Minstrels and Minimoogs – Documentary

COMING IN DECEMBER 2026

A Journey of Resurrection

Unimaginable devastation in a musician’s career erupts in a chaotic journey of reinvention and artistic resurrection.

Minstrels and Minimoogs Trailer

In 2021, the most destructive fire in Colorado history destroyed the life work of celebrated composer and musician Gregory T.S. Walker. In less than a minute, manuscripts, audio recordings, albums and photograph all vanished. Then, a severed tendon in his index finger brought an abrupt halt to his career. There would be no more concerts, no recordings, no performances. But a work of art is like a living creature; it will find ways to survive. Seven months after the fire, a 30 year-old album, discovered in a garage sale, offered a new lease on life. Minstrels and Minimoogs is an experimental cinema verité documentary of Gregory Walker’s struggle to reclaim his legacy… a journey of artistic resurrection by one of the most original and unflinching artists of our time.

“a work of art will devise tricks to survive”

“I expanded myself beyond what I was designed or meant to be”

Gregory Walker’s “Dreams N. the Hood” was called “an American Masterpiece,” by the Minneapolis Pioneer Press. The Wire magazine called his 1988 album a “wild and delightful fusion.” He is an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fellowship recipient, the artistic director of the Colorado NeXt Music Fest, and touring concert violinist.

Walker has been featured in soloist engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Oberlin Orchestra, the Encuentro Musical de los Americas in Havana, Cuba, the Detroit Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, Poland’s Filharmonia Sudecka, and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, as well as at the Library of Congress, England’s Lake District Music Festival, Centro Mexicano para la Musica y las Artes Sonoras, Peking University, and the Cork Orchestral Society Concert Series in Ireland. For 25 years, Walker served as concertmaster for the Boulder Philharmonic.

Over the course of 30 months, filmmaker Ian Walker documented the journey of Ministrels and Minimoog, from the smokey stages of experimental music venues of Denver to the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music in London, Englands.

Featuring

Elena Camerin Young

Todd Reid

Peter Swanson

Michael Klausman

John Murino

Mark Harris

Minstrels and Minimoogs was a seminal musical album produced in 1988. Described as “wild and delightful… a showcase of virtuosity” by The Wire magazine, it vanished for more than 30 years– only to be rediscovered at a garage sale in Colorado and brought to the attention of Peter Swanson at Freedom to Spend music.

Listen to the newly released album here.