviving group of reggae and roots originators still musically active today. The legendary group dates back to the late 1960s. The Wailing Souls members got their start learning from reggae icon Joe Higgs in Jamaica's Trench Town yards and sung alongside other emerging groups at the time including Bob Marley & The Wailers. By the '70s The Wailing Souls attracted interest from preeminent reggae producer Coxson Dodd and began a fruitful recording career. Four decades later the group has amassed three Grammy nominations, has been critically lauded for albums released by Island, Tuff Gong and CBS Records and gained a widespread international following.
The Wailing Souls saw large success in the early '90s featuring songs on soundtracks including the certified gold album for Disney's film Cool Runnings. Their 1992 album All Over The World also achieved a great deal of success for the group, selling over 800,000 copies.
The Wailing Souls pushed the musical limits of the reggae genre with that release, blending sounds of funk, r&b, and country into their roots tradition, securing their reputations as pioneers in the genre.
Fusing the harmonies of Motown with the roots and dancehall sounds of reggae, The Wailing Souls have ridden the crest of Jamaica's music for more than four decades. Nominated for Grammy awards three times, the group scored hits with classic roots reggae tunes, War and Bredda Gravlicious, Firehouse Rock, and 1992 album and title track, All Over The World. Additionally, the group scored number one hits with Things and Time, Jah Jah, Old Broom, and Shark Attack. The Wailing Souls' recording career has been nothing short of historic. Vocally trained by Bob Marley and the Wailers' teacher, Joe Higgs, they worked with legendary reggae producers including Coxson Dodd of Studio One, Henry 'Junjo' Lawes, Channel One Studios, Delroy Wright, Lloyd 'King' Jammy’s, as well as recording several early tunes at Bob Marley's Tuff Gong Studio. The Wailing Souls attracted global attention when their music was featured in the 1993 Disney film, Cool Runnings. The soundtrack album was an international hit, selling nearly half a million copies worldwide. The Souls had three songs on this soundtrack including the hit, Picky Picky Head. Formed in Trench Town, Kingston, Jamaica, in the late-1960s, The Wailing Souls have experienced numerous transformations. Their discography (over 26 albums to date) includes singles recorded as The Renegades, Pipe & the Pipers, and Atarra. Sly & Robbie and the Roots Radics are only a few of the stellar musicians who have worked with The Wailing Souls. Still one of the most powerful forces in Reggae, The Wailing Souls continue to tour globally and record new songs with the vigor that they had singing in Kingston's Trench Town decades ago. On Feb 12, 2021, The Wailing Souls released their long awaited album Back A Yard on Greensleeves label.
Mono Verde Collective, a Denver local Latin Reggae band with international flavors. MVC was created 15 years ago with the purpose to elevate consciousness around the social topics through the music and cultural exchange, as it reflects in the title of their first album Ensamblando Culturas. MVC members are from Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and the US, Mixing rhythms from all the American continent to create a unique sound within the reggae genre. Spreading their music in the US from coast to coast and touring Mexico, Mono Verde Collective has the magic to captivate the audience with their distinctive melodies and lyrics that contain a message from the heart.
“ we love what we do, because we believe in the power of music”.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Thursday, July 6th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, April 14th at 10am MT
Drums that are both metronomic and feline, a dobro-guitar with riffs made from embers, telluric basslines that seem to escape from a dented tuba… Here is Delgres, a power-trio that’s reinventing the blues by injecting an abrasive rock transe in it, recalling the Tuaregs’ soul as much as The Black Keys or John Lee Hooker’s, while carrying Louis Delgres’ secular message : his heroic fight against slavery in the Guadeloupe island. This is how this rebellious and burning music means so much nowadays, by speaking to us through shivers, and vibrating our bodies as well as our minds.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Sunday, July 2nd, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 3:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 4:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, April 14th at 10am MT
A jazz kit played with sticks and mano, an upright bass tattooed with comely women, jaunty Caribbean-influenced acoustic guitar and a beautiful blonde siren with, yes, a trumpet. Do you wanna dance yet? Jenny will lure you in with her bluesy no nonsense voice. She doesn’t want to work, just to dance. This relationship is torture. It’s just plain better in Buenos Aires. And always her case is compelling, the music a perfect dance in and of itself, pieced together like good jazz—every player counts. Jenny’s from Britain but her Spanish is impeccable, the drummer is from Spain and the strings are from Mexico, but this group is original, like Manu Chau without the political agenda or a killer ska combo minus the kitsch. They are independents and the sum of their parts is from a land of heart and strong, quick rhythm.
“What they’ve done with their influences is create this really impressive mix of rockabilly, cumbia, jazz, flamenco, and they perform it in both English and in Spanish – very cool sound.” – Felix Contreras host of NPR’s Alt Latino on Jenny and the Mexicats.
Colorado’s own Xicanxbeat Orchestra, Pink Hawks span a gamut of Afrodiasporic musical styles in an undeniably o.g. Denver way. That being said, it comes as no surprise that they are one of Denver’s longest standing musical acts whose honors include Best of Denver Award for World Music in 2013 and 2014 as well as the distinguished Mastermind Award in 2019 from Westword Magazine. With music as their weapon for social disruption, Pink Hawks set the dance floor on fire with rhythms of the revolution.
Bring your dancing shoes as los Pink Hawks set the dance floor on fire. Your body will thank you
later.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Sponsored by FEMA
Presented by Channel 93.3
Saturday, July 1st, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP / Limited VIP Opens Friday, March 31st at 10am MT
Flobots are an alternative hip hop band from Denver, CO, who are on a mission to use their music as a tool to create community, conversation, and ignite the activist in all of us.
