Tonight's Breckenridge Music Festival Orchestra concert contains a special treat: Featured pianist Robin Sutherland, who began with the BMF's predeccessor, the Breckenridge Music Institute. In fact, he's known BMF founder Kenny Evan since Sutherland was 6. He first performed in the frestival at Evan's invitation, when the concerts were at the Bergenhof Restaurant.

“Then came the Event Tent, and now we've got our glorious Riverwalk Center,” Sutherland said. “So it's been a good while. As some of my younger, hipper students might say, I've been with the BMF for hella (lot of) years.”

And, he's not just known for his BMF shows. He holds the Jean and Bill Lane Principal Chair in Keyboards for the San Francisco Symphony — a position created for him 38 years ago.

“Sutherland is a stunning pianist,” said BMF executive director Marcia Kaufmann. “He has a big local following, having grown up in Greeley and with a long history with the BMF.”

Sutherland takes a beautiful approach to explaining the magic of classical music, by talking about how nature inspired many composers, such as Brahms.

(“Brahms) said there were so many melodies in the country that he had to be careful walking in order not to trip over them all,” Sutherland said. “So here we are rubbing elbows with The Continental Divide itself — it doesn't get more awesomely majestic than this. My job, and they tell me I'm extremely good at it, is to ‘bring it' to Summit County. By ‘it,' I mean the finest classical music, and fortunately this is not difficult: Music is that universal, elemental thing that doesn't need ‘bringing' at all, because it's already here.”

Especially when the BMF Orchestra performs.

“I get to join up with my extraordinary BMF colleagues in doing something that just feels right, and I get a huge assist from the scenery here in my native state of Colorado,” he said. “So to those folks not very familiar with orchestral music, I'd say that if all else fails, make a game out of it, and try not to trip over all the melodies. If you do actually fall down over one, you'll walk a little more jauntily when you get yourself up, and we all will have succeeded.”

Through Maestro Gerhardt Zimmermann's guidance, Sutherland has engaged in a “systematic, methodical examination of the piano concertos of Wolfgang Mozart,” some of which he'll be performing tonight.

“They represent the absolute summit — get it? summit? — of the art of music's greatest genius, and luckily, there are 27 of them — so I'm far from finished.”

The specific piece he'll perform is “B-flat Major Concert,” which he infuses with his own personal stamp — and he said this year's rendition will be “exceptionally bizarre, at least by purist standards.”

He said some people ask, “What would Mozart say?”

And to them, he replies: “Get over it. Mozart gave this to me, and I'm loving every note of it. But now, it's mine... Bwa-hahahahaaa!”

Can you believe he said this about a piece he's playing on the dreaded Friday, the 13th?

“It's true, this Friday does fall on the 13th, but hey — a little element of danger never hurt anybody,” he said. “Sometimes it gives things just the edge they need. Be there.”

Yes, Sutherland has quite a sense of humor, and, apparently, not much fear of death. He seems to have come to terms with the concept long ago, because, having no other “perceptible aptitude for anything other than music, if I weren't a musician, I'd probably be dead.”

Oddly enough, he sees “tons of career opportunities” in death.

“In my case, I would choose to be a ferryboat captain,” he said. “That way I could ferry my friends, both of them, across the River Styx on our festive journey to hell.”

Since he feels blessed that his life has been so full, he doesn't have a whole bunch on his bucket list. He just wants to spend “a few million more days with my friend —no need to name names,” and, perhaps get a smaller bucket, because he's quite satisfied with his life, and listeners seem quite pleased with the music he creates.