INITIAL PLANS FOR THE 79TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
June 5-8, 2025
Festival programming will include the West Coast Premieres of Liza Lim’s Sex Magic, Craig Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ubique, Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands, and Terry Riley’s Pulsefield
Festival celebrates multiple generations of composers, including works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Tania León, Annea Lockwood, Liza Lim, and Marcos Balter; composer-performers include Craig Taborn (piano), Leilehua Lanzilotti (viola), and Susie Ibarra (percussion)
An all-star “meta-ensemble” of Festival musicians including Seth Parker Woods, cello; Wu Wei, sheng; Steven Schick, conductor and percussion; the JACK Quartet (violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell); Katinka Kleijn, cello; Cory Smythe and Alex Peh, piano and keyboards; Ross Karre, percussion; Joshua Rubin, clarinet; M.A. Tiesenga, saxophone and electronic hurdy-gurdy; and members of Australia’s ELISION Ensemble
“There’s no place in the world like Ojai, and there is no gathering of musicians and ideas like the Ojai Festival. From the time I was a kid growing up in Southern California, the Festival has taken on mythical dimensions for me.” – Claire Chase, 2025 Music Director
Download PDF version of announcement
(OJAI CA – October 15, 2024) — The 79th Ojai Music Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025, welcomes as Music Director one of today’s most vital artists, flutist 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.
Described by Chase as a kind of “meta ensemble,” Ojai’s 2025 Festival collaborators include returning artists Steven Schick, who previously served as 2015 Music Director; cellist Seth Parker Woods; the JACK Quartet comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell; clarinetist Joshua Rubin; percussionist Ross Karre; and composerTania León. Ojai welcomes several artists in their first Festival appearances including Annea Lockwood, composer; Wu Wei, sheng; Marcos Balter, composer; Susie Ibarra, composer, sound artist and percussion; Katinka Kleijn, cello; Leilehua Lanzilotti, composer and viola; Liza Lim, composer; Cory Smythe and Alex Peh, keyboards; Craig Taborn, piano, electronic musician and composer/improviser; M.A. Tiesenga, saxophone and electronic hurdy-gurdy; and members of ELISION Ensemble.
“In the spirit of collectivism and collaboration, I’m excited to invite these artists to play together in new and sometimes surprising ensemble configurations. We’ll all show up as both headliners and side acts in each other’s explorations,” commented Claire Chase.
“While shaping these programs,” writes Chase, “I was inspired by the author Donna Haraway’s invitation to encounter one another in “unexpected combinations and collaborations,” in what she calls “oddkin”—a term for our deep and unruly interdependence. What a beautiful description of the messy and miraculous experience of making music in the 21st century! The four days of the Festival will be anchored by four generations of brilliant composers whose projects—though wonderfully divergent stylistically—explore common themes of rebirth, re-imagination, reclamation, and re-wilding. Our programs will be brought to life by an exhilarating lineup of performers whose manifold musical backgrounds will meet in unpredictable and electrifying new ways. From Thursday to Sunday, we will conjure thinking forests, liberated rivers, endangered charms, ancient mythologies, holy presences, magical spells, and reimagined communities. And we will embrace multispecies collaboration in performance experiences that extend from the newly rewilded landscapes of the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy to the feathered night choruses fluttering around Libbey Bowl. My hope is that these programs will illuminate and celebrate the fragilities as well as the exuberant possibilities of music made in oddkin. I look forward to welcoming you to the adventure!”
Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian said, “Claire Chase is one of the most vibrant generators of ideas in today’s musical life, something she does with boundless imagination and generosity of spirit. It’s been so rewarding to imagine all of Ojai’s possibilities with her. I’m particularly excited by the musical community she’s creating with the resident performers and composers, weaving them throughout in collaborations and cross-current inspirations. And being a native Californian, Claire responds deeply to the particular beauty and complexity of Ojai’s natural setting, something represented in many works that explore many distinct environments.”
The 2025 Festival opens on Thursday, June 5 with Annea Lockwood’s bayou-borne, an affectionate tribute to Pauline Oliveros, and culminates with Marcos Balter’s Pan from Chase’s epic Density 2036 project. Balter’s already iconic Pan (2017-18) is an evening-length musical drama for solo flute, live electronics, and an ensemble of community musicians. The all-ages, all-abilities Pan ensemble—a kind of 21st-century Greek chorus that serves as the conscience of the community in this telling of the Greek myth—is assembled newly in each city to which the work travels.
Friday (June 6) begins with an early morning program featuring the JACK Quartet with works by Tania León, Leilehua Lanziliotti, and two exciting emerging composers, Vicente Atria and Eduardo Aguilar. The Libbey Bowl concert on Friday celebrates the old made new in Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Impressions for harpsichord and ends with a summit meeting between Craig Taborn and Cory Smythe, two dazzlingly inventive composers and pianists whose worlds encompass creative music, free jazz, new music, and beyond.
In its West Coast premiere, Australian composer Liza Lim’s Sex Magic for solo contrabass flute and electronics centers Friday afternoon. Inspired by Claire Chase’s towering contrabass flute (Bertha), Sex Magic celebrates the sacred erotic in women’s history, evoking 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.
Terry Riley’s The Holy Liftoff will be featured on the Friday evening Libbey Bowl concert. Performed by Claire Chase and the JACK Quartet, The Holy Liftoff was conceived as a series of musical sketches and brilliantly colored drawings. Of Riley’s recent work Chase said, “At 90 years young, Terry is on fire with ideas. He’s creating new ideas and inciting collaborations and connections with urgency and vitality. For Ojai, we are imagining the limitless variations, realizations and possible interpretations of his ‘liftoff’ to include both performers and audiences.” Music for a “chorus of cellos” by Sofia Gubaidulina and Julius Eastman precede The Holy Liftoff.
On Saturday, June 7, following a free “morning meditation” in the Ojai Meadow Preserves, a collaboration with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, the first Libbey Bowl concert of the day centers on the West Coast premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ubique for flute, two cellos, piano and electronics. Thorvaldsdottir describes the work as “inspired by the notion of being everywhere at the same time, an enveloping omnipresence, while simultaneously focusing on details within the density of each particle, echoed in various forms of fragmentation and interruption and in the sustain of certain elements of a sound beyond their natural resonance – throughout the piece, sounds are both reduced to their smallest particles and their atmospheric presence expanded towards the infinite.”
Saturday afternoon continues with the West Coast premiere of composer-pianist Craig Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and electronics. Taborn’s critically acclaimed Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms was inspired by a dream in which plants awake, blossom, grow and change as the dreamer walks through a garden. (A second performance of Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms will be offered on Sunday afternoon, June 8.) At the Libbey Bowl that evening is a program of music by Bach, Sofia Gubaidulina (inspired by Bach) and Tania León, preceding Liza Lim’s large-scale How Forests Think. A work inspired by the imagery of ancient forests as vibrant, symbiotic communities that, as the Lim writes, “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.”
Sunday morning begins with another free “morning meditation” program. The JACK Quartet then explores their ongoing “Modern/Medieval” project mid-morning at Libbey Bowl, with music from the 14th to 17th centuries renewed for contemporary performance by composers/JACK violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman. The program includes the west coast premiere of Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands, a musical tribute to rich and fragile ecosystems inspired by the distinct rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines. The work features the interlocking rhythms and melodies of Philippine Northern-style bamboo, gong, and flute music, performed on new sound sculptures of gong metals. Sky Islands is described as “a musical call to action, drawing awareness to dwindling biodiversity, changing climate and global community practices.”
An exuberant all-company 2025 Festival finale includes music by Leilehua Lanzilotti, Pauline Oliveros’ The Witness and the West Coast premiere of Terry Riley’s Pulsefield as the joyous ending in celebration of his 90th birthday.
A complete 2025 Ojai Music Festival schedule will be announced in January 2025. Programs and artists are subject to change. For 2025 artist and composer biographies and for Festival updates, visit OjaiFestival.org.
EXPERIENCE THE 79th OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, JUNE 5 TO 8, 2025
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.
CLAIRE CHASE, MUSIC DIRECTOR
Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season and serves as the Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival. Previously, Chase performed at the Ojai Music Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2015 with that year’s Music Director Steven Schick, in 2016 with Music Director Peter Sellars, and in 2017 with Music Director Vijay Iyer.
Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and London Philharmonia. Upcoming concerto projects include the world premiere of a new duo concerto by Dai Fujikura for Chase and the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, which the pair will premiere with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, with subsequent performances with Ensemble Resonanz at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and on tour in Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey, and Greece. In the 2022-23 season, Chase premiered a new duo concerto by Felipe Lara with the vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding and the conductor Susanna Mälkki, which was named one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by The New York Times.
In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036, described by The New Yorker as “a quarter-century journey with little precedent.” Now in its 12th year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, educational initiatives, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. In 2023, Chase performed all ten Density programs to date in a weeklong series of events co-produced by Carnegie Hall and The Kitchen. Central to the Density project is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in bold new interpretive directions. The Density Fellows program, launched in 2023 in celebration of the 10th anniversary, provides an international cohort of emerging flutists with the resources to make the Density repertoire their own. Chase is the artistic director of Density Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute in the 21st century.
As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017 and as an ensemble member on performance and educational projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that resulted in the premieres of over 1,000 new works and earned the group multiple Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and the Ensemble of the Year Award from Musical America Worldwide.
A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Chase is also Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, where she mentors young artists and engages students in a range of interdisciplinary projects. With her longtime colleague Steven Schick, she cofounded Ensemble Evolution at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, a three-week intensive for the next generation of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and teachers. Chase’s Debs Creative Chair residency at Carnegie Hall encompassed programming for all ages, including a “Day of Listening” for children and families inspired by the listening philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. Chase will partner with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to expand her Pauline Oliveros project as part of the PST ART x Science Collide festival in 2024-25.
Claire Chase’s extensive discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres. Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She lives in Brooklyn.
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.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. 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. He is also a member of the music visiting committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
Previously, Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, first as producer for the orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. 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 of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 78th 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 music summer 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, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), 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.
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Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected] (805) 646-2094
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected] (704) 340-4094
Photo of Claire Chase: Walter Wlodarczyk
Ojai Music Festival Receives Grant from Ventura County
OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL RECEIVES
AN ARTS AND CULTURE INVESTMENT FUND GRANT FROM THE COUNTY OF VENTURA AND VENTURA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
Download the PDF version
(July 30, 2024 – OJAI CA) — The Ojai Music Festival is pleased to announce it is a recipient of the Arts and Culture Investment Fund Grant from the County of Ventura and the Ventura County Community Foundation.
The $75,000 grant will support the internationally recognized annual Ojai Music Festival, which presents classical and contemporary music featuring today’s most innovative and celebrated artists; an expansion of its year-round activities, that will include public performances and partnerships in the Ojai community and the broader Ventura County; and the broadening of its BRAVO education program in public schools with SCORE, a music composition class for high school students.
“We are deeply grateful to the County and the Board of Supervisors for this very generous and meaningful support,” said Ara Guzelimian, Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival. “This marks an important milestone moment in the cultural life of Ventura County, recognizing and supporting the ever-growing range of vibrant arts activity in our communities.”
The Arts and Culture Investment Fund is Ventura County’s first dedicated arts and culture grant program, which as approved by the Board of Supervisors as part of the County’s 2023 Recovery Plan to support ongoing recovery from the pandemic. Funding supports both nonprofit arts and culture organizations and artists based in Ventura County. For more information and the Arts and Culture Investment Fund and a complete list of grant recipients, please visit www.ventura.org/arts.
