Music 

​Samantha Crain’s rich voice and offbeat tone have earned her compliments as a unique singer, but it’s Crain’s heart-on-her-sleeve songwriting and her storytelling during live performances that make her truly special.

Experiencing a great masterpiece, in any medium, can change perspectives, broaden thoughts and leave a lifelong impression on its audience. For musician Rufus Wainwright, this happened when he was a teenager, listening to Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem.

It was Sunday, August 7, the third afternoon of the inaugural Vertex Festival in Buena Vista. Inside the festival grounds, a blow-up couch adorned with bikini-clad ladies floated around a pond, bumping into oversized inflatable swans, unicorns and dragons.

Backed by a posse of DJs and surrounded by smoke, hip-hop dynasty Bone Thugs-n-Harmony took the Bluebird Nightclub stage late Sunday night. A sold-out crowd of faithful fans greeted the group with a long-awaited cheer – they had been waiting 10 years and four opening acts to see this performance.

It’s charming to hear someone with a British accent tell you that Aspen is starting to feel like home. When that someone is Simon Green, a.k.a. Bonobo, speaking from the shadows on stage at the Belly Up, it’s enough to bring the local crowd into a roar of applause.

Eight voices and syncopated clapping open up the performance, singing “I’m so glad to be here.” 

Bloomington-based world music a cappella band Kaia’s repeated lyric served as a mantra for the bands and audiences attending the three-day Lotus World Music and Arts Festival in town this weekend.

You can count on one hand the number of tour dates The Budos Band has scheduled this year. Luckily, for fans of the big-band afrofunk group, one of those stops is in Aspen.

“Everybody has a baby now” said founding member Brian Profilio, of the changes the band has been through since their 2005 debut album.

tis Taylor describes himself as “old as dirt.” In truth, he is 69 and has recently put out his 15th album, “Fantasizing About Being Black.”

He calls his music “trance blues,” likening it to Haitian voodoo music, Appalachian songs and even hip hop.