MC’s Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit became friends in the fourth grade and bonded first over their love of comic books then hip hop. Flobots are best known for their blending of genres and lyrical landscapes, traversing topics of race, equality, democracy, and social justice.
Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit met guitarist/vocalist Andy Rok in high school and became fast friends. While finishing their final year in college, Andy Rok recruited a number of Colorado musicians including Kenny O on drums to create an all- star backing band inspired by groups like The Roots. After playing their first show as a full-fledged band, they vowed to never perform with a backing CD track ever again and the rest is Flobots history.
In the 15+ years of being a platinum-selling band, touring the world, and founding the nonprofit Youth on Record, Flobots continue to invite us to imagine a world rooted in empathy, equality, and love using music as their superpower.
Today’s core group is comprised of Emcees Jonny 5 (born Jamie Laurie) and Brer Rabbit (born Stephen Brackett) along with musicians Andy Rok Guerrero (guitar/vocals) and Kenny O (drums). The band’s current roster of live touring musicians includes sisters Larea Edwards & Chrissy Grant (members of Spirit of Grace), Sarah Hubbard (violin/viola), and Sean Blanchard (Bass).
Joseph Lamar is part sage and part space cadet, part cynic and part ingénue, part saint and part heathen. He embodies conflict actively seeking resolution; synthesis giving birth to something uniquely beautiful yet universal. With song, dance and a cinematic imagination, he dramatizes a journey toward spiritual evolution; a journey still en route. If the “post-apocalyptic gospel” of Sin. [Act I] is any indication, he makes a strong case for the true meaning of the word “apocalypse.” It’s not an end but an awakening; it’s the collapse of paradise and the possibility of creating something better.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Friday, June 30th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP Opens May 19th at 10am MT
Since 2009, this Colorado-based meta-mystical ensemble has been thrilling audiences across the U.S. and beyond.
A battery of fourteen-plus power percussionists comprises the spine of the fifty-plus strong performance troupe whose orchestral arsenal of avant-instrumentation runs the gamut from guitars, gamelan, and synths to less conventional instruments including theremin and vocoders in concert with more experimental trance-inducing appurtenances.
Itchy-O dismantles assumptions of traditional performance models to break down the barriers between audience and experience, administering a blast of ceremonial chaos; baptizing the audience—body, mind, and collective soul—in a spectacular, pan-sensorial sea of music, mystery, and transcendental spiritual spectacle.
Itchy-O proudly served as a centerpiece at MONA’s world-renowned Dark MOFO fest in Tasmania in 2016, they have performed on stage with David Byrne & St. Vincent. JG Thirwell and Dan Deacon have opened for itchy-O and they have warmed up audiences for numerous legendary artists including DEVO, Beats Antique, Iggy Pop, Bad Religion, and Public Enemy. Itchy-O has performed countless private engagements, including a legendary performance for Maynard Keenan’s Merkin Vineyards in 2019 and Jello Biafra’s iconic underground record label, Alternative Tentacles has released three of their groundbreaking studio albums.
*The Drood is an experimental psych-rock band from Denver, Colorado featuring Nathan Jamiel, Daniel Watts, and Hayden Peltier. Their captivating blend of industrial, post-rock, and psychedelic genres offer a provocative experience for fans of avant-garde music. The band's eclectic nature has led them to explore a wide range of styles including ballads, ambient drones, dance, noise-rock, and more, and they are not afraid to inject a touch of wry humor and novelty into the mix.
Formed in 2012, The Drood has since released two full-length albums and several singles and music videos. The band have worked with Randall Frazier of The Legendary Pink Dots and Orbit Service and have collaborated with Dead Voices On Air on a Psychic TV cover song. Most recently TheDrood composed an hour-long ambient soundtrack for theMysteries of UB television show which is on-track to be released this summer as the bands third full-length album.
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Sunday, June 25th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 3:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 4:00 PM | Show Start: 5:00 PM
Free RSVP/ Limited VIP Opens Friday, March 31st at 10 am MT
Brazil Day will feature Ginga with Bateria
Cultivated in Boulder, Colorado and composed of some of the best jazz, classical and salsa musicians on the Front Range, Ginga is THE powerhouse Brazilian band in Colorado. They can bring an audience to a quiet purr with a sultry Bossa Nova or blow the roof off the evening with a full blown Carnaval style samba dance party.
The seven members of the band are Francisco Marques (cavaquinho, bass, percussion, vocals), Greg LaLiberte (flute, saxophones, percussion, vocals), Bill McCrossen (bass), Bill Kopper (acoustic 6 & 7 string guitars, electric guitar, vocals), Raoul Rossiter (drums, percussion, vocals), Carl Dixon (percussion, vocals), and Vincent Gonzalez (percussion, vocals).
Whether it’s the magnetizing pulse of a samba groove, the alluring dancing that accompanies or the sheer joy that is infused at every show, Ginga specializes in bringing people together to have a good time.
Presented by The Colorado Sound & Westword
Levitt’s Free Concert Series
Saturday, June 24th, 2023
All Ages | Rain or Shine
VIP Doors Open: 5:30 PM
GA Doors Open: 6:00 PM | Show Start: 7:00 PM
Free RSVP/ Limited VIP Opens Friday, March 31st at 10am MT
iZCALLi:MOVIMIENTO is a deep exploration of iZCALLi's musical catalog channeled through movement and dance featuring ArtistiCO Dance Company.
Opening Acts: El Cro & Fruta Brutal
