Download a PDF 2022 schedule 

Click here to read the 2022 Festival program book 

Thursday 06.09.22

3pm | Ojai Presbyterian Church
OJAI TALKS

Featuring members of AMOC hosted by Ara Guzelimian

5pm | Ojai Art Center
A Passageway Between Shores

Featuring Paul Appleby, Keir GoGwilt, Carolyn Chen, and Divya Victor

This musical-poetic meditation weaves together a tapestry of original compositions, traditional songs, and familiar refrains, melding original music with Irish, Scots, and Tamil tunes. Featuring original work by poet Divya Victor, composer Carolyn Chen, and violinist Keir GoGwilt, it seamlessly integrates music and poetic recitation in an intimate and moving reflection on displacement and belonging.

Subscribers receive priority seating. Free, non-ticketed event. If you’re interested in attending, please read our FAQ.

8pm | Libbey Bowl
OPENING NIGHT

Featuring AMOC and Friends  

Julius EASTMAN   Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc  
Iannis XENAKIS   Rebonds B  
Eric WUBBELS   Gretchen am Spinnrade
Frederic RZEWSKI   Coming Together
Bob DYLAN    Masters of War
Kate SOPER  The Rose Once Blown
Celeste ORAM   The Power of Moss  
Michael HERSCH   Scars Plummet to the Corners XIX & XX 
Orlando GIBBONS   Fantasia  (arr. Michael Hersch) 
Matthew AUCOIN   Shaker Dance

Members of AMOC perform a wide range of the cutting-edge repertoire for which they are renowned. The music on this program ranges from modern classics by Iannis Xenakis, Frederic Rzewski, and Julius Eastman to more recently-composed music by Celeste Oram, Kate Soper, Matthew Aucoin, Michael Hersch, and others.

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Friday 06.10.22

8am | Zalk Theater, Besant Hill School
OJAI DAWNS: MITCHELL & LEWIS

Featuring Emi Ferguson, Doug Balliett, Miranda Cuckson, Jonny Allen, Mathew Aucoin, and Friends  

George LEWIS  Artificial Life, 1 
Roscoe MITCHELL   Cards from At Oakwood Drive 
George LEWIS   Artificial Life, 2  

 This concert brings together improvisatory works by two of the most formidable composers of our time, Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis. In the composer’s words, Lewis’s Artificial Life “[presents] a model of group improvisation as an emergent phenomenon arising from negotiation and local intelligence.” Mitchell’s “Cards from At 440 Oakwood Drive” are excerpted from an in-progress multi-movement work that is being composed for Emi Ferguson, Ruckus, and the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet as a co-commission with Metropolis Ensemble.  The “Cards” invite the performers into Mitchell’s language through unmeasured melodic and harmonic material, leaving the creation of the musical structure to the performers.

There will be no intermission during this concert

11am | Libbey Bowl
EASTMAN

Featuring Johnny Allen, Matthew Aucoin, Doug Balliett, Miranda Cuckson, Emi Ferguson, Conor Hanick, Davóne Tines, Zack Winokur, and Seth Parker Woods; Directed by Zack Winokur

Works by Julius EASTMAN
Our Father 
Buddha
Gay Guerrilla 
Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc
Stay on It

A multi-dimensional performance piece, EASTMAN reflects the performers’ consideration of Julius Eastman’s art and the larger context of his life, creativity, and humanity. The program will include performances of some of Eastman’s most affecting works, including Buddha, Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc, and his epic, joyous Stay on It.

There will be no intermission during this concert

2:30pm | Greenberg Activity Center, Ojai Valley School
Open Rehearsal
A new collaborative dance-theater work by Bobbi Jene Smith

5pm | Libbey Bowl
the echoing of tenses

Featuring Paul Appleby, Miranda Cuckson, and Anthony Cheung

Stewart GOODYEAR   Suite – Prelude and Dance
Charles IVES   Sunrise
Anthony CHEUNG   the echoing of tenses   World Premiere 

A new song cycle, the echoing of tenses, commissioned by the Ojai Festival from Anthony Cheung, sets poetry by Asian-American writers interconnected by the larger theme of memory, made complicated by the circumstances and tensions of cultural and personal identity, family, migration, loss, and reflection. The various poems by Arthur Sze, Monica Youn, Jenny Xie, Ocean Vuong, and others, will be sung, spoken, and interwoven throughout. The work features Paul Appleby, Miranda Cuckson, and Anthony Cheung, and a score that mixes live performance with pre-recorded sound design, in collaboration with David Bird.

