The Telluride valley will be alive with the sound of electronic dance music this summer when Denver-based producer Of The Trees stops by for a two-night run.
The artist – real name Tyler Coombs – visits the Western Slope Aug. 22-23 for back-to-back performances at Telluride Town Park where other renowned festivals take place throughout the summer. The event is expected to attract about 7,000 attendees and will include camping.
More details, such as the full lineup and ticket sales information, are expected to be released in the coming days, according to the announcement Tuesday.
“My team and I are incredibly excited to bring a concert experience to a location where the natural beauty is perhaps an even bigger centerpiece to the experience than the show itself,” Of The Trees, who has previously sold out Red Rocks Amphitheatre, said in a statement. “This is the beginning of realizing the dream I’ve always had of hosting events that bring people together to a place where nature and music are intertwined in a way such as this.”
Of The Trees’ appearance marks the first large-scale EDM concert in Telluride since 2016, when homegrown producer Pretty Lights played the same venue. Pretty Lights also played in 2015 and both shows live famously in local lore because of how different the vibe was compared to the town’s signature events like Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Telluride Blues & Brews.
That was part of the appeal of booking a show with a single headliner, said Zach Tucker, vice president of production company Planet Bluegrass. The company throws Telluride Bluegrass Festival every year and wanted to offer a different kind of concert, in terms of format and genre.
In fact, the company had been in talks to bring Pretty Lights back to Telluride, but couldn’t get approval to use the venue quickly enough to make a competitive offer, Tucker said. (Pretty Lights recently announced a two-night stint in Buena Vista in late June.)
“It’s a challenge that a lot of people who have tried to bring events to Telluride have faced. How do you (the artist) commit without an event? But then how do you approve an event without knowing who’s playing? That is the constant back and forth struggle,” Tucker told The Denver Post in January.
Tucker was happy with the amount of faith the town council put into Planet Bluegrass, which was approved to use Town Park before securing an artist – perhaps a testament to its history running the bluegrass festival for more than 30 years. The idea of bringing a different kind of act also seemed to be appealing to local leaders and as did having a nighttime concert, which allows fans to enjoy the mountains, shops and restaurants throughout the day.
“I think there’s excitement for some fresh, new change,” Tucker said.
Though Of The Trees is projected to bring millions of dollars to Telluride, where the tourism economy is king, the pitch received pushback from some locals. Organizers of the Telluride Mountain Run, which is slated for the same weekend, said having thousands of concertgoers in and around Town Park would impede their event’s success, and maybe even end it altogether by introducing “a completely different and incompatible atmosphere,” the Telluride Daily Planet reported.
The reason Planet Bluegrass chose those specific dates was because almost every other weekend in Telluride is already booked with long-standing events, Tucker said. The company coordinated with the Telluride Mountain Run on camping and logistics to ensure both events could still happen. After August, Planet Bluegrass plans to work with its partners in town to evaluate if the event was successful and could be replicated in future years.
“We’re excited to have those conversations and hopefully they’re all positive and we prove ourselves,” Tucker said.
