Peter Oundjian glanced over the Colorado Music Festival‘s 2023 lineup and reported with unconcealed glee, “Everybody I wanted to invite said ‘Yes.’”

That pretty much sums up the music director’s enthusiasm for the annual summer event that opens June 29-30 in Boulder’s Chautauqua Auditorium. That’s when superstar violinist Joshua Bell will serve as soloist to launch a season of premieres and must-see concerts that have Oundjian positively bubbling with excitement.

Did we say premieres? New music? At a laid-back summer festival? Won’t that frighten folks away? He scoffs at the suggestion.

“What some people consider daring, I consider normal,” said Oundjian (pronounced Ooon-jee-in), who was named music director of the Colorado Music Festival in 2019 and, additionally, principal conductor for the Colorado Symphony last year. “I think that playing music of today has a positive effect on what else we do.”

Besides, the conductor added, new music is no longer scary stuff.

For example, Oundjian pointed to the July 16 premiere of “JFK: The Last Speech,” a deeply personal work for soprano, speaker and orchestra blending the poetry of Robert Frost and President Kennedy’s inspiring words, which he delivered to students at Amherst College only weeks before his assassination.

The music was composed by Dr. Adolphus Hailstork, a music professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia. “His music is so beautiful,” the conductor said, noting that this piece is one of three new works commissioned by the festival. “We’ve never supported that many in one year. But the board was right there with me (in underwriting contemporary music),” he said.

It’s worth noting that “The Last Speech” has generated national attention; the July premiere will be followed next season by performances in Dallas, Indianapolis, Washington D.C. and Amherst. Dr. Hailstork will be present for this much-anticipated premiere. Other composers are also expected to be traveling to Boulder this summer, all of them among America’s (and the world’s) most-performed, most-sought-after music-makers: John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Jake Heggie, Kevin Puts and Edgar Meyer.

The conductor loved the idea of having these important figures in American music on hand to present their work and offer guidance to the CMF Orchestra during rehearsals. Corigliano will be onstage at the July 13 concert devoted entirely to his music, Oundjian said.

“The opportunity (for an audience) to hear from a composer is invaluable. I know that some composers don’t want to speak at all, but John loves to speak, and he’ll talk three times, once before each piece.”

Among the new works heard at the festival, perhaps the most unusual are the five individual movements to be unveiled at season’s end when Bell returns to offer performances of “Elements” with Oundjian and the CMF Orchestra.

“This was all Josh’s idea,” the conductor said, pointing to the longtime close relationship of the two musicians. “We live within 45 minutes of each other (in New England). I’ve known him since he was 14.”

The five segments, contractually presented here as “preview performances,” will receive their official premiere in New York in late September, followed by concert appearances around the world.

Based on the ancient Greek concept of the five universal elements, the music will be heard at the festival’s final two concerts. The Aug. 3 program includes “Fire” by Heggie, “Water” by Meyer and “Ether” by Jessie Montgomery. (The latter is the only composer who will be unable to attend.) That concert concludes with Debussy’s “La Mer.” The festival finale on Aug. 5 schedules Higdon’s “Air” and Puts’ “Earth,” ending with Mahler’s First Symphony.

More new music will take place at the “Last Speech” concert on July 16 when University of Colorado composers Jordan Holloway and Carter Pann unveil their pieces written in celebration of Chautauqua’s 125th anniversary.

Don’t get the impression that the summer event is one giant new-music festival. Far from it. This year marks the 150th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s birth, and Oundjian is not letting that slip by unnoticed.

He’ll lead the Third Symphony and Symphonic Dances plus the Third and Fourth Piano Concertos (with Nicolai Lugansky as soloist) on July 6, 7 and 9. “I think of these programs as ‘Rachmaninoff in America,’ since these works, written late in his career, were premiered in this country,” the conductor said. “I know that the Third Symphony is not played as much as the Second, but I just love it.”

This may be a busy time in Boulder for Oundjian, but he’s not the only one occupying the podium. The baton will be passed, as it were, to other capable conductors, most notably to former Festival music director Michael Christie, who’ll return to lead performances of Tchaikovsky’s mighty Symphony No. 4, along with works by Florence Price and Maurice Ravel on July 20 and 21.

Other maestros due to appear include Kalena Bowell (the Family Concert on July 2), François Lopez-Ferrer (music by Mozart on July 23), Eun Sun Kim (works by Mason Bates, Shostakovich and Brahms on July 27-28), and Hannu Lintu (Einojuhan Rautavaara, Schumann and Haydn on July 30).

Chamber music has always been a welcome part of the festival, and will once again serve as a reminder of music’s intimate pleasures on consecutive Tuesday evenings, beginning July 11. Past masters such as Brahms, Mozart, Debussy and Beethoven will be represented. But so too will music by living composers John Zorn, Caleb Burhans, Caroline Shaw and Philip Glass, all placed front and center in a concert titled “New York Stories” by the JACK Quartet, kicking off the Tuesday series.

Colorado Music Festival Season Highlights

• June 29-30: Violinist Joshua Bell plays Bruch’s Concerto, plus Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”

• July 2: Family Concert featuring “Peter and the Wolf” and “Goodnight Moon”

• July 6, 7, 9: Concerts celebrating Rachmaninoff’s 150th anniversary

• July 13: Music by John Corigliano, with the composer present

• July 16: Premiere of Dr. Augustus Hailstork’s “JFK: The Last Speech”

• July 20-21: Michael Christie conducts Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4

• July 27-28: Johannes Moser plays Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1

• Aug. 3, 6: Bell plays new concerto movements by Jake Heggie, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery, Jennifer Higdon and Kevin Puts, with composers present