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.

Playground at 20! Concert

Saturday March 21, 2026, 8:00 pm
MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater
2644 W 32nd Ave, Denver, CO 80211
$20 Tickets

Hosted by MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, this evening series of concerts is the heart of MARATHON. At 8:00 pm is our 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.

Program

Angelus Movus by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

I'm Waiting for Your Crip Cadence by MG Bernard & Nathan Hall

Performed by:
Nathan Hall, Conductor/Vocals
MG Bernard, Vocals/Machines
Joshua Sawicki, Piano
David Short, Cello
Bass Clarinet
Conrad Kehn, Electronics

I'm Waiting for Your Crip Cadence is the collaborative composition and performance by Denver-based artists MG Bernard (she/her) and Nathan Hall (he/him). With help from a quartet of chamber musicians, Bernard and Hall create and recreate an auditory and visual experience of what it feels like to exist in a chronically sick bodymind. Elements of the piece explore ideas of crip time (the disabled experience of non-linear time) and queer experiences through music, and the relationship between doctor and "patient". Together, the artists and performers reveal invisible aspects of Bernard's life to the public through a visceral and juxtaposing display of how she is bound to the medical industrial complex, dependent on uncomfortable relationships of care, and indentured to pain.

Ithánali (I Know) for Solo Soprano, Cello, and Piano by Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate

Performed by:
Leah Podzimek, Vocals
Kierra Aiello, Cello
Joshua Sawicki, Piano

Ithánali (I Know) is about a Chickasaw woman astronaut who is designated to be the first human to set foot on Mars. In her excitement, fear and wonderment, she is also aware of the irony of her own action - colonizing Mars - and how it compares/contrasts to the historic colonization of her own tribe. This song is the first of a song cycle, expressing many aspects of being a modern American Indian and is sung in English and Chickasaw.

Text:

This is the moment.
The old ones, they know.
Now I will listen and follow.
Now I know.

Anchonkash, (my heart) is clear.

I can feel them.
They take my hand
and show me.
They hold me,
and carry me home.

Ithánali.
(I know.)

I see,
and now I know.
Inki', Ishki', chihollo'li'.
(Father, Mother, I love you.)

The wind is restless,
like my soul.
Is this the right time?
Am I the right one?

I am breathless.
The air is heavy.
Hear me, mother.
Talk to me, father.

They took a chance so I could be.
They were frightened,
but fate did tell them.

I know I must go.

The Sun is shining!
This is the new beginning.
I’ll show the way to glory.
We’ll sing the joy of home.

My heart has told me that now I must go.
I am now certain, I know.

Now I know.

And now, I know.
I see my home.
I know they see it, too.
Ithánali.

Mother! Father!

Distractions by Conrad Kehn

Stories by Conrad Kehn