Show to play a free show at Snow Bowl Friday

The summer concert season is not over yet.

Musical artist Spectacle will take the stage at the Snow Bowl Steamboat at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 9, bringing together sounds from around the world with dance music and live performances.

The show, part of Schmiggity’s Presents Snow Bowl summer concert series, is free to the public thanks to donations to Family Bowl, a Snow Bowl initiative to benefit the Steamboat community.

Family Bowl was born out of a series of meals to get rid of food when COVID shut down restaurants. However, it turned into 30,000 meals for the community in three months and has since expanded its means of benefiting Steamboat.

“The stage and this whole concert hall is something that came out of COVID. People needed and wanted to be outdoors,” said Meryl Meranksi, vice president of marketing and partner at Western Centers, the company that operates Snow Bowl. “A lot of the feedback we’ve received from the concert series is that we’ve created a space that’s not just representative of concerts and performances, but is a gathering space for the community.”

Making the concert free for attendees is just the latest way Snow Bowl is trying to improve the community and give people an accessible space to gather.

Spectacle is surprising for the ears. The duo create dance music that the ears tend to attribute to electronic sources. However, Spectacle incorporates live instruments into its songs, with Michael Mahan on Spanish guitar and Jessica Borth on violin. Mahan also plays synths, contributes vocals and produces the songs, while Borth also plays keys and sings.

The band’s founding members combine their instrumental talents with worldly sounds, creating mesmerizing music that resembles EDM with gripping beats and satisfying drops. However, the live aspect makes the musical group appealing to a wider audience.

Borth won’t be at Steamboat this weekend as she recently had a baby, Mahan said, but her sister, Michaela, will take her place after crushing Borth’s parts at the Shangri-La Music Festival in Minnesota over the weekend. -end of Labor Day.

“I’m excited to come and play there,” Mahan said. “We are on a roll.”

Saxophonist David Bernot will also join the group this weekend.

“(It’s going to be) a very energetic, fun and saxy show, but still true to Spectacle’s gypsy and dark roots that are our band,” Mahan said. “Ethnic vibes that are our thing right now.”

Borth and Mahan appreciate all music and enjoy incorporating classic sounds from around the world with modern electronic beats.

Mahan said he was looking forward to performing an unreleased song Astarte, which is a collaboration with an artist called Gallium.

“The song has this really ethereal female voice that sounds like a goddess, like a kind of church opera vibe,” Mahan said. “That’s the main root of it. I brought the song with the Spanish guitar. I don’t have much to do yet, so we played it for the first time at this festival and people love it.

Snow Bowl will conclude the summer music festival next weekend with the Young Dubliners.

To reach Shelby Reardon, call 970-871-4253, email sreard[email protected] or follow her on Twitter @ByShelbyReardon.