Steamboat Springs — Strings Music Festival is hosting holiday concerts destined to please audiences of all ages next week, with a Sunday night performance by perennial Strings favorite Carnegie Mellon Trio and Monday performances from the Kutandara Marimba Experience.

Selections from the Carnegie Mellon Trio at Sunday’s concert will include “festive” works by Mendelssohn, de Falla, Haydn and Liszt, violinist Andes Cárdenes said. The trio’s other members are cellist Anne Martindale Williams and pianist David Deveau.

“We wanted to make sure it was festive and happy, so we picked some very fun pieces from the classical repertoire,” Cárdenes said. “I think the audience will really enjoy it.”

The Carnegie Mellon Trio, which has performed in Steamboat Springs almost every year since the group was founded in Pennsylvania in the early 1990s, helped close out Strings Music Festival’s most recent summer season.

Sunday’s performance will be Cárdenes’ first with Strings Music Festival since he took charge earlier this year as its co-music director, along with his wife, Monique Mead, also a violinist. Mead will join him onstage this weekend for a performance of Liszt’s “Consolation,” Cárdenes said.

Strings annual holiday family concert will be the renowned Boulder-based world-beat ensemble Kutandara Marimba Experience. In addition to Kutandara’s marimbas, drums, horns and vocals, Monday’s audiences will get to learn a song, rhythm or dance step as part of the show.

Although some past family concerts have been geared toward young children, Strings Music Festival spokeswoman Julie Taulman said Monday’s interactive performances have appeal for older children, teens and across generations.

“This one is truly a family show – everyone will love it,” Taulman said.

Kutandara was founded in Boulder in 1999 by students at the University of Colorado. Its six members cite the Shona peoples of southern Africa as their primary inspiration and influence.

Tickets still are available for all the Strings Music Festival Holiday Concerts, though Kutandara’s 4 p.m. show is selling out fast, Taulman said. All three concerts are being held at the Sheraton Steamboat Resort.

– To reach Melinda Dudley, call 871-4203

or e-mail mdudley@steamboatpilot.com