MANKATO — Even as he talks about it, it’s obvious Colin Scharf is working through what Silver Summer means to him. And, perhaps even more, what the band doesn’t mean to the rest of his musical life.
It’s almost as if he feels he doesn’t want to fully admit to the freedom and autonomy it gives him to work outside the 10-year family of Good Night Gold Dust. And that makes perfect sense, because at the heart of that band is his wife, Laura Schultz.
In the end, he sees it as an extension of who he is as a musician in Gold Dust. With the freedom he finds in Silver Summer, he has an opportunity to become the creative he’s always wanted to be. And not someone stepping away from what works.
“It helped me, really kind of realize myself as a songwriter, and there was just sort of something about working with people who were pretty neutral,” he said. And by neutral, he quickly noted, he means finding a place away from the expectations that have come through the Gold Dust experience.
His partners in Silver Summer, he notes, are “intensely great musicians, and I’ve grown as a musician, as a lyricist, as, you know, (an) arranger.” In fact, the neutrality he refers to might be more about himself.
To be sure, Hanna Cesario (vocals, synth, piano), Tyler Vaughan (drums) and Ed Avila (bass, piano) are classically trained or energized through their own musical journeys. In this situation, however, they turn to Scharf for direction and that helps him break away from any preconceptions.
Saturday’s The Summer Ball 2026: A Sliver Screen Affair featuring Silver Summer’s album release show is 6 p.m. in The Bank Room (Ellerbe Building) at the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center.
As with previous Summer Ball events that Scharf has been hosting since 2022, this event will give people the chance to step away, become someone else and celebrate music.
“It started off as the spring formal and then, because I booked it too late the third year, it became the summer ball. The summer ball, historically, has been a celebration of local music, fashion and community fun, I guess,” he said. “There’s been a chance for people to get dressed up to a theme, come to music in a unique location and just enjoy local music on an elevated sort of level.”
This year’s theme reflects the inspirational source for most of the music on the “Die of Love” album. And that is a silver screen affair, reflecting the Golden Age of Hollywood, with its glitz, glamor and catch phrases that, like the album title, say so much with so little.
In fact, the title comes from one of those classic films he and Laura enjoy watching, he said. While people may only “die of love” in the movies, life contains small “deaths” that, when experienced, help guide our journeys.
Occurring in tandem with the deaths, of course, can be events that help define or expand life as well. Someone who knows that well is Scharf’s bandmate and established musician Cesario.
She began her conversation about being a part of Silver Summer in a very strong, positive way: “This band means a great deal to me.”
A classically trained musician who sings jazz and plays ukulele and piano, she found herself in new territory when Scharf asked her to add synthesizer to her repertoire. Adding the new instrument paralleled her feelings of taking on a new type of music as well, she said.
“But it was a push I didn’t know I needed and has expanded my skills immensely,” Cesario said. And working with the other members, all who arrive at Silver Summer from different places, “has made the song-writing experience full of twists and turns we don’t expect.”
With this year’s summer ball being a first album release, she said she sees it as both a way to know what they have accomplished so far and the start of working on their next full-length album.
With lyrics from old Hollywood finding their way into songs on the album, it becomes a tribute to the time.
“So, ‘A Silver Screen Fair,’ this summer ball theme, is an homage to all of those old films in that style, that big melodrama, that sort of coded yearning, you know, that you couldn’t quite already express from that era,” Scharf said.