With Mark Morris at the helm as music director, 2013 was a momentous year, with more Festival events and concerts than ever before in its history. Click through the slideshow below to relive some of our favorite moments. We thank you for your steadfast support and enthusiasm, which help make each year possible.

Create more Ojai memories in 2014. Please join us for the 68th Ojai Music Festival with Jeremy Denk. View program schedule >>

Please consider joining our new Ojai Membership to demonstrate your support >>

WALL STREET JOURNAL

“The annual Ojai Music Festival, whose 67th season ran June 6 to 9, does many things well. But what it does best is reinvent itself, which it accomplishes by recalling its past while broadening its horizons. This year, that dichotomy was particularly pronounced, with the festival welcoming as its music director the choreographer Mark Morris…”

“Mr. [Mark] Morris programmed only a limited number of dances, all on Friday night—just enough for a bold experiment without fundamentally altering the character of the enterprise. His selections proved apt musically, and his compact and fresh-scrubbed dancers, all from the Mark Morris Dance Group based in Brooklyn, N.Y., seemed incapable of insincere gestures. But his engaging dances—with their signature wit and concentration on the body’s extremities.”

Click here to read the complete review of the Wall Street Journal June 12, 2013

LOS ANGELES TIMES

“But however untraditional a “Rite” for piano, bass and percussion may be, Ojai has a long tradition for being its own Stravinskyan rite of spring. The composer’s close association with the festival in the ’50s made the town musically famous.”

“Reputed to court mavericks, the Ojai Music Festival doesn’t always extend a very large welcome mat. But this offbeat weekend, the mat was massive.Attention was drawn to supposedly kooky and bizarrely neglected West Coast composers who happen to be essential contributors to American music and our national identity.”

Click here to read the complete review of the Los Angeles Times June 7, 2013 >>

Click here to read the complete review of the Los Angeles Times June 11, 2013 >> 

SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT 

“Every year at this time, one of the world’s best music festivals is reborn, and this phoenix rises right in our backyard. With acclaimed choreographer Mark Morris at the helm, the 67th edition of the venerable Ojai Music Festival could hardly have been more fresh or up to date.”

“Terry Riley’s In C got the full Ojai treatment from a large ensemble on Saturday. Shimmering, pulsing, syncopating, shuffling, and shifting sounds came together and drifted apart as easily and as naturally as the sun filtered through the canopy of trees.”

Click here to read the complete review of the SB Independent June 11, 2013 >>

SANTA BARBARA NEWS PRESS 

“Mr. Ives loomed large over the weekend. That old Ives-ian charm and rebel spirit was powerfully moving, from the powerful String Trio (once you closed your eyes to block out the intrusive, uninvited dance component) and gutsy and quote-happy String Quartet No. 2, masterfully delivered by the American String Quartet on Sunday morning, this coming after several beauteous Ives songs on the concert’s first half (wonderfully sung by soprano Yulia Van Doren, mezzo-soprano Jamie Van Eyck, and bass-baritone Douglas Williams).”

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

“[Mark] Morris’ organizing principle was really quite simple. Taking Harrison as his focal point, he added music by Harrison’s teacher Henry Cowell, his confrere Cage and his followers Riley and Adams. The list constitutes a line of American composers, mavericks, innovators and tinkerers one and all, oriented to the West Coast, and strongly influenced by the music of Asia. The music of the father of all American mavericks, Charles Ives, became a natural addition.”

VENTURA COUNTY STAR

“In an Ojai Music Festival that revels in revelations, choosing the multi-talented choreographer Mark Morris as this year’s music director brought multiple bonuses to the alert sensibilities of the traditional festival audience.”

DANCE TABS 

“As always, Morris’s ability to shape the sounds coming from the pit through a combined language of gesture and seemingly simple movement is a constant source of surprise and almost primal satisfaction.”

Click here to read the complete review of Dance Tabs June 9, 2013 >>

THE MISREAD CITY

“There are not many ideas we like better than a classical music festival, dedicated mostly to contemporary work, and held almost entirely outside in a verdant valley. This year, the existing Ojai template was sweetened further by a concentration on West Coast composers…”

Click here to read the complete review of The MisRead City June 11, 2013 >>

SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE 

“This year’s music director, Mark Morris, one of the greatest choreographers of his generation and certainly the most musical (he’s also conducted), proved an ideal advocate for the triumph of song, dance, and American music at this year’s Ojai Festival.”