There will be no intermission during this concert

8pm | Libbey Bowl
Friday Evening Concert 

Please note that Julia Bullock has tested positive for COVID-19 and is unable to travel. The originally scheduled performance of Messiaen’s Harawi will be replaced with the following program.

Davone Tines, bass-baritone; Richard Valitutto, piano; Conor Hanick, piano; Jonny Allen, percussion; Coleman Itzkoff, cello

Tyshawn SOREY For James Primrosch (2022) Commissioned by The Music Academy of the West
Tyshawn SOREY Lost and Looking
Caroline SHAW Mass: 1. Kyrie
J. S. BACH Wie Jammern Mich, BWV 170
Caroline SHAW Mass: 2. Agnus Dei
Tyshawn SOREY Songs of Death: I. After Were You There?
Margaret BONDS To A Brown Girl, Dead
Caroline SHAW Mass: 3. Credo
J. S. BACH Mache Dich Mein Herze Rein, BWV 244
Caroline SHAW Mass: 4. Gloria
Moses HOGAN Give Me Jesus
Caroline SHAW Mass: 5. Sanctus
arr. Davóne TINES and Matthew AUCOIN BALM
Igee DIEUDONNÉ and Davóne TINES arr. Matthew AUCOIN VIGIL

 There will be no intermission during this concert

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Saturday 06.11.22

9am | Chaparral Auditorium
Meditation

Featuring Jay Campbell, Julia Eichten, Keir GoGwilt, Yiannis Logothetis, and Matilda Sakamoto

Carolyn CHEN  How to Fall Apart   World Premiere

A new commission by AMOC, Carolyn Chen’s How to Fall Apart describes cosmic, natural, and human processes of disintegration, aging and falling apart. This one-hour work integrates text, gesture, and music, building upon Chen’s long-standing compositional work “in which sensuality and abstraction find common ground” (Los Angeles Times).

There will be no intermission during this concert

4:30pm | Zalk Theater, Besant Hill School
The Cello Player

Event is sold-out!

Featuring Matthew Aucoin, Paul Appleby, Davóne Tines, Conor Hanick, Coleman Itzkoff, Keir GoGwilt, Doug Balliett, Jonny Allen, Emi Ferguson, Miranda Cuckson, Julia Bullock, Julia Eichten, Carrie Frey, Gleb Kanasevich, and Mari Yoshinaga

Andrew MCINTOSH   Little Jimmy
Matthew AUCOIN  Deep Water Trawling
Matthew AUCOIN  Family Dinner  World Premiere

This program features the first Ojai Festival performance of music by Andrew McIntosh, one of Southern California’s most vital and distinctive musical voices. Pianists Conor Hanick and Matthew Aucoin and percussionists Jonny Allen and Mari Yoshinaga will perform McIntosh’s Little Jimmy, a 30-minute work inspired by a visit the composer made to a backpackers’ camp called Little Jimmy, located on Mt. Islip in the Angeles National Forest.

A cycle of mini-concertos commissioned by the Ojai Festival, Family Dinner aims to capture the raucous, joyful energy of a multi-course dinner with beloved friends. The music ranges from introspective to riotously dancelike; it is also punctuated by spoken “toasts” composed by writers and thinkers who are collaborators of AMOC’s artists.

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Sunday 06.12.22

9am | Chaparral Auditorium
Meditation

Featuring Doug Balliett, Miranda Cuckson, Emi Ferguson, Davóne Tines, and Seth Parker Woods 

Julius EASTMAN  Our Father 
EASTMAN  Buddha  

Free, non-ticketed event. If you’re interested in attending, please read our FAQ.

10am | Libbey Bowl
THE BOOK OF SOUNDS

Featuring Conor Hanick

Hans OTTE   The Book of Sounds 

A rare performance of The Book of Sounds, a remarkable cycle of 12 solo piano pieces written between 1979 to 1982 by the pioneering German composer, pianist, poet and visual artist Hans Otte (1926-2007). The work is a mesmerizing exploration of sound, shaped by Otte’s immersion in both European and Eastern spirituality as well as his championing of such composers as John Cage, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass.

