The Ojai Music Festival welcomes as Music Director one of today’s most vital artists, Claire Chase. Reflecting on Ojai’s natural and sonic environment, the 2025 Festival programming offers responses to landscape as caretakers and participants and welcomes a multi-generational collective of composers, performers, composer-performers, and improvisers. Read 2025 highlights and join us for another music adventure.
Types of Libbey Bowl Series Passes
| NUMBER OF DAYS | What’s Included |
|---|---|
| 4-Day Libbey Bowl Pass | Libbey Bowl Concerts on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (7 in total), plus Ojai Talks |
| 3-Day Libbey Bowl Pass | Libbey Bowl Concerts on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (6 in total) |
| 2-Day Libbey Bowl Pass | Libbey Bowl Concerts on Saturday and Sunday (4 in total) |
This symbol indicates that this is a Beyond the Bowl event, not located at Libbey Bowl. Due to the intimate setting of these events, they are not automatically included in Libbey Bowl Passes and may require the purchase of an additional ticket.
THU 06|05
OJAI TALKS
3:00PM | Ojai Presbyterian Church
Claire Chase and Festival artists and composers in conversation
Automatically included in 4-Day Libbey Bowl Passes, available for purchase as an add-on.
PAN
8:00PM | Libbey Bowl
A festive opening night with Annea Lockwood’s bayou-borne, an affectionate tribute to Pauline Oliveros, then culminating in Marcos Balter’s Pan, an already iconic work from Claire Chase’s epic Density 2036 project. Pan is a deeply affecting work that explores the life and death of the mythical Greek goat-god Pan, written for flute, electronics, and a community of musicians, telling the tale of this weaver of melodies and a guardian of the wilderness – true to the Ojai spirit!
FRI 06|07
OJAI DAWNS
8:00AM | Zalk Theater, Beasant Hill School
Early morning program featuring JACK Quartet with works by Tania León, Leilehua Lanziliotti, and two exciting emerging composers, Vicente Atria and Eduardo Aguilar.
Festival donors have first access to tickets. Click here to learn more.
IMPRESSIONS
10:30AM | Libbey Bowl
A program of works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Cory Smythe and Craig Taborn that celebrates the old made new in Thorvaldsdottir’s Impressions for harpsichord as well as a summit meeting between two dazzlingly inventive composer/pianists whose worlds encompass jazz, new music and beyond.
SEX MAGIC
3:30PM | Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School
A program devoted to Sex Magic by the Australian composer Liza Lim for solo contrabass flute and electronics, celebrating the sacred erotic in women’s history. Inspired by Claire Chase’s towering contrabass flute (Bertha), Sex Magic evokes the giant bass flutes of Papua New Guinea and the Australian Didjeridoo in a work that ritually moves across three altars, creating a mystical, mesmerizing evocation of both the present and the timeless past.
Festival donors have first access to tickets. Click here to learn more.
THE HOLY LIFTOFF
8:00PM | Libbey Bowl
Music for a “chorus of cellos” by Sofia Gubaidulina and Julius Eastman precede The Holy Liftoff, the most recent work by pioneering American composer Terry Riley, played in Ojai by Claire Chase and the JACK Quartet. Written as a series of musical sketches and brilliantly colored drawings, an exuberant and energized work represents a culmination for Riley, who says “I feel like this piece sums up a lot of things I’ve worked for.”
SAT 06|08
MORNING MEDITATION
8:00 AM | Ojai Meadows Preserve
Program TBA.
Free and open to the public
UBIQUE
10:30AM | Libbey Bowl
A program centered on the West Coast premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ubique for flute, two cellos, piano and electronics, a work of enigmatic lyricism by a composer who is inspired by the “musical qualities of nature.”
ENDANGERED CHARMS
3:30PM | Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School
A concert centered on the West Coast premiere of Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and electronics by the endlessly inventive composer-pianist Craig Taborn. The work is inspired by a dream in which plants awake, blossom, grow and change as the dreamer walks through a garden.
Subscribers have first access to ticket sales. Purchase this event as an add-on when you subscribe.
HOW FORESTS THINK
8:00PM | Libbey Bowl
Music by Bach, Sofia Gubaidulina (inspired by Bach) and Tania León, precede the West Coast premiere of the large-scale How Forests Think by Liza Lim, a work inspired by the imagery of ancient forests as vibrant, symbiotic communities that, as the composer writes, “that nourish the old connections and keep a song going. One might think of a forest as a choir or certainly as an ensemble. Stories, dreams and thoughts inhabit multiple forms in a living matrix.”
SUN 06|09
MORNING MEDITATION
8:00AM
Program TBA.
Free and open to the public
SKY ISLANDS
10:30AM | Libbey Bowl
The JACK Quartet explores Modern/Medieval with music from the 14th to 17th centuries, renewed for contemporary performance by composers/JACK violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman. The program is followed by the West Coast premiere of Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands, evoking a unique environment of the elevated rain forests in the Philippines with the interlocking rhythms and melodies of Philippine Northern-style bamboo, gong, and flute music, performed on new sound sculptures of gong metals.
ENDANGERED CHARMS (repeat performance)
2:30PM | Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School
A concert centered on the West Coast premiere of Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and electronics by the endlessly inventive composer-pianist Craig Taborn. The work is inspired by a dream in which plants awake, blossom, grow and change as the dreamer walks through a garden.
Subscribers have first access to ticket sales. Purchase this event as an add-on when you subscribe.
FINALE CONCERT
5:30PM | Libbey Bowl
An exuberant all-company finale with music by Hawaiian composer Leilehua Lanzilotti, Pauline Oliveros’ The Witness and the West Coast premiere of Terry Riley’s Pulsefield as the joyous ending.
Programs and artists are subject to change. Schedule as of October 8, 2024.