Swallow Hill Music has Colorado Spirit – Colorado Sound Music Awards

You voted Swallow Hill Music as your Colorado Spirit choice in 2024

By Adam Perry

Denver native Jessy Clark was hired as Chief Operating Officer of Swallow Hill in 2017. Now, Clark is the Chief Executive Officer of the 45-year-old Denver-based nonprofit, which specializes in enriching the community through music education, outreach, and concert production.

Swallow Hill is the winner, as selected by Colorado Sound listeners, of this year’s Colorado Spirit award, and there’s not much more embodying of Colorado spirit than a Denver-run, music-forward nonprofit headed by a Denver native.

“You know, music is what we do, and music is what The Colorado Sound does, right?” Clark says. “I feel like it’s just this great unifier for people, regardless of their backgrounds or political affiliations. You can have a conversation about music that is just about music, and I feel like Colorado’s got that vibe. It’s just this big mix of all these people that live in different communities, and we all hang out together and enjoy live music and learn together.”

“I was born in Denver, moved back here as an adult right after college,” Clark continues. “I thought I’d only be here a couple years, and it’s been 25 years, because it’s such a great community.”

Swallow Hill’s goal is supporting the local music community, and it has over 70 instructors—all gigging musicians—who support their students as Swallow Hill supports them as they pursue their work, performing and recording and striving toward their dreams.

Swallow Hill is a school, a multi-venue performance space spanning multiple floors of its headquarters, a homebase for traveling community outreach, and a hub for producing concerts in and around Denver.

“It’s not just a performance space, and it’s not just a school, and it’s not just community outreach,” says Clark. “It seems pretty universal. It’s a pretty awesome space, and I think it’s proud to be a nonprofit in this space. It’s unusual, but we do it well, and so that’s also just a nod to the community and supporting us on the flipside of that. It’s pretty awesome to have the community support we have in order to do what we do.”

Swallow Hill is an impressive, diverse local nonprofit with a sizable annual budget of $5 million, and it has even been inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. Its roots, though, are in the humble and eccentric history of the Denver Folklore Center, the impact of which is not lost on Clark.

“Our founder, Harry Tuft, founded the Denver Folklore Center and is still actively involved in what we do here, which is so cool. I think probably the thing I love most about Swallow Hill is that every person that has crossed paths with us somewhere in their history – whether that’s the patrons or the staff and volunteers and all those other things – it just gets in their blood. We do such a good job of building community, which was Harry’s intent: Give musicians a place to play, and put teachers to work. We do that, just in a larger-scale version of what I think Harry envisioned from the beginning. It’s still a place to build community and support working musicians.”

According to Clark, being voted by Colorado Sound listeners as the 2024 recipient of the Colorado Spirit award is “amazing, such an honor, and I feel like we still just work hard to keep the [music] community going. We have a reputation for all the things we’re talking about, and Denver shares in that recognition of the community taking care of artists…and that community-building piece is so critical right now.”

Meet all of the 2024 Colorado Sound Music Award winners

On the Rise – the Trujillo Company

Colorado Spirit – Swallow Hill Music

Outstanding Stage Presence (tie) – Los Mocochetes

Outstanding Stage Presence (tie) – the Swashbuckling Doctors

Outstanding ‘Secret Ingredient’ – Fort Collins Musicians Association (FoCoMA)

Musician or Band You’d Drive 105.5. Miles to See – 2MX2

Meet all the winners and all our incredible 2024 Colorado Sound Music Award nominees

The 2024 Colorado Sound Music Awards are brought to you by: 

Initial Capacity

The Lazy Greyhound Cocktail Lounge