About the Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and openhearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Entering 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 the breathtaking Ojai Valley in Ventura County. 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 music summer 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, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), 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. The 79th Ojai Music Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025, will welcome flutist Claire Chase as Music Director.
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2024 Festival Gallery
Concert Photos
Photos by Timothy Teague
Ojai Music Festival Announces 2025 Music Director
“Claire Chase is one of the boldest, most inventive and irresistibly joyous musicians I have ever known. She is such a generative force in all that she does, embracing composers, audiences, and entire communities with generosity. She is the perfect match for Ojai’s spirit of adventure, and I can’t wait to imagine the possibilities together for the 2025 Festival!”
– Ara Guzelimian, Artistic and Executive Director
(April 10, 2024 – Ojai, California) – As the Ojai Music Festival anticipates the upcoming 78th Festival (June 6-9, 2024) with Music Director Mitsuko Uchida, Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian announces flutist Claire Chase as Music Director for the 2025 Festival. Since the late 1940s, the Ojai Music Festival’s tradition has been to welcome a new Music Director each year to ensure vitality and diversity in programming across Festivals. Initial details for Chase’s 2025 Festival (June 5 to 8, 2025) will be announced in June 2024.
“When Ara called me with the invitation, I nearly dropped the phone! The Ojai Festival has been a kind of dreamland for me since I was a kid growing up in Southern California, and I have the deepest affection for the audiences at Ojai – I don’t know that a more curious, adventurous, and open-eared group of listeners exists anywhere in the world. I’m tremendously excited to work with Ara to craft experiences that I hope will animate, complicate, and celebrate the connections between musics of the past and the beating-heart present,” shares Claire Chase.
Previously, Chase performed at the Ojai Music Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2015 with that year’s Music Director Steven Schick, in 2016 with Music Director Peter Sellars, and in 2017 with Music Director Vijay Iyer.
Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists, and in 2013 launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036. Now in its eleventh year, Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education, and an accessible archive at density2036.org. Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and in 2017 was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase is currently Professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University’s Department of Music, a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, and a Collaborative Partner with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. For complete biographical information on Claire Chase, visit OjaiFestival.org.
Details of the 2025 Ojai Festival programming and artists will be announced in June 2024.
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.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. 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. He is also a member of the music visiting committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. In 2020, Guzelimian was appointed to the advisory panel of the Birgit Nilsson Foundation in Sweden.
Previously, Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, first as producer for the orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. 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 of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 78th 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 music summer 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, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), 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.
EXPERIENCE THE 78TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, JUNE 6-9, 2024
The 78th Ojai Music Festival, June 6 to 9, 2024, welcomes as Music Director pianist Mitsuko Uchida, one of the most universally admired artists of our time. Mitsuko Uchida last performed at the 2004 Festival and was co-music director in 1998.
Uchida, who will perform each Festival evening in works by Schoenberg and Mozart, welcomes 2024 collaborators the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Brentano String Quartet, violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jay Campbell, harpist Julie Smith Phillips, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, percussionist Sae Hashimoto, accordionist Ljubinka Kulisic and bassist Rick Stotijn.
Works By Kaija Saariaho are woven throughout the 2024 Festival, including Dreaming Chaconne, Fall, Six Japanese Gardens, and Lichtbogen, conducted by Saariaho’s daughter Aliisa Neige Barriere. Highlights of the 2024 Festival also include music of John Adams, Bartók, Biber, Cage, Debussy, Sofia Gubaidulina, Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Missy Mazzoli, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Stravinsky, Jörg Widmann, and John Zorn.
In collaboration with Baryshnikov Arts, Shifting Ground features violinist Alexi Kenney and video projections by Xuan, juxtaposing Baroque works by Bach and Matteis, with recent music by Kaija Saariaho, Angélica Negrón, Paul Wiancko, and Salina Fisher. The 2024 Festival integrates music from both the First and Second Viennese Schools, from Haydn and Mozart to Berg, Webern, and multiple works by Arnold Schoenberg in honor of the 150th Anniversary of his birth.
Single tickets and day passes to the 2024 Festival are available online at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. Follow Festival updates at OjaiFestival.org.
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SCORE Composition Program Launches at Nordhoff High School
(January 16, 2024 – OJAI CA) — The Ojai Music Festival launches SCORE, a new initiative of the Festival’s BRAVO music education program that will provide the tools and guidance necessary for Nordhoff High School (NHS) music students to compose their own musical works. The 17-week course, which will be free to the students, will be led by NHS music teacher Bill Wagner and SCORE coordinator Emily Praetorius.
To participate in the enrichment class, NHS students will have previous course study through the NHS music department, along with a demonstrated interest in learning music composition. Registration for SCORE began in December, 2023.
“The Festival, through its BRAVO music education program, has been providing free school workshops, artist residencies, Music Van, and free Imagine concerts to elementary-age students for nearly 40 years in the Ojai Valley. By expanding with SCORE to the upper grades, we will be able to help high school students tap into their own musical creativity across genres with the expert guidance of the school’s own Bill Wagner and Ojai-based composer Emily Praetorius. I am so glad that we can continue to deepen our connection in our Ojai community on a year-round basis,” said Festival Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
In the class, students will learn to find their own compositional voices and processes by composing for themselves and their fellow classmates in a series of cumulative projects. Through each project, students will learn a new tool of the compositional process, from music notation and idea generation to notation software and audio recording. Listening sessions, composition lessons, and guest speakers will enhance the class’s exploration of musical composition and contemporary music in general. The course will culminate with a performance of the students’ works performed by NHS music students.
“We are very excited to be collaborating with the Ojai Music Festival to offer SCORE for Nordhoff students to begin to explore music from a composer’s viewpoint. The perspective they will gain through the process will be invaluable to their development as musicians. I’m looking forward to hearing their creative works take shape,” shares Wagner.
EMILY PRAETORIUS, SCORE COORDINATOR
Emily Praetorius, a former Ojai Music Festival Rothenberg Intern Fellow, is a composer from Ojai, CA. She recently received her DMA from Columbia University in 2023 where she studied composition with Georg Friedrich Haas and George Lewis. Her pieces have been performed by several New York City based ensembles such as Yarn/Wire, Mivos Quartet, TAK and Wet Ink Ensemble. Recent works include a solo viola work on violist Carrie Frey’s 2023 album Seagrass and a current collaboration with violin-viola duo andPlay. After 10 years of living in New York City where she studied, composed and co-owned Kuro Kirin Espresso & Coffee, she returned to her hometown of Ojai to live in the sunshine and go hiking every weekend.
BRAVO MUSIC EDUCATION PROGRAM IN THE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY
The Ojai Music Festival’s BRAVO program has been serving the Ojai Valley community for close to four decades. Over each year, BRAVO serves nearly 3,000 public school children with free music workshops, artist residencies, Music Van, and concerts. BRAVO also offers free workshops at local senior centers and includes talks and free community events during the Ojai Music Festival in June.
OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
Since 1947, the Festival has remained 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 Festival-related programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned four-day Festival, which takes place 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. During the intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches 35 times more audiences worldwide through live and on-demand streaming of concerts and discussions throughout the year.
The 2024 Ojai Music Festival is slated for June 6 to 9 with acclaimed pianist Mitsuko Uchida as Music Director, featuring the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, violinist Alexi Kenny, cellist Jay Campbell, and the Brentano String Quartet. For information on BRAVO and the 2024 Festival, visit OjaiFestival.org.
2024 Festival Programs Announced
Mitsuko Uchida performs each Festival evening in works By Schoenberg and Mozart
The 2024 Festival welcomes Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Brentano String Quartet, violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jay Campbell, harpist Julie Smith Phillips and introduces soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, percussionist Sae Hashimoto, accordionist Ljubinka Kulisic and bassist Rick Stotijn to Ojai audiences
Works By Kaija Saariaho are woven throughout the Festival, including Dreaming Chaconne, Fall, Six Japanese Gardens, and Lichtbogen, conducted by Saariaho’s daughter Aliisa Neige Barrière
Highlights also include music of John Adams, Bartók, Biber, Cage, Debussy, Sofia Gubaidulina, Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Missy Mazzoli, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Stravinsky, Jörg Widmann, and John Zorn
In collaboration with Baryshnikov Arts, Shifting Ground features violinist Alexi Kenney and video projections by Xuan, juxtaposing Baroque works by Bach and Matteis, with recent music by Kaija Saariaho, Angélica Negrón, Paul Wiancko, and Salina Fisher
The Festival features music from both the First and Second Viennese Schools, from Haydn and Mozart to Berg, Webern, and multiple works by Arnold Schoenberg in honor of the 150th Anniversary of his birth
(OJAI, California — January 18, 2024) — The 78th Ojai Music Festival, June 6 to 9, 2024, welcomes as Music Director pianist Mitsuko Uchida, one of the most universally admired artists of our time. Along with Festival Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian, Uchida shares programming highlights for the upcoming Festival. Mitsuko Uchida last performed at the 2004 Festival and was co-music director in 1998. The Festival will include more than 20 music events in the beautiful setting of the Ojai Valley.
“We are so honored to welcome Mitsuko Uchida back to the Ojai Festival, renewing her internationally celebrated partnership with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. It has been a joy to work with her in creating programs that span from her lifelong exploration of the Mozart piano concertos to music by some of today’s most compelling composers. And we celebrate her close association with a new generation of American artists through her work at the Marlboro Festival. This promises to be an exceptional Festival,” said Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
“I am so delighted to be returning to Ojai, a place of happy memories and wonderful musical associations for me. My first visit took place in 1996, one of the hottest summers in memory and yet the concentration on stage and in the audience was complete, with the focus entirely on music. The combination of deeply serious music-making amidst the natural beauty and informality of Ojai remains very special to me,” said 2024 Music Director Mitsuko Uchida.
“I am joined this year by my friends and colleagues of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom I have been working closely as an Artistic Partner for many years now. We have been exploring the rich world of the Mozart piano concertos together over the past five years with tours and projects throughout the world, with growing delight and understanding at each turn. The MCO musicians have their own special relationship with Ojai and have cherished their time here in the past. I know they are thrilled to be back.
We will be joined by a group of guest artists who I have come to know and admire through my work at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont each summer – soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jay Campbell, and the Brentano String Quartet. And I am so pleased to welcome percussionist Sae Hashimoto, accordionist Ljubinka Kulisic, harpist Julie Smith Phillips, and bassist Rick Stotijn. Similarly, the presence of a visiting composer at Marlboro has enlivened each summer with some of the most compelling musical thinkers of our time, and they are represented in this year’s Ojai programs – Sofia Gubaidulina, Kaija Saariaho, György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Helmut Lachenmann among them,” added Uchida.
One of today’s most distinguished interpreters of Mozart, Uchida and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) anchor the 2024 Festival with Mozart piano concerti in E flat K. 482, B flat K. 595, and G Major K. 453. The expansive partnership between Mitsuko Uchida and the MCO has been realized at major venues and multiple-concert residencies worldwide. In addition to leading Mozart from the keyboard, Uchida opens the 2024 Festival with Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 and Mozart’s Fantasy in D minor, K. 397. The Festival also embraces artists closely associated with her through Marlboro Festival — soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jay Campbell, and the Brentano String Quartet. Each of these artists as well as composers Uchida has championed, including Sofia Gubaidulina, Kaija Saariaho, György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Helmut Lachenmann, are represented throughout the 2024 programming.
During this 150th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg’s birth, Ojai honors the Austrian composer who settled in Los Angeles in 1936, after emigrating to the United States. Festival audiences will hear works of his for piano, string quartet, and chamber orchestra joined by works of his students Webern and Berg. These pillars of the Second Viennese School are woven through the Festival weekend alongside works from the First Viennese School.