LA OPUS and HUFFINGTON POST 

“Although bursting at the seams with 37 events — Libbey Bowl and off-site concerts, in-town movies, distant seminars and closer pre-concert talks and much more — the thematic focus remained sharp. Building on a festival trend in recent years, the fullness would make it nearly impossible for any single patron to attend all events in the non-stop schedule that revved up each day at dawn’s early light and wound down in the night’s wee hours.”

Click here to read the complete review of LA Opus June 20, 2013 >>

ALL IS YAR

“if you should know anything about Ojai, it is to expect and embrace the unlikely.”

Click here to read the complete review of All Is Yar June 6, 2013 >>

Read complete reviews posted as of June 21, 2013 >> 

In just four days we experienced 37 events from music, dance and discussions to fitness classes, singing and marching band appearances! Relive the memories by viewing our photos on our Flickr page.

Please feel free to share your memories with us or any video you may have captured! Email us at [email protected]

Click here for the photo link >>

by Tom Morris, Artistic Director

After last June’s Festival with Leif Ove Andsnes, and as plans were developing for 2013 with Mark Morris, and for 2014 with Jeremy Denk, I realized that Ojai is increasingly about being a laboratory for great artists to experiment – to reinvent themselves. It is not a place where artists come to trot out the programs they do elsewhere. In many ways, the very essence of Ojai stems powerfully from the fact that artists are part of the experiment themselves so audience and performers join at the hip in the mutual experience.

All the final touches are now in place for 2013 and we will have, indeed, a seamless and continuous party of music, dance and conversation. Get your rest ahead of time! With Mark Morris as our irrepressible guide, we have a festival that will look and feel different with more than 30 distinct events over 4 days:

• We start with 8 major concerts – more than in the past as we cut some previous 2-hour concerts into 2 1-hour concerts: 1 concert Thursday night, 2 Friday night, 1 Saturday morning, 1 Saturday evening, 1 Sunday morning, and 2 Sunday evening.

• We will have 2 Ojai Talks, each with 2 sessions, on Thursday and Friday.

• We will have 7 free extra events, subject only to getting an advance reservation: 3 film screenings at the Ojai Playhouse, 1 on Thursday and 2 on Saturday; 2 Ojai Late Night concerts in the Libbey Bowl on Friday and Saturday nights; Ojai Sunrise concerts on Saturday and Sunday mornings at Meditation Mount and at Two Tree Hill on the Besant Hill School in Upper Ojai

• We will have 7 community events – free and open to the public: 2 gamelan concerts in the Libbey Park Gazebo on Friday and Saturday; a 30-minute concert of music for toy piano to be performed on the Libbey Park playground Friday between the 2 evening concerts; public fitness classes led by dancers from the MMDG Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings in the Libbey Park; a “Dance with the MMDG” Saturday afternoon at the Ojai Arts Center where members of the MMDG will teach you a movement of Lou Harrison’s Grand Duo which is being performed on Friday night

• We will have 3 special events for donors: Social Dancing with Mark Morris at the opening night party Thursday night at the Ojai Arts Center; Open-mic karaoke with Mark Morris and The Bad Plus at Agave Maria’s late Friday night; a special performance by American String quartet on Sunday afternoon at the Ojai Arts Center

• The Legacy Lunch Saturday afternoon at the Lavender Inn when Chris Hailey will interview several veteran members of the MMDG

• 6 Concert Insights with Christopher Hailey, 4 of which will be with Mark Morris

• A Reception for 2014 subscribers.

• And there just might be a few other surprises!!!

This will be a festival that truly reflects what Mark Morris stands for in all of his work. It will be infused with his infectious energy, his extraordinary artistry, his supreme ability to delight, and his playful sense of fun. As he has said:

“….thrilling, raucous, serene, contemplative, serendipitous, and surprising. As Lou Harrison put it: ‘music is a song & a dance.’”

