Muse Performance Space didn’t exactly have an auspicious beginning. “We had our first show in June of 2018, and there were zero people in the audience,” recalls Clare Church, who co-owns the nonprofit venue with her husband Pete Lewis. But eventually word got out about The Muse, and the couple finally broke even…in January of 2020. Against all odds, Muse Performance Space sustained itself through lockdown, and provided out-of-work musicians with gigs in the process. “We employed musicians. We probably had bands twice a week for donations. Like, we just put them online and asked for donations, and it kept us alive. It kept them alive too,” Church says proudly. It’s a prime example of The Muse’s whole dogma: music will always come first. For Church, that’s the main reason she wanted to open her own venue: “I wanted a place that was a pure performance space, not like a club or restaurant. So it’s not about selling stuff, it’s just about the concert.” The Muse’s musician-centric philosophy makes them a perfect partner venue for Lafayette Music Fest, happening Saturday, October 5.
Church and Lewis are both jazz musicians who have been living and playing music around Boulder County for thirty-three years. Lewis is a multiple woodwind player specializing in saxophone, and Church is a former multiple woodwind player and currently a drummer and vocalist (She switched to drums and vocals after being diagnosed with a movement disorder). They’ve lived in Lafayette for the past decade, but previously spent twelve years in Louisville, and another twelve in Superior. When the couple took over the building that’s now The Muse in 2018, it needed a LOT of work. “You wouldn’t believe what it looked like. It didn’t look like this, it was what I would call a shitshow,” Church remembers. “It was a t-shirt screen-printing place on one side, and on the other side it was a place where they made medals and trophies.There was an exposed sink and 2 bathrooms, and there was no stage, of course. There was a six-foot drop ceiling, with electrical wires hanging through the holes in the ceiling, with no drywall above 6 feet, and a cement floor covered with paint and goo and industrial stuff. So we did the whole thing from scratch.”
Church knew from the get-go that she wanted to bring visual art into the space as well, so from the start The Muse has had a gallery wall overseen by a curator who rotates the featured art every few months. Until recently, their curator was Molly McCrosson, a Lafayette-based visual artist and designer who Church coincidentally got to know over years of music lessons with McCrosson’s stepkids. Last month, Aubrey Carton took over as curator and artist-in-residence, and the first artist she’s decided to showcase is Bob Wiz, a Boulder-based mixed-media artist known for his acrylic paintings done on cross-cuts of logs. I was completely transfixed by his works, intricately-detailed portraits of animals that incorporate the raw texture of his organically shaped wooden canvases. Excellent choice, Aubrey! Bob Wiz has acquired a new fan.
But the main attraction at Muse Performance Space is, of course, the music. “People come here specifically to hear who is playing. It’s not like, let’s just see who is at The Muse!,” Church explains. The Muse hosts three to five concerts a week, not including rentals, recitals or student showcases. “We’re really particular,” Church says of The Muse’s sometimes niche concert offerings. “It's usually high-art type music, but not always. It can be fun, I just don’t want to book garbage.” While their standards for musicians are high, Church and Lewis still manage to book an array of genres, with one practical guiding principle: “It’s based primarily on volume. I know that sounds terrible, but we can’t do really high volume. We have a lot of jazz because we are jazz musicians, so a lot of our friends come in and play jazz. We’ve had classical, a little bit of bluegrass, some indie singer-songwriter type stuff, world music–Latin music, Indian classical music, Gypsy jazz, tango. Everything is artistically well played, and often original. But we don’t have ‘80s cover bands or aging rock bands. We’re not booking that because I don’t want to.”
To me, Church’s no-nonsense attitude towards booking is the coolest and most unique thing about Muse Performance Space (and there are a lot of cool and unique things about The Muse). The venue’s programming is unapologetically shaped by the owners’ personal tastes, not by potential ticket sales. When considering an act to perform at The Muse, the question of how many tickets will sell is secondary to what I think should always be the most important question: Is this good art? “Sometimes it is something so creative or so start-up, that they might only have 12 people,” Church admits. “But we still think it should be presented because it’s really good. And we give [the artists] a fair split, always. Even if there’s no one in the audience, they don’t go home with no money.” As someone who is sick of seeing crappy artists booked just because they mysteriously continue to sell out venues, I could’ve given Church a standing ovation right then and there. The majority of artists who perform at The Muse are based in Colorado, but if a touring act meets their prerequisites and can draw any kind of audience (however small!), The Muse will book them too. Notable past guests include MaryLynn Gillaspie, Amy Beyonta, CU vocal professor Jocelyn Medina, Cody Qualls of Face Vocal Band, Kat Ellis, Art Lande, and Eddie Gomez, just to name a few.