Shifting Ground is a unique program imagined and performed by Alexi Kenney for solo violin and boundary-pushing video projections by visual artist Xuan, taking place at the Ojai Valley School’s Greenberg Center. Produced in collaboration with Baryshnikov Arts, New York City, Shifting Ground weaves Baroque works by Bach and Matteis, with recent music by Kaija Saariaho, Angélica Negrón, Paul Wiancko, and Salina Fisher.
Ojai will welcome the return of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO), who appeared with the 2018 Festival Music Director Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Those Ojai Music Festival performances marked the MCO’s first extended United States residency. Founded in 1997, the MCO is an international ensemble defined by its distinct sound, independent artistic identity, and agile and democratic structure. The orchestra brings together 27 different nationalities, with musicians living in all parts of the world, to reach audiences across 40 countries on five continents. The MCO forms the basis of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and maintains long and fruitful artistic relationships with major artists, including several Ojai Music Directors such as Mitsuko Uchida, Kopatchinskaja, Leif Ove Andsnes (2012 Music Director) and George Benjamin (2010 Music Director). In Ojai, MCO will display its versatility and virtuosity as an orchestral ensemble, in smaller chamber iterations, and in solo performances from individual members.
Mitsuko Uchida will be joined by the Brentano String Quartet, who first appeared at the Festival in 2017 with Vijay Iyer as music director; cellist Jay Campbell, who performed at the Festival in 2019 with Barbara Hannigan as music director, as well as a member of AMOC in 2022; violinist Alexi Kenney and harpist Julie Smith Phillips, whose first Festival was with Music Director John Adams for the 2021 Festival. The 2024 Festival also introduces to Ojai audiences soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, percussionist Sae Hashimoto, accordionist Ljubinka Kulisic, and bassist Rick Stotijn. Please visit the website for complete 2024 artist biographies.
Additional programming will be announced in spring 2024.
COMMUNITY OFFERINGS
An integral part of the immersive Ojai Festival experience are the free community activities in Libbey Park and throughout Ojai. This will include Morning Meditations, Music Pop-Ups, and a Family Concert.
BEYOND OJAI: ONLINE OFFERINGS
The Ojai Music Festival lives beyond the flagship four-day festival in June, allowing further engagement with audiences worldwide. These include the Festival’s state-of-the-art live streaming and archived library of concerts; Virtual Ojai Talks with featured Festival artists and alum leading up to the Festival; and OjaiCast, the podcast series that provides insights on upcoming programming. The Festival’s digital projects are available at OjaiFestival.org.
Continuing this year is Ojai on the Air with New York Public Radio’s New Sounds and host John Schaefer. The series of programs connects audiences and artists who engage deeply with adventurous new music. Ojai on the Air segments featuring the discipline colliding collective AMOC, Ojai’s 2022 Music Director, and the 2023 Festival with Music Director Rhiannon Giddens are archived and available at WQXR.org and directly at newsounds.org.
SERIES PASSES FOR 2024 OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
2024 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 the spring.
2024 MUSIC DIRECTOR MITSUKO UCHIDA
One of the most revered artists of our time, Mitsuko Uchida is known as a peerless interpreter of the works of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven, as well for being a devotee of the piano music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and György Kurtág. She was Musical America’s Artist of the Year in 2022, is Music Director of the 2024 Ojai Music Festival, and is a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist across the 2022/3, 2023/4 and 2024/5 seasons. Her latest solo recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, was released to critical acclaim in 2022, nominated for a Grammy® Award, and won the 2022 Gramophone Piano Award.
She has enjoyed close relationships over many years with the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and – in the US – the Chicago Symphony and The Cleveland Orchestra, with whom she recently celebrated her 100th performance at Severance Hall. Conductors with whom she has worked closely have included Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Jurowski, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, and Mariss Jansons.
Since 2016, Mitsuko Uchida has been an Artistic Partner of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom she is currently engaged on a multi-season touring project in Europe, Japan and North America. She also appears regularly in recital in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York and Tokyo, and is a frequent guest at the Salzburg Mozartwoche and Salzburg Festival.
Mitsuko Uchida records exclusively for Decca, and her multi-award-winning discography includes the complete Mozart and Schubert piano sonatas. She is the recipient of two Grammy® Awards – for Mozart Concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra, and for an album of lieder with Dorothea Röschmann – and her recording of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra won the Gramophone Award for Best Concerto.
A founding member of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and Director of Marlboro Music Festival, Mitsuko Uchida is a recipient of the Golden Mozart Medal from the Salzburg Mozarteum, and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association. She has also been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Wigmore Hall Medal and holds Honorary Degrees from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 2009 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
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. At Juilliard, he worked closely with the president in overseeing the faculty, curriculum, and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions: dance, drama, and music. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. 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. He is also a member of the music visiting committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. In 2020, Guzelimian was appointed to the advisory panel of the Birgit Nilsson Foundation in Sweden.
Previously, Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of his career, first as producer for the orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. 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 of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 78th 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 music summer 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 Rhiannon Giddens, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), 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.
2023 Festival Gallery
Photos by Timothy Teague
Concert Photos
Offstage Moments
2023 Music Director Rhiannon Giddens and Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian Share Updates to the 77th Ojai Music Festival
“I am so excited to get to work with the Ojai Music Festival as Music Director for 2023. With Ojai, I am able to sit at the crossroads of all that I am artistically and feel fully supported by the Festival team and by Ojai’s audiences. With the artists that we’re bringing out next June, the future is in celebration of how we come together as humans – despite boxes, boundaries, and borders thrown up with the intent to keep us apart.” – Rhiannon Giddens, 2023 Ojai Festival Music Director
Ojai welcomes guest artists to the 2023 Festival, including Wu Man (pipa), Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh/composer), 2015 Ojai Music Director Steven Schick (conductor/percussion), Francesco Turrisi (multi-instrumentalist), Seckou Keita (kora), Gloria Cheng (piano), Emi Ferguson (flute), Justin Robinson (fiddle), Michi Wiancko (violin), and Leonard Hayes (piano); featured singers Cheryse McLeod Lewis (mezzo-soprano), Limmie Pulliam (tenor), and Michael Preacely (bass-baritone); guest ensembles Attacca Quartet, red fish blue fish (percussion), and members of the Silkroad Ensemble: Mazz Swift (violin), Mario Gotoh (violin/viola), Karen Ouzounian (cello), and Shawn Conley (double bass)
Highlights of the 2023 Festival programming:
• The Festival opens with Gabriela Ortiz’s Liquid Borders performed by red fish blue fish directed by Steven Schick alongside the Attacca Quartet in works of John Adams, Flying Lotus, Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Haydn, Kayhan Kalhor, and Squarepusher
• World Premiere of Omar’s Journey, an Ojai commissioned suite for voices and chamber ensemble drawn from the opera Omar by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels with Giddens (soprano) singing the role of Julie. The new work, placed in the context of the journey of Omar Ibn Said (1770-1864), is contextualized by the music of Senegal and the Carolinas
• World Premiere of an Ojai Music Festival commission by Aida Shirazi, founding member of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA), for kamancheh and electronics; and Festival-wide programming in honor of the IFCA with works by Niloufar Nourbaksh, Nina Barzegar, Nasim Khorassani, and Golfam Khayam
• A reimagining of Tan Dun’s pioneering Ghost Opera for pipa and string quartet with Wu Man, Attacca Quartet, PeiJu Chien-Pott (dancer/choreographer), and Jon Reimer (director)
• An acoustic concert with Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi with music ranging from the Baroque to Appalachian ballads and traditional Black American songs as well as excerpts from Songs of Flight by Shawn Okpebholo
• Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds, four solo string works placed in visual context by their source of inspiration: the paintings of self-taught artist Bill Traylor (1853-1949) whose lived experience spanned the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration
• An “Early Music” concert curated by Francesco Turrisi with music spanning from ancient pipa music to works of Dowland and Monteverdi
• “Strings Attached” concert – a festive finale of string instruments from cultures across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East
• Activities designed to welcome and engage the community throughout the Festival include four free events – two early morning concerts with Niloufar Shiri (kamancheh) and Mario Gotoh (violin), and with Seckou Keita (kora); an interactive community concert performance of Elliot Cole’s Flowerpot Music led by Steven Schick; and a reading/musical performance by Rhiannon Giddens of her new children’s book Build a House
Additional works featured throughout the Festival by Margaret Bonds, Chou Wen-chung, Tyson Gholston Davis, Ge Gan-Ru, Lei Liang, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, and Edgard Varèse
OJAI, California — March 15, 2023— The 77th Ojai Music Festival, June 8 to 11, 2023, welcomes acclaimed musician and composer Rhiannon Gidden as Music Director. Along with Festival Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian, Giddens shares additional details for the upcoming Festival which will include more than 20 music events in the beautiful setting of the Ojai Valley.
“Rhiannon Giddens has an extraordinarily wide embrace of music, history, and culture. She uses her art to tell essential stories, to illuminate, and to create deeper understanding, dissolving false boundaries between people and cultures,” adds Guzelimian. “Rhiannon’s programs for the 2023 Ojai Festival touch on so many of her interests across musical genres, from Baroque music to Black traditions in American roots music, from classical music from China and Persia to the influence of non-Western music on American contemporary works. This is a Festival that celebrates liquid borders between cultures and musics, so we appropriately begin the programming with Gabriela Ortiz’s work of the same name. I am thrilled to be working with all our 2023 Festival artists and with Rhiannon as we bring her range of musical interests to Ojai audiences.”
One of the 2023 Festival program anchors will be Omar’s Journey, an Ojai-commissioned suite for voices and small chamber ensemble drawn from the recently premiered and widely acclaimed opera Omar by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels. For Ojai, this intimate concert version of Omar will be placed in the context of the journey of Omar Ibn Said (1770-1864), a Muslim scholar who was captured from his native Senegal and enslaved in North and South Carolina. Omar’s Journey will pair the new Giddens/Abels suite with the musical traditions of Senegal and the Carolinas of his lifetime. This world premiere features Giddens, soprano, singing the role of Julie for the first time, joined by Cheryse McLeod-Lewis (mezzo-soprano), Limmie Pulliam (tenor), and Michael Preacely (bass-baritone).
During this 77th edition of the Ojai Festival, additional music centerpieces include a reimagining of Tan Dun’s pioneering Ghost Opera performed by Wu Man and Attacca Quartet. Written in 1994, Tan’s Ghost Opera evokes the spirits of Bach and Shakespeare, standing with the ancient folk traditions of traditional shamanistic Chinese music. Ojai’s reimagined performance of Tan’s work is directed by Jon Reimer with dancer/choreographer PeiJu Chien-Pott.
Gabriela Ortiz’s Liquid Borders performed by red fish blue fish directed by Steven Schick opens the Festival. Liquid Borders will be followed by works of John Adams, Flying Lotus, Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Haydn, Kayhan Kalhor, and Squarepusher curated and performed by the Attacca Quartet.
A complete performance of Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds, a quartet of string works placed directly in the visual context of the art of Bill Traylor (1853-1949), will be performed by members of the Silkroad Ensemble – Mazz Swift, Mario Gotoh, Karen Ouzounian, and Shawn Conley – with projection mapping by Ross Karre. Traylor’s lived experience spanned the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration. Carlos Simon wrote, “Themes of mystical folklore, race, and religion pervade Traylor’s work. I imagine these solo pieces as a musical study; hopefully showing Traylor’s life between disparate worlds.”
The Saturday morning concert, “The Willows are New,” celebrates a range of works by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, one of the founding members of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA), Lei Liang, Ge Gan-Ru, and Chou Wen-chung followed by solo improvisations by renowned kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor.
