Emi Ferguson is excited to be back at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. A 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ferguson can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including 2022 Ojai Festival Music Director AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), the Handel and Haydn Society, the New York New Music Ensemble, and the Manhattan Chamber Players. Her recordings celebrate her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present. Her debut album, Amour Cruel, an indie-pop song cycle inspired by the music of the 17th-century French court, was released by Arezzo Music in September 2017, spending four weeks on the classical, classical crossover, and world music Billboard charts. Her 2019 album Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes, a collaboration with continuo band Ruckus, debuted at #1 on the iTunes classical charts and #2 on the Billboard classical charts, and was called “blindingly impressive … a fizzing, daring display of personality and imagination” by the New York Times. A passionate chamber musician of works new and old, Ferguson has been a featured performer at the Marlboro, Lucerne, Ojai, Lake Champlain, Bach Virtuosi, and June in Buffalo festivals, often premiering new works by composers of our time. Emi has spoken and performed at several TEDx events and has been featured on media outlets including the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, WQXR, and Vox talking about how music relates to our world today. As part of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, she created the series “This Composer is SICK!” with Max Fine that explored the impact of syphilis on composers Franz Schubert, Bedrich Smetana, and Scott Joplin, in addition to guest hosting WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase. This summer, her book co-written with David and Nicholas Csicsko, Iconic Composers, will be released by Trope Publishing, introducing kids and adults to 50 incredible composers. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York City.