There will be no intermission during this concert

12pm | Libbey Park – Free Community Event
Dance in the Park

Featuring Julia Eichten and Bret Easterling 

EICHTERLING  Dance in the Park  World Premiere 

Dance in the Park, a free happening in Libbey Park, celebrates tenderness, togetherness, and fierce joy. The piece is by the dance duo Eichterling, an ongoing collaboration between and across forms with Bret Easterling and Julia Eichten.

Free, non-ticketed event. Open to the public. If you’re interested in attending please read our FAQ.

2:30pm | Greenberg Activity Center, Ojai Valley School
Open Rehearsal
A new collaborative dance-theater work by Bobbi Jene Smith 

Event is sold-out!

Featuring Paul Appleby, Julia Bullock, Julia Eichten, Keir GoGwilt, Conor Hanick, Coleman Itzkoff, Or Schraiber, and Bobbi Jene Smith, and guest collaborators Vinson Fraley, Jonathan Fredrickson, Jesse Kovarsky, Yiannis Logothetis, and Stephanie Troyak

Bobbi Jene SMITH  Open Rehearsal  World Premiere 
Musical works by Schubert, Bach, Connie Converse, Pete Seeger 

A new collaborative dance-theater piece by Bobbi Jene Smith, made specially for the 2022 Ojai Festival. This work, evolving and adapting parts of her most recent film Broken Theater, which was developed and shot at Mass MoCA and La Mama, explores themes of power, love, and trust through the theatrics of rehearsal. It presents a theater company caught in the midst of preparing for their show. Company members perform music by Schubert, Bach, Connie Converse, Pete Seeger, exquisitely curated and choreographed. But signals are crossed; the chain of command breaks down; the artists repeat, rebuild, and take apart the moment of performance.

4pm | Libbey Park – Free Community Event
Rome is Falling

Featuring Doug Balliett, Coleman Itzkoff, Davóne Tines, Jonny Allen, Keir Gogwilt, Emi Ferguson, Julia Bullock, Paul Appleby, Matthew Aucoin, and Ruckus

Doug BALLIETT  Rome is Falling  World Premiere 

This new work – conceived and composed by Doug Balliett – tracks the fall of Rome in the form of a high-energy opera in the Libbey Park gazebo. Bringing together members of AMOC and Ruckus – the critically-acclaimed early music band with a fresh approach to baroque music – Rome is Falling presents an exciting new telling where song, spoken word, and driving music come together to contextualize the action. Complete with audience engagement and the performance of members of a local children’s choir, Rome is Falling is a free, public opportunity for Ojai Festival-goers and locals alike to bring a picnic blanket to enjoy.

Free, non-ticketed event. Open to the public. 

5:30pm | Libbey Bowl
FINALE CONCERT

Featuring AMOC, Ruckus, and Friends  

Program to include:

Act I: Ruckus & AMOC
Celeste ORAM   A Tuning Tune  World Premiere
Girolamo FRESCOBALDI   Canzona Terza a due Bassi
Sigismondo D’INDIA   Infelice Didone
ORAM   Attuning Tune   World Premiere
VIVALDI   Sonata VI in B-flat for Cello, RV46, Op. 14: Preludio
VIVALDI   Qual per ignoto calle
Philip GLASS   Liquid Days
GLASS   The Encounter

Act II: AMOC
John CAGE   She is Asleep
Nina SIMONE   Revolution
SIMONE   Four Women
SCHUBERT   Ständchen
Julius EASTMAN  Stay on It

AMOC closes out the 2022 Festival with a culminating concert focused on pieces that showcase the company’s full ensemble, including Julius Eastman’s indomitable Stay On It and Anthony Roth Costanzo singing his trademark renditions of the music of Philip Glass. AMOC’s dancers make a Libbey Bowl cameo in a choreographed rendition of Schubert’s “Ständchen.” The program also features Costanzo and the early-music ensemble Ruckus in a vibrant array of Baroque music, ranging from Vivaldian virtuoso fireworks to a rarely-performed gem by Sigismondo d’India.

Last updated 6.2.22. Programs and artists are subject to change.