Ojai’s “Early Music” concert on Sunday, June 11, curated by Francesco Turrisi, plays on the idea of “old music and on music for the first hours of the day.” Turrisi’s program celebrates thousand-year-old works for solo pipa, to Renaissance consort music, from ancient Persian melodies to modal jazz improvisations.
The 2023 Festival concludes with an exuberant musical summit performed by Rhiannon Giddens, Wu Man, Kayhan Kalhor, Seckou Keita, Justin Robinson, Francesco Turrisi, Michi Wiancko, and members of the Silkroad Ensemble – Mario Gotoh, Karen Ouzounian, Mazz Swift, and Shawn Conley. This family jam session “Strings Attached” features solos and collaborations among the bowed and plucked string instruments from cultures across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
In honor of what would have been his 100th birthday, the Festival will feature works of Chinese American composer Chou Wen-chung coupled with the music of Edgard Varèse who was Chou’s mentor. The Festival will also present music by Michael Abels, John Adams, Nina Barzegar, Margaret Bonds, Tyson Gholston Davis, Flying Lotus, Ge Gan-Ru, Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Kayhan Kalhor, Golfam Khayam, Nasim Khorassani, Lei Liang, Jessie Montgomery, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Shawn Okpebholo, and Caroline Shaw.
2023 Featured Artists
Rhiannon Giddens’ 2023 collaborators include a mix of Festival debuts and returning artists. Audiences will be introduced to Leonard Hayes (piano), Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh/composer), Seckou Keita (kora), Justin Robinson (fiddle), Michi Wiancko (violin), members of the Silkroad Ensemble including Mazz Swift (violin), Mario Gotoh (violin/viola), Karen Ouzounian (cello), and Shawn Conley (double bass), and singers Cheryse McLeod-Lewis (mezzo-soprano), Limmie Pulliam (tenor), and Michael Preacely (bass-baritone).
Making welcome returns to Ojai will be percussionist/conductor Steven Schick, Music Director for the 2015 Festival, and pipa player Wu Man who last appeared with Schick. From the 2021 Festival will be multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, Emi Ferguson (flute), and the Attacca Quartet (violinists Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni, violist Nathan Schram, and cellist Andrew Yee), as well as Gloria Cheng (piano) and red fish blue fish (percussion ensemble), both last seen at the 2015 Festival.
Community Offerings
An integral part of the immersive Ojai Festival experience are the free community activities that occur in the Libbey Park and throughout Ojai. The 2023 Festival will include two morning Meditations at Chaparral Auditorium, the first begins Saturday, June 10 with Niloufar Shiri, kamancheh and Mario Gotoh, violin. On Sunday, June 11 the Morning Meditation features Seckou Keita, kora.
Percussionist/conductor Steven Schick welcomes everyone to make music together in the Libbey Park on Sunday afternoon. Led by Schick, the Ojai community and patrons will be invited to participate in an interactive performance of Elliot Cole’s Flowerpot Music.
On the same Sunday afternoon at Libbey Park, Rhiannon Giddens offers a special family event for children of all ages. Giddens will do a reading and musical performance of her debut book Build a House. The picture book, published by Candlewick Press, was inspired by a song that Giddens wrote and recorded with Yo-Yo Ma to commemorate Juneteenth 2020.
Beyond Ojai: Online Offerings
The Ojai Music Festival lives beyond the flagship four-day festival in June, allowing further engagement with audiences worldwide. These include the Festival’s state-of-the-art live streaming and archived library of concerts; Virtual Ojai Talks with featured Festival artists and alum leading up to the Festival; and OjaiCAST, the podcast series that provides insights on upcoming programming. The Festival’s digital projects are available at OjaiFestival.org.
Ojai on the Air with WQXR/New Sounds with host John Schaefer continues this year. The series of programs connects audiences and artists who engage deeply with adventurous new music. The first program, which debuted in October 2022 and is archived and available at NewSounds.org (episodes 4668-4671) featured discipline colliding collective AMOC, Ojai’s 2022 Music Director. Details of the second installment with 2023 Music Director Rhiannon Giddens will be announced soon. Sign up for the New Sounds newsletter to be informed of dates and about other musical adventures also at NewSounds.org.
Single Tickets for the 2023 Ojai Music Festival
Single Tickets are available and may be purchased at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. Single tickets range from $150 to $50 for reserved seating in the Libbey Bowl. General admission for the Lawn in Libbey Bowl is $20. Add-on event prices range from $35 to $50. Student discounts, OjaiNEXT young professional discounts, and group sales are available by inquiring with our Box Office.
RHIANNON GIDDENS, MUSIC DIRECTOR OF THE 2023 OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. She most recently won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for They’re Calling Me Home and was also nominated for Best American Roots Song for “Avalon” from They’re Calling Me Home, which she made with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Giddens is now a two-time winner and eight-time Grammy nominee for her work as a soloist and collaborator.
They’re Calling Me Home was released by Nonesuch last April and has been widely celebrated by the NY Times, NPR Music, NPR, Rolling Stone, People, Associated Press and far beyond, with No Depression deeming it “a near perfect album…her finest work to date.” Recorded over six days in the early phase of the pandemic in a small studio outside of Dublin, Ireland – where both Giddens and Turrisi live – They’re Calling Me Home manages to effortlessly blend the music of their native and adoptive countries: America, Italy, and Ireland. The album speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death.
Giddens’ lifelong mission is to lift people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins. Pitchfork has said of her work, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration,” and Smithsonian Magazine calls her “an electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black.”
Among her many diverse career highlights, Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashville’s National Museum of African American History in partnership with the Americana Music Association. Her critical acclaim includes in-depth profiles by CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR’s Fresh Air, among many others.
Giddens was featured in Ken Burns’ Country Music series, which aired on PBS, where she spoke about the African-American origins of country music. She is also a member of the band Our Native Daughters with three other black female banjo players, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah, and co- produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival.
Giddens is in the midst of a tremendous 2022. She recently announced the publication of her first book, Build a House (October 2022). Lucy Negro Redux, the ballet Giddens wrote the music for, had its premiere at the Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019 and toured in 2022), and the libretto and music for Giddens’ original opera, Omar, in collaboration with Michael Abels, based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said, premiered at the Spoleto USA Festival in May. Giddens is also curating a four-concert Perspectives series as part of Carnegie Hall’s 2022–2023 season. Named Artistic Director of Silkroad Ensemble in 2020, Giddens is developing new programs for that ensemble, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders. As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville.
Rhiannon Giddens made her debut at the Ojai Music Festival in September 2021 with Music Director John Adams.
ARA GUZELIMIAN, ARTISTIC AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ara Guzelimian is 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. At Juilliard, he worked closely with the president in overseeing the faculty, curriculum, and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions: dance, drama, and music. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor, Office of the President.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. 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. He is also a member of the music visiting committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. In 2020, Guzelimian was appointed to the advisory panel of the Birgit Nilsson Foundation in Sweden.
Previously, Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of his career, first as producer for the orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. 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, openminded, and openhearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Marking its 75th anniversary season last 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 Festival-related programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned four-day Festival, which takes place 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. During the intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches 35 times more audiences worldwide through live and on- demand streaming of concerts and discussions throughout the year.
Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented broad-ranging programs 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 the multi-disciplinary colliding collective AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), 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.
Press contacts:
Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected] (805) 646-2181 National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected] (704) 340-4094
AMOC @ OJAI Event, LA Dance Project (3/26/22)
2022 Festival Gallery
Photos by Timothy Teague
Photos by Josh S. Rose
2021 Festival Gallery
The 2021 Festival Schedule Announcement
Ojai Music Festival and Music Director John Adams
Announce Schedule for the 75th Festival — September 16 to 19, 2021
- Music Director John Adams devises a wide-ranging composer-focused festival with Samuel Adams, Timo Andres, Laurie Anderson, Anthony Cheung, Donnacha Dennehy, inti figgis-vizueta, Arturo Fuentes, Dai Fujikura, Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Alejandra Hernández, Mario Lavista, Ingram Marshall, Dylan Mattingly, Brad Mehldau, Jessie Montgomery, Nico Muhly, Gabriela Ortiz, Manuel Rocha, Kaija Saariaho, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Caroline Shaw, Carlos Simon, Gabriella Smith, and Paul Wiancko, alongside works by Bach, Debussy, Mozart, Rameau, and Stravinsky
- Artists making their Ojai debuts include Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, Attacca Quartet, violinist Miranda Cuckson, Chumash Elder and storyteller Julie Tumamait, and recorder player Anna Margules; Ojai welcomes the return of pianist/composer Timo Andres, the LA Phil New Music Group, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO)
- 2021 Program features the World Premieres of Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things) by Dylan Mattingly and the revised version of Gabriela Ortiz’s La Calaca, along with the West Coast Premiere of Samuel Adams’ Chamber Concerto and the first concert performance of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Objets Trouvés
- The Festival will offer a free family concert for the community by Festival artists Julie Tumamait and Anna Margules in conjunction with its BRAVO education program
“The Ojai Music Festival has always done things differently with its special mix of casual manner and provocative programming. Ever since its inception in the days of Stravinsky and Copland it has stood out among music festivals for its celebration of the new. I am honored to return as Music Director, and I am eager to introduce to our audiences a new generation of composers and performers who give a glimpse of what the future of creativity in music will be. Rhiannon Giddens, Víkingur Ólafsson, Carlos Simon, Gabriella Smith, Gabriella Ortiz, and Samuel Adams are just a few among many who will give this year’s Festival a jolt of energy that will resound in the magnificent setting of the Ojai Valley. It will be a treat not to be missed.” – John Adams, 2021 Music Director
(May 26, 2021 – Ojai, California) – Ojai Music Festival 2021 Music Director John Adams and Artistic & Executive Director Ara Guzelimian today announced scheduling details for the 75th Festival, September 16 to 19, 2021. (The Festival moved this year from its traditional June time period because of the pandemic.) The Festival’s 75th anniversary year will conclude next June (June 9 to 12, 2022) with American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) serving as Music Director for the 76th Festival.
Ara Guzelimian commented, “I am overjoyed that we will gather once again to hear music in the magical setting of Libbey Bowl. As this 75th milestone year is marked, we look toward Ojai’s future by honoring the Festival’s role as a champion of a new generation of composers and artists. We respond to these immensely challenging times by placing our faith, now more than ever, in this next generation to show us the way forward. John Adams has been unwavering in his desire to focus the 75th Festival as a forward-facing exploration and adventure for artists and audiences alike. On behalf of the Festival family, I am so grateful for the support and understanding of our world-wide community through this challenging time. I cannot wait for all of us to gather in Ojai in September for the 75th Festival. It will be a most joyous reunion.”
John Adams, who is both curator and conductor for the 2021 Festival, focuses on composers of today whose music will be threaded throughout the Festival. Featured composers include Samuel Adams, Timo Andres, Laurie Anderson, Donnacha Dennehy, inti figgis-vizueta, Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Ingram Marshall, Dylan Mattingly, Brad Mehldau, Jessie Montgomery, Nico Muhly, Gabriela Ortiz, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Caroline Shaw, Carlos Simon, Gabriella Smith, and Paul Wiancko, many of whom plan to be in residence during the Festival. Mr. Adams will conduct two concerts that will include works by Debussy, Mozart, Carlos Simon, Gabriela Ortiz, Timo Andres, Gabriella Smith, Ingram Marshall, Esa-Pekka Salonen, the West Coast Premiere of Samuel Adams’ Chamber Concerto, featuring violinist Miranda Cuckson, and two of his own works featuring Rhiannon Giddens as soloist.
