October 1 — Sustainable Gathering

Discover how to do more to conserve energy than simply recycling your beer cans at Endotrend, an enviro festival that features everything from films like Overview, a short about astronauts turned environmentalists, to presentations by sustainability activists. (Don’t miss Saturday’s panel featuring Denver-based endangered species advocate Taylor Jones.) Plus, mobile wind turbines, a bike pedal energy generator, and “raincatchers”—any droplets collected will be donated to local community gardens—ensure that attending this showcase won’t be a waste. endotrend.com

5280 October 2016
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October 7-8 — The Entertainer

Whether you consider “Piano Man” inspiring or irritating, it’s difficult to deny the impact Billy Joel has made on pop music. Colorado College thinks the six-time Grammy Award winner deserves as much attention from scholars as he’s received from the public. This month the Colorado Springs campus will host It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me: The Music and Lyrics of Billy Joel ($20), a conference that aims to connect fans with novelists, poets, and others who have examined Joel’s legacy. The flashiest of the 30 sessions will be a live phone interview with Mr. Long Island himself. (Sadly, only conference presenters can ask questions, so your query about how he managed to land Christie Brinkley will likely go unanswered.) Our panel pick: Saturday’s coffee break with Jim Bosse, a member of Joel’s high school band, who will discuss the singer’s early mood swings. coloradocollege.edu

Starting October 14 — Paper Trail

Best known for his large-scale abstract expressionist works, Clyfford Still differentiated himself from contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko with an extensive cache of drawings—upward of 2,300. In a three-month exhibit, Clyfford Still: The Works on Paper, the Clyfford Still Museum will display more than 260 of those compositions, many of which served as starting points for his larger paintings, such as “PH-235,” arguably the most famous of Still’s portfolio. Other drawings are finished artworks themselves, including pieces from Still’s time working in the Bay Area shipyards at the start of World War II and pastel designs dating from the last decade of his life. (He used pastels for his final signed work in 1980.) Although you could spend all day staring at Still’s art, make sure to visit the Drawing Room, a public studio in the center of the gallery, to contribute to a crowdsourced installation and explore your own creative process. clyffordstillmuseum.org

October 22 — XX Country

You’ve spent your summer running stairs at Red Rocks Amphitheatre—now test your quads on the surrounding park’s footpaths in female race series Esprit de She’s first trail run. In addition to stellar views, the registration fee ($75 for the 5K, $105 for the 10K) gets you fun extras like a Zumba warm-up and a sunset concert by country singer Jana Kramer. espritdeshe.com