(Ojai CA – February 5, 2025) – Composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to the Ojai Music Festival to serve as Music Director for the 80th Festival, June 11 to 14, 2026. Since the late 1940s, the Festival has continued the tradition of appointing a new Music Director each year, fostering vitality and diversity in its programming throughout the years.
“Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most inventive, adventurous thinkers of 21st-century musical life. The unique format of the Ojai Music Festival gives him an unusually free creative hand as both composer and conductor. I’m thrilled at the prospect of all that he will dream up,” said Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, who previously collaborated with the Ojai Music Festival as Music Director for the 1999 and 2001 Festivals, is known as both a composer and conductor. He is the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony and the Conductor Laureate for the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School, he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded, and until 2018 served as the Artistic Director of the annual Baltic Sea Festival.
This season, Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in world premieres of works by Nico Muhly, Xavier Muzik, and Gabriella Smith, among many other programs. He also returns to the Philharmonia Orchestra—both in London and on tour in Italy—and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he leads wide-ranging programs including Bryce Dessner’s Violin Concerto with Pekka Kuusisto and Boulez’s Notations with Pierre-Laurent Aimard. With the Orchestre de Paris, Salonen conducts a reprise of his and Romeo Castellucci’s staged production of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” and a Boulez Centennial celebration with choreography by Benjamin Millepied, while a Salzburg Easter Festival residency with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra centers on a new Simon McBurney production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina.
Salonen’s compositions are programmed with thirteen different orchestras this season. He conducts his own Tiu, kínēma, and cello concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; he also conducts the cello concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he leads his Sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra. His works, led by other conductors, also appear on programs at the Montreal and Aarhus symphony orchestras (Sinfonia concertante), Munich Philharmonic (Insomnia), Lahti Symphony Orchestra (kínēma), Netherlands Radio and Magdeburg philharmonic orchestras (Gemini), Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra (Nyx), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra (Cello Concerto), and Ensemble intercontemporain (Meeting).
Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career. Releases with the San Francisco Symphony include recordings of Bartók’s piano concertos, spatial audio recordings of several Ligeti compositions, and the GRAMMY® Award-winning (Best Opera Recording) world premiere recording of Saariaho’s Adriana Mater. Other recent recordings include Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony and Deutsche Grammophon, among others; his Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and Cello Concerto all appear on recordings he conducted himself.
Initial details about Mr. Salonen’s 2026 Ojai Music Festival will be shared prior to the 79th Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025, with Music Director Claire Chase. Please visit OjaiFestival.org for information.
ARA GUZELIMIAN, ARTISTIC AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ara Guzelimian is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, having begun in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks and as Artistic Director from 1992–97. Guzelimian stepped down as Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City in June 2020, having served in that position since 2007. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor.
Guzelimian serves as artistic consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, the artistic committee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in London, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations. Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006 and earlier held positions at the Aspen Music Festival and School and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Guzelimian is editor of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (Pantheon Books, 2002), a collection of dialogues between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. In September 2003, he was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.
OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and openhearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 79th year, the Festival remains a creative laboratory for thought-provoking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic outdoor setting. Each Festival’s narrative is guided by a different Music Director, whose distinctive perspectives shape programming — ensuring energized festivals year after year.
Throughout each year, the Ojai Music Festival contributes to Southern California’s cultural landscape with in-person and online programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned Festival, which takes place over four days in Ojai, a breathtaking valley 75 miles from Los Angeles, which is a perennial platform for the fresh and unexpected. During the immersive experience, a mingling of the most curious take part in concerts, symposia, free community events, and social gatherings. The intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international summer music season, welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches exponentially more audiences worldwide through streaming and broadcasts of concerts and discussions throughout the year.
Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented expansive programming in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing a different Music Director each year, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Mitsuko Uchida, Rhiannon Giddens, American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years; throughout its history, featured artists have included Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Robertson, Eighth Blackbird, George Benjamin, Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, Steven Schick, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Sellars.
79th OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, JUNE 5 TO 8, 2025, WITH MUSIC DIRECTOR CLAIRE CHASE
2025 Libbey Bowl series passes are available and may be purchased online at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. Passes start at $215 for reserved seating. Lawn Area passes start at $90. Single tickets and day passes will go on sale in spring 2025. Follow Festival updates at OjaiFestival.org.
Photo credit of Esa-Pekka Salonen: © Benjamin Suomela
Press contacts: Nikki Scandalios: [email protected] (704) 340-4094 | Gina Gutierrez: [email protected] (805) 646-2181