Making their Ojai debuts are Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi, who will perform works from their latest album, They’re Calling Me Home; Ms. Giddens will collaborate in her own works with the Attacca Quartet and as vocal soloist in music of John Adams, conducted by the composer; violinist
Miranda Cuckson (who will return with AMOC as the 2022 Music Director) performing works by Kaija Saariaho, Anthony Cheung, Bach, and Dai Fujikura; recorder player Anna Margules will share a solo concert of new music for recorder and electronics from Mexico featuring composers Arturo Fuentes, Alejandra Hernández, Mario Lavista, Manuel Rocha, and Gabriela Ortiz; Chumash Elder Julie Tumamait will lead a series of events exploring the music, culture, and cosmology of the indigenous peoples of the Ojai Valley; Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson in a solo recital of works by Philip Glass, Bach, Debussy, and Rameau; and the Grammy-Award winning Attacca Quartet in a concert of music by John Adams, Rhiannon Giddens, Jessie Montgomery, Caroline Shaw, Gabriella Smith, and Paul Wiancko.
Ojai welcomes the return of Timo Andres, an Ojai alum from the 2014 Festival, performing I Still Play, a series of works by such composers as Laurie Anderson, John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Donnacha Dennehy, Philip Glass, and Nico Muhly. The series of solo piano works were commissioned as a tribute to legendary Nonesuch Records President Bob Hurwitz. The recital will also include recent works by Samuel Adams and Gabriella Smith.
The Festival will honor long-standing ties with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with a concert by members of the LA Phil New Music Group featuring the world premiere of the work Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things) by Dylan Mattingly. Co-commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Sunt Lacrimae Rerum is scored for two harps and two de-tuned pianos. Mattingly, who composed the piece during the current pandemic, shares “…the music that I felt, the music that exists in the following pages, was ecstatic — music for dancing, the barbaric yawp, a scream of joy.”
The 2021 Ojai Festival Orchestra will be drawn from freelance artists and ensembles from Southern California and from around the US. Ojai is pleased to rely on this incredibly talented group of musicians, especially at this time when so many in this community are experiencing significant professional disruption caused by the pandemic. The 2021 Festival is also pleased to welcome back the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), last appearing in 1993 with Music Director John Adams. The combination of the 2021 Ojai Festival Orchestra, the LA Phil New Music Group, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra represents an important homecoming during this anniversary festival, celebrating the musicians and ensembles who have created the vibrant musical life of Southern California.
The 75th Festival, and future Festivals, will incorporate elements of its year-round BRAVO education program into the life of the Festival itself. This year, Ojai school children will perform alongside Festival artists in a free family concert. Julie Tumamait, the Tribal Chair of the Barbareño/Ventureńo Band of Mission Indians, will share stories, songs, and dances from the Chumash people. BRAVO education coordinator Laura Walter curates the nature-centered program, which also features a performance by Festival artist Anna Margules playing Gabriela Ortiz’ Huitzitl(the Nahuatl word for hummingbird) for solo recorder.
As Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival, composer/conductor John Adams follows violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (2018), soprano/conductor Barbara Hannigan (2019), and Matthias Pintscher (2020). Prior to this 2021 collaboration, Mr. Adams served as Ojai’s Music Director in 1993. The 2022 Festival which bookends the Ojai Music Festival’s 75th anniversary will welcome the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) as Music Director.
For more than seven decades, the Ojai Music Festival has flourished as a creative laboratory by combining a boundless sense of adventure, an expansive musical curiosity, and an atmosphere of relaxed but focused informality. Each year a different Music Director is given the freedom and the resources to imagine four days of musical brainstorming. Ojai’s signature blend of an enchanted setting and an audience voracious in its appetite for challenge and discovery has inspired a distinguished series of musical innovators – from Boulez, Copland, and Stravinsky in its formative years to Dawn Upshaw, Vijay Iyer, and Peter Sellars in recent times – to push artistic boundaries. In announcing the appointments of John Adams and AMOC, the Festival now charts a course for its next chapters under the leadership of Artistic & Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
Launching the Festival’s 75th Anniversary Celebration
To mark the beginning of its 75th anniversary, the Festival will offer musical activities, in accordance with state guidelines, from June to September. As a thank you to the Ojai community, the Festival will present a series of surprise musical pop-ups throughout the town of Ojai featuring Festival collaborators harpist Shelley Burgon, percussionist Fiona Digney, violinist Helen Kim, Kamancheh player Niloufar Shiri, and flutist Laura Walter. Ojai will continue to connect with its global community through newly produced videos throughout the summer.Virtual Offerings
The Festival continues to offer online content with its ongoing series of virtual Ojai Talks that have featured 2021 Festival artists and composers, including Gabriela Ortiz, Carlos Simon, Miranda Cuckson, Timo Andres, and Samuel Adams. These free offerings and “What’s on your Bookshelf” videos with past Festival artists are available at OjaiFestival.org.Ojai Talks
The immersive in-person Festival experience in September will include Ojai Talks featuring Music Director John Adams, resident composers as well as a special morning talk with Chumash Elder Julie Tumamait looking at the Ojai Valley landscape in through Chumash cosmology.Remote Access to the Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival allows the world beyond Ojai’s Libbey Bowl to experience the music and ideas expressed at the Festival through state-of-the art live streaming access during the four-day Festival and later archived at OjaiFestival.org.COVID-19 Health and Safety Planning
The health and safety of the Festival’s family of artists, audiences and community partners is paramount. To that end, the Ojai Music Festival is working closely with a COVID-safety advisory team of medical advisors, local, regional, and state officials, and public health authorities, to adhere to the highest standards of health and safety. Safety-related plans will be released and updated as details are confirmed.Religious Observance
For those observing Yom Kippur, please note that the first Festival event, an Ojai Mix – Prelude to a Festival – will begin at 9pm, two hours after sundown on September 16.Series Passes for 2021 Ojai Music Festival
2021 series subscriptions are available for purchase at OjaiFestival.org, or by reaching the box office at 805 646 2053. All current 2021 subscriptions will be honored during the September dates. Availability and venues for the Ojai Talks and Dawn and Dusk Concerts will be announced in the coming months, based on appropriate capacity guidelines issued by state and county public officials.
BIOS
John Adams, 2021 Music Director
Composer, conductor, and creative thinker – John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes; his stage compositions, many in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, have transformed the genre of contemporary music theatre. Spanning more than three decades, works such as Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, El Niño and Nixon in China are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music.
As a conductor he has led the world’s major orchestras, programming his own works with a wide variety of repertoire ranging from Beethoven, Mozart and Debussy to Ives, Carter and Ellington. Among his honorary doctorates are those from Yale, Harvard, Northwestern and Cambridge universities and from The Juilliard School. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review. Since 2009 Mr. Adams has been Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Born and raised in New England, Mr. Adams learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing age ten and his first orchestral pieces were performed while he was still a teenager. In 2017, he celebrated his 70th birthday with festivals of his music in Europe and the US, including special retrospectives at London’s Barbican, Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in Amsterdam, New York and Geneva, among other cities. In 2019 he was the recipient of both Spain’s BBVA ‘Frontiers of Knowledge’ award and Holland’s Erasmus Prize “for notable contributions to European culture, society and social science.”
Conducting highlights in 2019/20 included performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Adams made his first appearance with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in February 2020, giving the European premiere of his latest piano concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? together with Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson.
Recent recordings include Grammy-nominated albums Doctor Atomic (featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers conducted by Mr. Adams, with Gerald Finley and Julia Bullock) and Scheherazade.2, a dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra written for Leila Josefowicz, as well as Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (written for and performed by Yuja Wang, together with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel) and the Berliner Philharmoniker’s ‘John Adams Edition’, a box set comprising seven of his works, conducted by Rattle, Dudamel, Petrenko, Gilbert and Adams. The official John Adams website is www.earbox.com.
American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), 2022 Music Director
Culminating the Festival’s 75th anniversary year, Ojai’s 2022 Music Director will be American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). As described by The Boston Globe, AMOC is “a creative incubator par excellence . . . where the boundaries between disciplines go to die.” A collective of some of the most creative, forward-thinking artists, AMOC is led by its Artistic Directors composer/conductor Matthew Aucoin and director/choreographer Zack Winokur collaborating with Core Ensemble members Jonny Allen (percussion), Paul Appleby (tenor), Doug Balliett (double bass/composer), Julia Bullock (soprano), Jay Campbell (cello), Anthony Roth Costanzo (countertenor), Miranda Cuckson (violin/viola), Julia Eichten (dancer/choreographer), Emi Ferguson (flute), Keir GoGwilt (violin/writer), Conor Hanick (piano), Coleman Itzkoff (cello), Or Schraiber (dancer/choreographer), Bobbi Jene Smith (dancer/choreographer), and Davóne Tines (bass-baritone).
In addition to 2021 Festival artist Miranda Cuckson, Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, and Jay Campbell will make a welcome return to Ojai, having participated memorably in past Festivals. Prior to AMOC, Ojai has welcomed only two ensembles as Music Director: Emerson String Quartet in 2002 and Eighth Blackbird in 2009. Initial details of AMOC’s 2022 Festival will be announced in the coming months.
Ara Guzelimian, Artistic & Executive Director
Ara Guzelimian is Artistic & Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, beginning in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival, including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks at the Festival and as Artistic Director 1992-97. Ara 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. At Juilliard, he worked closely with the President in overseeing the faculty, curriculum and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of it divisions – dance, drama and music. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor, Office of the President.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. Mr. Guzelimian currently 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. He is also a member of the Music Visiting Committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
Previously, Ara Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of his career, first as producer for the Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. Mr. 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, Mr. Guzelimian was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.
The Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded and open-hearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. As its 75th anniversary approaches, the Festival remains a haven 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 shapes 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 Festival related programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world renowned four-day Festival which takes place in early June in Ojai, a breathtaking valley only 75 miles from Los Angeles, that transforms into a 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. Considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai welcomes 7,000 patrons during the intimate Festival weekend and reaches 35 times more audiences worldwide through live and on-demand streaming of concerts and discussions.
Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented broad-ranging programs 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 an annual Music Director, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years and, 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, and Peter Sellars. Following the cancelled 74th Festival (June 11–14, 2020) with conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher, the Festival’s future with Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian begins in partnership with Ojai’s next music directors: composer/conductor John Adams as Music Director for the 75th Festival (June 10 to 13, 2021) and AMOC (American Modern Opera Company) as Music Director for the 76th Festival (June 9 to 12, 2022).