There are many benefits to purchasing series ticket packages:

• The same best seats for all concerts – and the ability to make special seating requests
• Substantial savings over single ticket prices
• One-stop shopping: the convenience of getting concerts, talks, and late night tickets at the same time
• Advance program notes and an invitation to the Festival Preview event in the spring
• AND, best of all, you get the satisfaction of being a part of the complete celebration during the entire four days

Purchase your tickets online here >>

The 67th Festival will feature the work of Lou Harrison, John Luther Adams, Terry Riley, and much more. Click here to listen to excerpts from the 2013 program >>

Taking risks and gettng outside of your comfort zone are qualities that are reflected in many of our past Festival music directors – from soprano Dawn Upshaw, composer/conductor George Benjamin, ensemble eighth blackbird to choreographer Mark Morris, who leads the upcoming 67th Festival in June 2013. Symphony Magazine recently interviewed Mark Morris on another venture he has successfully embarked on – conducting. Click here for article >>

AN OPEN INVITATION TO EXPLORE
by Christopher Hailey

Walk right in, sit right down/Daddy, let your mind roll on. Not that we’ll be hearing Gus Cannon’s 1929 country blues classic at the 2013 Ojai Music Festival, but his lyrics are a perfect fit for what Mark Morris has in store for us. It’s an informal, open-ended invitation to explore some of the most mind-expanding music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. American voices mostly, mostly West Coast, and very in the box: Lou Harrison, his teacher Henry Cowell, his friend and colleague John Cage, their patron saint, Charles Ives, and a couple of latter-day disciples in Terry Riley and John Luther Adams. Names we know, music we don’t. These are composers who have all challenged conventional High/Low, East/West, Music/Noise dichotomies and embraced what Morris calls a more inclusive idea of “Culture”.

Accordingly we’ll hear unusual mixtures of styles and instruments as in Harrison’s Concerto for Piano and Gamelan, Cowell’s Atlantis for voices, percussion and strings, and John Luther Adams’ songbirdsongs for percussion, piccolos and celesta (performed by red fish blue fish, the MMDG Music Ensemble, and UC Berkeley Gamelan Sari Raras). In the same spirit, we’ll see the Mark Morris Dance Group performs to string quartets by Cowell (played by the legendary American String Quartet), hear little-known songs by Cage, Cowell, Harrison, and Ruggles, and experience Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in an arrangement by the amazing The Bad Plus jazz trio. Morris has even re-imagined the concert experience itself by separating shorter, discrete musical segments with generous intervals that encourage the audience to discuss and explore. And there will be lots to explore because Morris aims to make year’s Ojai Festival a “valley-wide” experience with scheduled and spontaneous events scattered about town – extra concerts, films, talks, social dancing, toy pianos, and possibly even a marching band down Ojai Avenue. People on the move, taking notice, getting involved: Everybody’s talkin’’bout a new way of walkin’. And listening – thanks to Lou, Henry, John, and Charles.

Download web version of the series ticket brochure >>
View Program Schedule >

MARK MORRIS was born on August 29, 1956, in Seattle, Washington, where he studied with Verla Flowers and Perry Brunson. In the early years of his career, he performed with the Koleda Balkan Dance Ensemble, and later the dance companies of Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, Laura Dean, and Eliot Feld. He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980, and has since created more than 130 works for the company. From 1988-1991, he was Director of Dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the national opera house of Belgium. Among the works created during his time there were three evening-length dances: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato; Dido and Aeneas; and The Hard Nut. In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Morris is also a ballet choreographer and has created eight works for the San Francisco Ballet since 1994 and received commissions from many others. His work is also in the repertory of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, New Zealand Ballet, Houston Ballet, English National Ballet, and The Royal Ballet. Morris, named music director of the 2013 Ojai Music Festival, is noted for his musicality and has been described as “undeviating in his devotion to music.” He has conducted performances for the Mark Morris Dance Group since 2006. He has worked extensively in opera, directing and choreographing productions for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, English National Opera, and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

In 1991, he was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation. He has received eleven honorary doctorates to date. In 2006, Morris received the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Mayor’s Award for Arts & Culture and a WQXR Gramophone Special Recognition Award “for being an American ambassador for classical music at home and abroad.” He is the subject of a biography, Mark Morris, by Joan Acocella (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Marlowe & Company published a volume of photographs and critical essays entitled Mark Morris’ L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato: A Celebration. Morris is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In recent years, he has received the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (2007), the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society (2010), and the Benjamin Franklin Laureate Prize for Creativity (2012).

Visit the Mark Morris Dance Group

Visit our multimedia page and watch recent videos of Mark Morris

For information on series tickets to the 2013 Festival, call our box office at 805.646.2053 or purchase online here >>

The Ojai Music Festival announces further details of the 67th Ojai Music Festival, with choreographer Mark Morris as Music Director.

Read the press release >>