When asked what her favorite performance has been at The Muse, Church struggles to narrow it down, and settles on two. “We had Amina Figarova, with the Matsiko World Orphan Choir. She’s a jazz musician, and she and her husband Bart made this album with the Matsiko World Orphan Choir. It was a jazz sextet with twenty-four kids all across the stage and in front of the stage. It was amazing, and that was a huge deal,” she says. She’s also played the venue with her own band several times, including a particularly memorable show with Ron Miles: “Our band, back in January 2020, had a concert here with Ron Miles, who is an absolutely beloved jazz musician. He died in 2022. That was with my band, and he was an old friend, and it was so special.”
While The Muse has hosted classes and workshops in the past, their priority is, and will always be, producing high-quality, enjoyable live music experiences for artists and audiences alike. “We really wanted it to be for musicians and artists, by musicians and artists,” Church emphasizes. “It’s a great place to play, because it sounds so good. We did a lot of work, and just kept adding sound mitigation a little at a time, until it was like Goldilocks. I really, really care about the sound engineering, most of the time I’m the one that does it, so we just want it to sound great.” As an extra perk, The Muse’s piano has been deemed a favorite among Colorado’s musicians, boasts Church: “We have a great piano. It is everyone’s favorite–and I mean in the metro area.”
The Muse was clearly designed with musicians in mind, but Church and Lewis didn’t forget about their audiences either. “We really divide up our loyalties between the musicians and the audiences,” she says. “We were like, ‘We need to make it nicer for audiences.’ So now we have these nice comfy chairs, the tables, and we’ve done a lot with the bar area to make it more welcoming. We want the audience to feel welcome, like it’s a little home away from home, and they seem to.” Though removing the tables and plush chairs throughout the venue would bring their capacity up from eighty to two-hundred, Church and Lewis won’t sacrifice the comfort of their attendees, nor the intimacy that can only happen between artists and smaller audiences. I’m trying to stay off my soapbox, but I can’t stress enough how this people-over-profit mentality transforms the energy of the entire space (and yes, I do realize that their nonprofit status allows them to operate this way). Speaking of which, The Muse’s self-serve bar will be open for wine and beer sales on the day of the Fest, and if you dare ruin the extremely wholesome honor system by trying to sneak a drink without paying, I will personally tackle you to the ground. It’s $5 for beer or wine–that’s probably the cheapest drink you’ll have all day anyway.
The Muse will be one of Lafayette Music Fest’s five participating venues for the third year in a row. “It’s fun because a lot of people come in for the festival who have never been here before,” says Church. “From the outside, it looks like nothing. It’s kind of cool when you open the door and go ‘Oh!’” For those of us who are unfamiliar with the Lafayette music scene, Church shares two things we should know: “Number one, you can hear any kind of music in one of these 5 venues. And, there are many fine musicians that live right in Lafayette.” (I can’t help but add a quick caveat: while there is much more genre variety in Lafayette’s music community than I ever expected, I have yet to see any trace of hip-hop or rap.) Several of Lafayette’s finest were handpicked by Church and Lewis to perform at The Muse during Lafayette Music Fest, starting at 12:30 p.m: “The very first one, the Big Swing Trio, are three seasoned jazz players. They’ve been playing together for forty years, so when they play together it’s pretty great. We have Jack Hadley Band, a blues band playing. JoFoke & Same Cloth, that’s a great band. Mistura Fina is a really cool latin band with Christine Barbosa singing, they’re fabulous. Oh, and John Brewster and Antonio Lopez, two singer songwriters from the local area, are going to each do a little bit and then sing together. So that’s our singer-songwriter contingent.”
To have five different venues come together for a partnership like LMF is a rare feat. “The fact that there are 5 venues within a mile and half of each other, who cooperate together and jump in and help each other out, is pretty crazy,” Church notes. And it’s not just during the festival, either. The venues keep a symbiotic relationship year-round, all united by their love of the local music community: “If someone contacts us and they’re not a good fit for us, I’ll send them to Nissi’s, or Dog House, and they send people to me if it’s not going to be a good fit for them. So it’s this cooperative thing that’s really representative of this whole South Public Road area. That’s really cool. We’re all in it for slightly different reasons, but we’re all about the community.”
I don’t know about you, but that’s music to my ears.
The third annual Lafayette Music Fest is Saturday, October 5. Muse Performance Space will open their doors around 11:45 a.m., and their first show will start at 12:30 p.m. Tickets start at $43 and will be exchanged for wristbands upon arrival. For more information and the full Lafayette Music Fest lineup, visit lafayettemusicfest.com.
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