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75th OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
September 16 – 19, 2021
Thurs, Sept 09.16.21
9pm, Libbey Bowl
Ojai Mix – Prelude to a Festival
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Amy Schroeder, violin
Nathan Schram, viola
Anna Margules, recorder
Attacca Quartet
STRAVINSKY Elegie
Gabriela ORTIZ Huitzitl
Carlos SIMON Between Worlds
Timo ANDRES Early to Rise
Dylan MATTINGLY Magnolia
Samuel ADAMS Violin Diptych
Gabriella SMITH Maré
Fri, Sept 09.17.21
8am, location TBD
Ojai Talks
Chumash stories with Chumash Elder Julie Tumamait
Fri, Sept 09.17.21
11am, Libbey Bowl
Attacca Quartet with Rhiannon Giddens
Rhiannon Giddens, vocalist
Attacca Quartet
John ADAMS Selections from Book of Alleged Dances
Paul WIANCKO Benkei’s Standing Death
Caroline SHAW Plan and Elevation
Jessie MONTGOMERY Strum
Rhiannon GIDDENS Factory Girl
Rhiannon GIDDENS Build a House
Rhiannon GIDDENS At the Purchaser’s Option
Gabriella SMITH Carrot Revolution
Fri, Sept 09.17.21
3pm-4:30pm, location TBD
OJAI TALKS
Sessions will include conversations with Music Director John Adams and Festival composers along with brief
performances
Fri, Sept 09.17.21
8pm, Libbey Bowl
John Adams conducts the Ojai Festival Orchestra
Julie Tumamait, Chumash Elder
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Timo Andres, piano
Emily Levin, harp
John Adams, conductor
Ojai Festival Orchestra
Chumash Welcome
DEBUSSY Danse sacrée et danse profane
Samuel ADAMS Chamber Concerto West Coast Premiere
Esa-Pekka SALONEN FOG
Ingram MARSHALL Flow
Timo ANDRES Running Theme
Sat, Sept 09.18.21
8am, location TBD
Ojai Dawns
Anna Margules, recorder
Mario LAVISTA Ofrenda
Gabriela ORTIZ Huitzitl
Manuel ROCHA Trama de tramas
Arturo FUENTES Toro Mariposa
Gabriela ORTIZ Canto en Soledad
Alejandra HERNÁNDEZ Veulos
Gabriela ORTIZ Canto a hanna
Sat, Sept 09.18.21
11am. Libbey Bowl
Víkingur Ólafsson in recital
Víkingur Ólafsson, piano
Music by Philip Glass, Bach, Debussy, and Rameau
Sat, Sept 09.18.21
4:30pm, location TBD
Dusk Concert
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Anthony CHEUNG Character Studies Mvnt one – Dramatis Personnae, Mvnt two – [untitled]
Dai FUJIKURA Prism Spectra
J.S. BACH D Minor Partita No.2. Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, & Gigue
Kaija SAARIAHO Frises
Sat, Sept 09.18.21
8pm, Libbey Bowl
They’re Calling Me Home
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi
Having spent the past year away from in-person concerts, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi found themselves drawn to the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland. The result is their latest album, They’re Calling Me Home, which speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many throughout the past year.
Sun, Sept 09.19.21
8am, Libbey Bowl
I Still Play
Timo Andres, piano
Philip GLASS Evening Song No. 2
Nico MUHLY Move
Timo ANDRES Wise Words
Steve REICH For Bob
Louis ANDRIESSON Rimsky or La Monte Young
Laurie ANDERSON Song for Bob
Donnacha DENNEHY Her Wits (About Him)
Brad MEHLDAU LA Pastorale
John ADAMS I Still Play
Samuel ADAMS Impromptus
Gabriella SMITH Imaginary Pancake
Sun, Sept 09.19.21
11am, Libbey Bowl
LA Phil New Music Group
LA Phil New Music Group
Gabriela ORTIZ Rió de las Mariposas
inti figgis-vizueta To give you form and breath
John ADAMS Hallelujah Junction
Esa-Pekka SALONEN Objets Trouvés First concert performance
Dylan MATTINGLY Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things) World Premiere
Sun, Sept 09.19.21
5:30pm, Libbey Bowl
Festival Finale
Rhiannon Giddens, vocalist
Víkingur Ólafsson, piano
John Adams, conductor
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO)
Carlos SIMON Fate Now Conquers
MOZART Piano Concerto in C minor, K491
John ADAMS Am I in Your Light (from Dr Atomic)
John ADAMS Consuelo’s Dream (from I was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I saw the sky)
Gabriela ORTIZ La Calaca World Premiere of revised version
Programs and artists are subject to change. As of May 26, 2021
Press contacts:
Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected], 805 646 2181
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected], 704 340 4094
Ojai Music Festival to Reschedule 2021 Festival to September 16 to 19, 2021
2021 Music Director John Adams
announces initial programming for its 75th Festival
2021 Festival composers include Samuel Carl Adams, Timo Andres, Dylan Mattingly, Gabriela Ortiz, Rhiannon Giddens, Carlos Simon, and Gabriella Smith
Artists making their Ojai debuts include Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, Attacca Quartet, violinist Miranda Cuckson, and recorder player Anna Margules; Ojai welcomes the return of pianist/composer Timo Andres and members of the LA Phil New Music Group
Program features the world premiere of Sunt Lacrimae Rerum by Dylan Mattingly along with the west coast premiere of Samuel Carl Adams’ Chamber Concerto
The Festival will offer a free concert for the community by Festival artists alongside Ojai school children in conjunction with its BRAVO education program
To commence 75th anniversary celebrations, the Festival will present a series of summer events in Ojai, around Southern California, and online beginning in June
“The Ojai Music Festival has always done things differently with its special mix of casual manner and provocative programming. Ever since its inception in the days of Stravinsky and Copland it has stood out among music festivals for its celebration of the new. I am honored to return as Music Director, and I am eager to introduce to our audiences a new generation of composers and performers who give a glimpse of what the future of creativity in music will be. Rhiannon Giddens, Víkingur Ólafsson, Carlos Simon, Gabriella Smith, Gabriella Ortiz, and Samuel Adams are just a few among many who will give this year’s Festival a jolt of energy that will resound in the magnificent setting of the Ojai Valley. It will be a treat not to be missed.” – John Adams, 2021 Music Director
(March 18, 2021 – Ojai, California)/Updated 3/18/21, 2:30pm – The Ojai Music Festival today announced plans for the upcoming Festival to take place in person from September 16 to 19, 2021. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Chair Jerry Eberhardt and Artistic & Executive Director Ara Guzelimian shared the decision to move the early summer Festival which was originally scheduled for June 10 to 13, 2021. Music Director John Adams and Ara Guzelimian also announced today initial programming and major artistic collaborators for the upcoming 75th Ojai Music Festival. Every artist planned for the original Festival dates has been able to accommodate the September dates.
Mr. Eberhardt commented, “I am very pleased to share our decision that the clear path for our reunion in Ojai is to hold this year’s Festival in September. We have developed comprehensive health and safety protocols, which we will employ in September when we gather onsite for live musical events. We feel confident that this resolution will best serve our audiences, artists and our Ojai community. On behalf of the Board, I am grateful for our global community’s patience and support, and I simply cannot wait to see you all in Ojai in September for the 75th Festival.”
Mr. Guzelimian added, “I am overjoyed that we will gather once again to hear music in the magical setting of Libbey Bowl. As this 75th milestone year is marked, we look toward Ojai’s future by honoring the Festival’s role as a champion of a new generation of composers and artists. We respond to these immensely challenging times by placing our faith, now more than ever, in this next generation to show us the way forward. John Adams has been unwavering in his desire to focus the 75th Festival on nurturing an environment of exploration and adventure for artists and audiences alike. It is an honor to launch a new era for Ojai alongside such remarkable artists and thinkers.”
John Adams, who is both curator and conductor for the 2021 Festival, focuses on composers of today whose music will be threaded throughout the Festival. Featured composers include Samuel Carl Adams, Timo Andres, Rhiannon Giddens, Dylan Mattingly, Gabriela Ortiz, Gabriella Smith, and Carlos Simon, many of whom will be in residence during the Festival. Mr. Adams will conduct two chamber orchestra concerts that will include works by Debussy and Bach, Gabriella Smith and Carlos Simon, alongside the west coast premiere of Samuel Carl Adams’ Chamber Concerto, featuring violinist Miranda Cuckson.
Making their Ojai debuts are Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi who are creating music that crosses traditions, genres and cultures; Giddens will collaborate in her own works with the Attacca Quartet and as soloist in music of John Adams, conducted by the composer; violinist Miranda Cuckson (who will return with AMOC as the 2022 Music Director) performing works by Kaija Saariaho, Anthony Cheung, Bach, and Dai Fujikura; recorder player Anna Margules will share a solo concert of new music for recorder and electronics from Mexico; Chumash Elder Julie Tumamait will lead a series of events exploring the music, culture and cosmology of the original indigenous peoples of the Ojai Valley; Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson in a solo recital of works by Philip Glass, Bach, John Adams, Debussy, and Rameau; and Grammy-Award winning Attacca Quartet in a concert of music by John Adams, Rhiannon Giddens, Jessie Montgomery, Caroline Shaw, Gabriella Smith, and Paul Wiancko.
The Festival will honor long-standing ties with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with a concert by members of the LA Phil New Music Group featuring the world premiere of the work Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things) by Dylan Mattingly. Co-commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Sunt Lacrimae Rerum is scored for two harps and two re-tuned pianos. Mattingly, who composed the piece during the current pandemic, shares “…the music that I felt, the music that exists in the following pages, was ecstatic — music for dancing, the barbaric yawp, a scream of joy.”
Ojai welcomes the return of Timo Andres, an Ojai alum from the 2014 Festival, performing I Still Play, a series of eleven works by such composers as Laurie Anderson, Louis Andriessen, Donnacha Dennehy, Philip Glass, Pat Metheny, Nico Muhly, and Randy Newman. This Ojai recital will mark the first live public performance of the complete cycle, which was commissioned as a tribute to legendary Nonesuch Records President Bob Hurwitz.
The 2021 Festival chamber orchestra will be drawn from freelance artists and ensembles from Southern California and from around the US. Ojai is pleased to rely on this incredibly talented group of musicians, especially at this time when so many in this community are experiencing significant professional disruption caused by the pandemic.
The 75th Festival and future Festivals, will integrate elements of its year-round BRAVO education program. During the Festival, Ojai school children will perform alongside Festival artists in a free community concert. In addition, featured artists and composers will hold free workshops for Ojai public school children leading up to the Festival. As Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival, composer/conductor John Adams follows violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (2018), soprano/conductor Barbara Hannigan (2019), and Matthias Pintscher (2020). Prior to this 2021 collaboration, Mr. Adams served as Ojai’s Music Director in 1993. Mitsuko Uchida, who was previously announced to lead the 2021 Festival, asked to postpone her appointment because of scheduling conflicts and will return as Music Director for a future Festival.
Following John Adams’ 2021 Festival, American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) will serve as Music Director for the 76th Festival in 2022 (June 9-12), culminating the Festival’s 75th Anniversary year.
For more than seven decades, the Ojai Music Festival has flourished as a creative laboratory by combining a boundless sense of adventure, an expansive musical curiosity, and an atmosphere of relaxed but focused informality. Each year a different Music Director is given the freedom and the resources to imagine four days of musical brainstorming. Ojai’s signature blend of an enchanted setting and an audience voracious in its appetite for challenge and discovery has inspired a distinguished series of musical innovators – from Boulez, Copland, and Stravinsky in its formative years to Dawn Upshaw, Vijay Iyer, and Peter Sellars in recent times – to push artistic boundaries. In announcing the appointments of John Adams and AMOC, the Festival now charts a course for its next chapters under the leadership of Artistic & Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
Launching the Festival’s 75th Anniversary Celebration
To mark the beginning of its 75th anniversary, the Festival will offer musical activities, in accordance with state guidelines, from June to September, when audiences reunite in Ojai. Musical activities throughout Southern California are being planned, and Ojai will also serve its global community through newly produced online content. Details will be announced in the coming months.
Religious Observance
For those observing Yom Kippur, please note that Festival events will begin well after sundown (7:02pm) on September 16. The full Festival calendar will be shared in coming months.
Virtual Offerings
The Festival continues to offer virtual content with its ongoing series of Ojai Talks that have featured 2021 Festival artists and composers, including Gabriela Ortiz, Carlos Simon, violinist Miranda Cuckson, and Timo Andres. Revisit these additional free offerings and “What’s on your Bookshelf” videos with past Festival artists on the website at OjaiFestival.org.
Remote Access to the Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival allows the world beyond Ojai’s Libbey Bowl to experience the music and ideas expressed at the Festival through state-of-the art live streaming access during the four-day Festival and later archived at OjaiFestival.org.
