Saturday March 21, 2026
5:00 PM - 9:30 PM
MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater
2644 W 32nd Ave, Denver, CO 80211
$20 Tickets

In celebration of our 20th season, The Playground is planning a 20-hour MARATHON! This event will be broken into four blocks, each at a different venue in Denver. MARATHON will be structured to highlight all that we do as an ensemble and organization: concerts, community music-making, sessions for music educators, healing arts events, and an improvised communal cool down in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Evening Block: Playground at 20!

Hosted by MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, this series of concerts is the heart of MARATHON. 

The evening starts with Shane Courville (trumpet, electronics, composer) and Nathan Hall (piano, electronics, composer) presenting solo, duo, and improvised works on themes of freedom: freedom of nations and sovereignty, freedom to express our own identities, and the freedom of creative collaboration.

Up next join Leah Podzimek (vocals) and Joshua Sawicki (piano) for a 30-minute program of (mostly) contemporary art songs that recall childhood and gently remind us never to stop playing, even amidst the gloom and doom of life today. When you look through the kaleidoscope of your childhood, what do you see? Do the bright spots of hope, nature, and laughter stand out, or does darkness prevail? 

After these two duo sets we gather for a celebratory toast to all that has been accomplished in the previous two decades while looking forward to the future. 

At 8PM is the main event, the Playground @ 20! concert!

This chamber concert features the first work we ever played, a new commission by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez for bass flute and ‘ghost’ string quartet, and a new work by Playground Director Conrad Kehn for the entire ensemble. The evening will also feature the Colorado premiere of Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate’s Ithánali, and we will highlight one of our favorite works commissioned with I'm Waiting for Your Crip Cadence.