Holiday Festival Highlights Universal Connections of the Season

The holidays are about celebration, music and connection, and those priorities have always been at the heart of CU Boulder’s Holiday Festival.

The festival has been in place in some shape and form since 1945—and for that entire time, the performance has served as a way to celebrate music, musicians and the spirit of camaraderie that comes with the holidays.

This year will be no different. If anything, the festival slated to run from Dec. 4 to 6 in Macky Auditorium will offer those elements in an even more pronounced way, as CU Director of Bands Shanti Simon takes the helm as director of the event.

Simon, who joined the College of Music in 2025, has plenty of experience when it comes to creating connections through music. Before coming to Boulder, she traveled the world as a part of the U.S. Air Force Band, a post that saw her leading musical performances for full honors funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, as well as leading the band for the Air Force Central Command in locations including Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Egypt.

All of this experience gave Simon a sense of the possibilities of music and performance. “Every day, music was able to open doors to conversations and connections between people,” she notes.

Opening doors and creating connections will definitely be a feature of the Holiday Festival, a performance that features a combination of student ensembles, standout soloists and faculty musicians taking the stage for a program that offers a diverse musical tribute to the holidays.

In her first year leading the performance, Simon is eager to reimagine the possibilities as she looks at every element of the concert. In addition to the music itself, Simon is excited about drawing on the majesty and scale of Macky itself, seeing how the space can become a character in the performance.

“I’m thinking about crafting seamless concert experiences through innovative audience engagement,” Simon says. “I want people to come to the concert hall and have something happen in the space that makes them want to come back. I’ve been exploring all kinds of things, from video to lighting to memorized performances where we take away chairs and stands.”

What’s more, the Holiday Festival offers a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the College of Music’s core value of developing students as multiskilled, multifaceted universal musicians. During a time of year when celebrants from a range of cultures, faiths and traditions come together, the festival highlights the scope and power of music in our lives.

The CU Boulder College of Music’s 2026 Holiday Festival runs Dec. 4 to 6 in Macky Auditorium.