COVID-19 Health and Safety Planning
The health and safety of the Festival’s family of artists, audiences and community partners is paramount. To that end, the Ojai Music Festival is working closely with a COVID-safety advisory team of medical advisors, local, regional and state officials, and public health authorities, to adhere to the highest standards of health and safety. Safety-related plans will be released as details are confirmed. Please contact Managing Director Gina Gutierrez with any questions.
Series Passes for 2021 Ojai Music Festival
2021 series subscriptions are available for purchase at OjaiFestival.org, or by reaching the box office at 805 646 2053. All current 2021 subscriptions will be honored during the September dates.
BIOS
John Adams, 2021 Music Director
Composer, conductor, and creative thinker – John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes; his stage compositions, many in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, have transformed the genre of contemporary music theatre. Spanning more than three decades, works such as Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, El Niño and Nixon in China are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music.
As a conductor he has led the world’s major orchestras, programming his own works with a wide variety of repertoire ranging from Beethoven, Mozart and Debussy to Ives, Carter and Ellington. Among his honorary doctorates are those from Yale, Harvard, Northwestern and Cambridge universities and from The Juilliard School. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review. Since 2009 Mr. Adams has been Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Born and raised in New England, Mr. Adams learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing age ten and his first orchestral pieces were performed while he was still a teenager. In 2017, he celebrated his 70th birthday with festivals of his music in Europe and the US, including special retrospectives at London’s Barbican, Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in Amsterdam, New York and Geneva, among other cities. In 2019 he was the recipient of both Spain’s BBVA ‘Frontiers of Knowledge’ award and Holland’s Erasmus Prize “for notable contributions to European culture, society and social science.”
Conducting highlights in 2019/20 included performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. With the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Mr. Adams made his debut in February 2020, giving the European premiere of his latest piano concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? together with Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson.
Recent recordings include Grammy-nominated albums Doctor Atomic (featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers conducted by Mr. Adams, with Gerald Finley and Julia Bullock) and Scheherazade.2, a dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra written for Leila Josefowicz, as well as Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (written for and performed by Yuja Wang, together with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel) and the Berliner Philharmoniker’s ‘John Adams Edition’, a box set comprising seven of his works, conducted by Rattle, Dudamel, Petrenko, Gilbert and Adams. The official John Adams website is www.earbox.com.
American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), 2022 Music Director (June 9-12, 2022)
Culminating the Festival’s 75th anniversary year, Ojai’s 2022 Music Director will be American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). As described by The Boston Globe, AMOC is “a creative incubator par excellence . . . where the boundaries between disciplines go to die.” A collective of some of the most creative, forward-thinking artists, AMOC is led by its Artistic Directors composer/conductor Matthew Aucoin and director/choreographer Zack Winokur collaborating with Core Ensemble members Jonny Allen (percussion), Paul Appleby (tenor), Doug Balliett (double bass/composer), Julia Bullock (soprano), Jay Campbell (cello), Anthony Roth Costanzo (countertenor), Miranda Cuckson (violin/viola), Julia Eichten (dancer/choreographer), Emi Ferguson (flute), Keir GoGwilt (violin/writer), Conor Hanick (piano), Coleman Itzkoff (cello), Or Schraiber (dancer/choreographer), Bobbi Jene Smith (dancer/choreographer), and Davóne Tines (bass-baritone).
In addition to 2021 Festival artist Miranda Cuckson, Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, and Jay Campbell will make a welcome return to Ojai, having participated memorably in past Festivals. Prior to AMOC, Ojai has welcomed only two ensembles as Music Director: Emerson String Quartet in 2002 and Eighth Blackbird in 2009. Initial details of AMOC’s 2022 Festival will be announced in the summer of 2021.
Ara Guzelimian, Artistic & Executive Director
Ara Guzelimian is Artistic & Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, beginning in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival, including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks at the Festival and as Artistic Director 1992-97.
Ara 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. At Juilliard, he worked closely with the President in overseeing the faculty, curriculum and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions – dance, drama and music. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor, Office of the President.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. Mr. Guzelimian currently 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. He is also a member of the Music Visiting Committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
Previously, Ara Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of his career, first as producer for the Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator.
Mr. 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, Mr. Guzelimian was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.
The Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded and open-hearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. As its 75th anniversary approaches, the Festival remains a haven 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 shapes 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 Festival related programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world renowned four-day Festival which takes place in early June in Ojai, a breathtaking valley only 75 miles from Los Angeles, that transforms into a 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. Considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai welcomes 7,000 patrons during the intimate Festival weekend and reaches 35 times more audiences worldwide through live and on-demand streaming of concerts and discussions.
Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented broad-ranging programs 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 an annual Music Director, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years and, 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, and Peter Sellars. Following the cancelled 74th Festival (June 11–14, 2020) with conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher, the Festival’s future with Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian begins in partnership with Ojai’s next music directors: composer/conductor John Adams as Music Director for the 75th Festival (June 10 to 13, 2021) and AMOC (American Modern Opera Company) as Music Director for the 76th Festival (June 9 to 12, 2022).
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Press contacts:
Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected], 805 646 2181
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected], 704 340 4094
Ojai Music Festival Announces Future Music Directors for 75th Anniversary Celebrations
Beginning with the Appointment of John Adams as 2021 Music Director (June 10–13, 2021) and Culminating with American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) as Music Director for the 2022 Festival (June 9–12, 2022)
(OJAI, California, March 2, 2020) – Ojai Music Festival and Artistic Director designate Ara Guzelimian announced today the appointment of composer/conductor John Adams as the 2021 Music Director for the 75thFestival (June 10–13, 2021), followed by American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) as Music Director for the 76thFestival in 2022, culminating the Festival’s 75thAnniversary year.
Mr. Guzelimian’s tenure follows that of current Artistic Director Chad Smith, who was appointed CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October 2019. Mr. Smith planned the upcoming 2020 Festival with Music Director Matthias Pintscher (June 11–14, 2020) and the Ensemble intercontemporain, featuring music of Olga Neuwirth, Steve Reich, Pierre Boulez, and Matthias Pintscheramong many others. Mitsuko Uchida, who was previously announced to lead the 2021 Festival, has asked to postpone her appointment because of scheduling conflicts and will return as Music Director in a future Festival.
For more than seven decades, the Ojai Music Festival has flourished as a creative laboratory by combining a boundless sense of adventure, an expansive musical curiosity, and an atmosphere of relaxed but focused informality. Each year a different Music Director is given the freedom and the resources to imagine four days of musical brainstorming. Ojai’s signature blend of an enchanted setting and an audience voracious in its appetite for challenge and discovery has inspired a distinguished series of musical innovators – from Boulez, Copland, and Stravinsky in its formative years to Barbara Hannigan, Vijay Iyer, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja in recent times – to push artistic boundaries. In announcing the appointments of John Adams and AMOC, the Festival now charts a course for its next chapters under the leadership of Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian.
“I am utterly delighted to begin my time at Ojai in the company of artists who continue to advance the forward-looking perspective that has defined Ojai for so long.” said Mr. Guzelimian, who begins his tenure with Ojai following the 2020 Festival, “John Adams’ work as a composer, conductor and tireless advocate for new music has made him a central figure in the musical life of our time. With his characteristic eagerness and curiosity, we have begun conversations about the many young composers he admires and wants to champion at Ojai in 2021.”
“AMOC, the 2022 Music Director, is not exactly an opera company but a remarkable collective of composers, singers, stage directors, choreographers, dancers, and instrumentalists who are among the brightest and freshest artistic voices to emerge in the last few years. We will make our first Ojai acquaintance with numerous members of AMOC as well as welcome back such Festival artists as Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, and Jay Campbell. We are in for a great adventure.” added Mr. Guzelimian, “But first things first. I am excited about the more immediate 2020 Ojai Music Festival created by Music Director Matthias Pintscher and Artistic Director Chad Smith. I know that these wonderful artistic thinkers have conjured an exceptional musical journey, both true to the spirit of the Festival and also expanding its possibilities.”
As Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival, Mr. Adams will follow violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (2018), soprano/conductor Barbara Hannigan (2019), and Matthias Pintscher (2020). Prior to this 2021 collaboration, Mr. Adams served as Ojai’s Music Director in 1993. Initial details for Mr. Adams’ 2021 Festival will be announced in June 2020.
Ojai’s 2022 Music Director will be American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). As described by The Boston Globe, AMOC is “a creative incubator par excellence . . . where the boundaries between disciplines go to die.” A collective of some of the most creative, forward-thinking artists, AMOC is led by its Artistic Directors composer/conductor Matthew Aucoin and director/choreographer Zack Winokur collaborating with Core Ensemble members Jonny Allen (percussion), Paul Appleby (tenor), Doug Balliett (double bass/composer), Julia Bullock (soprano), Jay Campbell (cello), Anthony Roth Costanzo (countertenor), Miranda Cuckoos (violin/viola), Julia Eichten (dancer/choreographer), Emi Ferguson (flute), Keir GoGwilt (violin/writer), Conor Hanick (piano), Coleman Itzkoff (cello), Or Schraiber (dancer/choreographer), Bobbi Jene Smith (dancer/choreographer), and Davóne Tines (bass-baritone).
Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, and Jay Campbell are making a welcome return to Ojai, having participated memorably in past Festivals. Prior to AMOC, Ojai has welcomed only two ensembles as Music Director: Emerson String Quartet in 2002 and Eighth Blackbird in 2009.
John Adams, 2021 Music Director
Composer, conductor, and creative thinker – John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Works spanning more than three decades are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music, among them Nixon in China, Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic, Shaker Loops, El Niño, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and The Dharma at Big Sur.
His stage works, all in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, have transformed the genre of contemporary music theater. Of his best-known opera, the New Yorker wrote “Not since Porgy and Bess has an American opera won such universal acclaim as Nixon in China.”
Nonesuch Records has recorded all of Mr. Adams’ music over the past three decades, with numerous Grammy awards among them. A recording of the complete Doctor Atomic, with Mr. Adams conducting the BBC Symphony, was released in July 2018, timed to coincide with the Santa Fe Opera’s latest production.
As conductor, Mr. Adams leads the world’s major orchestras in repertoire that ranges from Beethoven and Mozart to Stravinsky, Ives, Carter, Zappa, Glass, and Ellington. Conducting engagements in recent seasons include the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Wiener Symphoniker and BBC Symphony. He led Rome’s Orchestra of Santa Cecilia in his oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary in October 2018.
A new piano concerto called Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? premiered by Yuja Wang in March 2019 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel. The same month the Dutch National Opera presented the European premiere of Adams’ 2017 opera about the California Gold Rush, Girls of the Golden West.
Born and raised in New England, he learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing at age ten and his first orchestral pieces were performed while just a teenager.
Mr. Adams has received honorary doctorates from Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, Cambridge and The Juilliard School. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. He is currently Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
AMOC, 2022 Music Director
AMOC’s mission is to develop and produce a body of discipline-colliding work, to combine traditional and experimental artistic processes, and to maintain enduring creative relationships between its members. Founded by Artistic Directors Zack Winokur and Matthew Aucoin, AMOC is made up of some of the most adventurous singers, dancers, and instrumentalists at work today in the fields of contemporary and classical music and dance.
The company’s upcoming projects include Lost Mountain, an evening-length dance work created by Bobbi Jene Smith; The No One’s Rose, a new music-dance-theater work created in partnership with San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, which features new music by Matthew Aucoin; and Veils for Desire, a staged concert featuring Anthony Roth Costanzo and Paul Appleby, which has its West Coast debut next season at the Los Angeles Opera.
Past projects include Zack Winokur’s production of Hans Werner Henze’s El Cimarron, starring Davóne Tines, which has been performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as the American Repertory Theater; a new arrangement of John Adams’s El Niño, premiered at The Met Cloisters as part of Julia Bullock’s season-long residency at the Met Museum; Davóne Tines’ and Winokur’s Were You There, a meditation on black lives lost in recent years to police violence; and Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt’s dance/music works With Care and A Study on Effort, which have been produced at San Francisco’s ODC Theater, Toronto’s Luminato Festival, and elsewhere. Conor Hanick’s performance of CAGE, Zack Winokur’s production of John Cage’s music for prepared piano, was cited as the best recital of the year by The New York Times in 2018 and The Boston Globe in 2019.
In 2017, the year the company was founded, AMOC also created the Run AMOC! Festival at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA; the company has curated and performed that festival annually for the past three years. The company’s past engagements also include performances at the Big Ears Festival, the Caramoor Festival, National Sawdust, The Clark Art Institute, and the San Diego Symphony. The company has also been in residence at the Park Avenue Armory and Harvard University.
Ara Guzelimian, Artistic Director designate
Ara Guzelimian is Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City, having been appointed in August 2006. At Juilliard, he has worked closely with the school’s President in overseeing the faculty, curriculum, and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions – dance, drama, and music. Mr. Guzelimian had previously announced his intention to step down from this position in June 2020. At Juilliard, he will continue in an advisory role, and will teach, during the 2020/21 academic year.
Mr. Guzelimian was Ojai’s Artistic Director from 1992 to 1997, working closely with Festival Music Directors Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Kent Nagano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Emanuel Ax. Since 2004, he has served as the Festival’s Ojai Talks Director.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006; in that post, he oversaw the artistic planning and programming for the opening of Zankel Hall in 2003. He was also host and producer of the acclaimed “Making Music” composer series at Carnegie Hall from 1999 to 2008. Mr. Guzelimian currently serves as Artistic Consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is also a member of the Music Visiting Committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations.
He has given lectures and taught at the invitation of the Metropolitan Opera, the Salzburg Easter Festival, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Chicago Symphony, the National Center for the Performing Arts in Taipei and the Jerusalem Music Center. Previously, Ara Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of his career, first as producer for the Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. As a writer and music critic, he has contributed to such publications as Musical America, Opera Quarterly, Opera News, Symphony magazine, The New York Times, the Record Geijutsu magazine (Tokyo), the program books of the Salzburg and the Helsinki Festivals, and the journal for the IRCAM center in Paris.
Mr. 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. The Chicago, Boston, and London symphony orchestras, conducted by Bernard Haitink, have performed Mr. Guzelimian’s performing edition of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In September 2003, Mr. Guzelimian 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
From its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival remains a place for groundbreaking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic setting 75 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The Festival presents broad-ranging programs in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing
juxtapositions of musical styles. The Festival, which takes place in early June, is an immersive experience with concerts, free community events, symposia, and gatherings. Considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai remains a leader in the classical music landscape over seven decades. Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing an annual Music Director, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including 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, Peter Sellars, Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan. The Ojai Music Festival looks forward to the 74thFestival, June 11–14, 2020, with conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher. As it approaches its 75thanniversary, Ojai anticipates the future with Ara Guzelimian, whose tenure as Artistic Director will begin following the 2020 Festival.
74thFestival: June 11–14, 2020
The 74thFestival – June 11–14, 2020, with Music Director Matthias Pintscher – will highlight progressive and forward-thinking composers of our time while paying homage to early classical roots. Featuring a vast array of composers from the past six centuries, the program connects the traditional with the contemporary, including works by Pierre Boulez, Olga Neuwirth, and Mr. Pintscher. Joining Mr. Pintscher for this adventurous musical exploration will be the Ensemble intercontemporain in its Ojai Music Festival debut. This Paris-based world-renowned ensemble, founded in 1972 by former Ojai Music Director Pierre Boulez and now led by Mr. Pintscher, is dedicated to performing and promoting contemporary chamber music. 2020 Festival series passes are available and single tickets go on sale in March. For more information, visit
OjaiFestival.orgor call 805 646 2053.
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Press contacts:
Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected], 805 646 2094
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected], 704 340 4094
Ara Guzelimian Named Artistic Director of the Ojai Music Festival Beginning with the 75th Festival in 2021
Chad Smith will Provide Artistic Direction through the 2020 Festival with Music Director Matthias Pintscher
(October 17, 2019 – Ojai, CA) – Ojai Music Festival Board Chairman Jerrold Eberhardt announced today the appointment of Ara Guzelimian as Ojai’s next Artistic Director with the 75th Festival, June 10 to 13, 2021. Mr. Guzelimian begins his initial three-year tenure with Ojai following the 2020 Festival under the artistic direction of Chad Smith. Mr. Smith, who was named as the Festival’s Artistic Di-rector in March 2018, announced his intention to step away from Ojai given his October 1, 2019 appointment as Chief Executive Officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
“Ara Guzelimian’s remarkable artistic perspective, expertise, and relationships will be paramount as he guides the future direction of the Festival. Through his work with young musicians around the world, Ara truly has his finger on the pulse of music making today. My Board colleagues and I are absolutely thrilled that Ara has agreed to take the helm as Artistic Director,” said Jerrold Eberhardt. “When Tom Morris decided to conclude his defining 16-year tenure, the Board immediately approached Chad Smith with our full confidence that Chad was the right visionary to build on Tom’s artistic legacy. Two weeks ago, the LA Phil named Chad as their new CEO – a brilliant move for that organization and for the field of music. We accept and understand Chad’s desire to focus fully on the Philharmonic, and appreciate that he will remain Ojai’s Artistic Director through the June 2020 Festival.”
Ara Guzelimian commented, “The Ojai Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and open-hearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming of settings with an audience to match its aspirations. To become Artistic Director at this moment, as the Festival approaches its 75th anniversary, is a deeply meaningful homecoming for me. I fell in love with Ojai in my teens – the place, the community, the spirit. I’ve enjoyed the warmest of friendships with my extraordinary predecessors – Lawrence Morton, Ernest Fleischmann, Tom Morris, and now, Chad Smith – and some of my most cherished musical experiences are rooted here. To return in this capacity brings me such joy. I look forward to working with the wonderful Board and staff to imagine a forward-facing festival very much true to the 2020s!”
Chad Smith said, “For nearly 75 years, the Ojai Music Festival has been a major platform for the world’s most probing, adventurous, and visionary musicians. It is, therefore, bittersweet to step away from this incredible opportunity after the 2020 Festival, but Ojai deserves the full creative energies of its Artistic Director and the LA Phil requires the singular focus of its CEO. That Ara’s personal journey allows him to assume the role of Artistic Director at Ojai, just as mine requires me to step away, is fortuitous. Ara is, quite simply, one of the great artistic minds in our field, and I look forward to supporting him and the Festival in the years to come from my position with the Philharmonic.”
Currently Provost and Dean of The Juilliard School, Ara Guzelimian had previously announced his in-tention to step down from that position in June 2020. At Juilliard, he will continue in an advisory role, and will teach, during the 2020/21 academic year. Mr. Guzelimian was Ojai’s Artistic Director from 1992 to 1997, working closely with Festival Music Directors Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Kent Nagano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Emanuel Ax. Since 2004, he has served as the Festival’s Ojai Talks Director.
Next month, the Ojai Music Festival and Chad Smith will share details for the upcoming 2020 Festival – June 11 to 14, with Music Director Matthias Pintscher.
Ara Guzelimian
Ara Guzelimian is Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City having been appointed to the post in August 2006. At Juilliard, he works closely with the President in overseeing the faculty, curriculum and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions – dance, drama and music.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006; in that post, he oversaw the artistic planning and programming for the opening of Zankel Hall in 2003. He was also host and producer of the acclaimed “Making Music” composer series at Carnegie Hall from 1999 to 2008. Mr. Guzelimian currently serves as Artistic Consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is also a member of the Music Visiting Committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, and a Board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations.
He has given lectures and taught at the invitation of the Metropolitan Opera, the Salzburg Easter Festival, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Chicago Symphony, the National Center for the Performing Arts in Taipei and the Jerusalem Music Center. Previously, Ara Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colora-do and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of his career, first as producer for the Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. As a writer and music critic, he has contributed to such publications as Musical America, Opera Quarterly, Opera News, Symphony magazine, The New York Times, the Record Geijutsu magazine (Tokyo), the program books of the Salzburg and the Helsinki Festivals, and the journal for the IRCAM center in Paris.
Mr. 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. The Chicago, Bos-ton, and London Symphony orchestras, conducted by Bernard Haitink, have performed Mr. Guzelim-ian’s performing edition of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In September 2003, Mr. Guzelimian 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
From its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has become a place for groundbreaking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic setting 75 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The Festival presents broad-ranging programs in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. The Festival, that takes place in June, is an immersive experience with concerts, free community events, symposia, and gatherings. Considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai has remained a leader in the classical music landscape for seven decades.
Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing an annual Music Director, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including 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, Jere-my Denk, Steven Schick, Peter Sellars, Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan. The Ojai Music Festival anticipates the 74th Festival, June 11 to 14, 2020, with conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher.
As it approaches its 75th anniversary, Ojai looks toward its future with Ara Guzelimian, whose tenure as Artistic Director will begin following the 2020 Festival.
74th Festival: June 11 to 14, 2020
The 74th Festival – June 11 to 14, 2020 – with Music Director Matthias Pintscher will highlight progressive and forward-thinking composers of our generation while paying homage to early classical roots. Featuring a vast array of composers from the past six centuries, the program will connect the traditional with the contemporary. Joining Mr. Pintscher for this adventurous musical exploration will be the Ensemble Intercontemporain in its Ojai Music Festival debut. This Paris-based world-renowned
ensemble of 31 full-time musicians is dedicated to performing and promoting contemporary chamber music, which was founded in 1972 by former Ojai Music Director Pierre Boulez, and is now led by Mr. Pintscher. For series passes to the 2020 Festival, visit OjaiFestival.org or call 805 646 2053.
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Press contacts:
Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected] (805) 646-2094
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected] (704) 340-4094
Ara Guzelimian photo by Rosalie O’Connor
Ara Guzelimian, Ojai Talks Director & Artistic Director Designate
Ara Guzelimian is Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City having been appointed to the post in August 2006. At Juilliard, he works closely with the President in overseeing the faculty, curriculum and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions – dance, drama and music. Mr. Guzelimian who was Artistic Director for Ojai Music Festival from 1992 to 1997, will return as Ojai’s Artistic Director for the 2021 Festival.
Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006; in that post, he oversaw the artistic planning and programming for the opening of Zankel Hall in 2003. He was also host and producer of the acclaimed “Making Music” composer series at Carnegie Hall from 1999 to 2008. Mr. Guzelimian currently serves as Artistic Consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is also a member of the Music Visiting Committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, and a Board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations.
He has given lectures and taught at the invitation of the Metropolitan Opera, the Salzburg Easter Festival, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Chicago Symphony, the National Center for the Performing Arts in Taipei and the Jerusalem Music Center. Previously, Ara Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the beginning of his career, first as producer for the Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. As a writer and music critic, he has contributed to such publications as Musical America, Opera Quarterly, Opera News, Symphony magazine, The New York Times, the Record Geijutsu magazine (Tokyo), the program books of the Salzburg and the Helsinki Festivals, and the journal for the IRCAM center in Paris.
Mr. 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. The Chicago, Boston, and London Symphony orchestras, conducted by Bernard Haitink, have performed Mr. Guzelimian’s performing edition of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In September 2003, Mr. Guzelimian was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.
2019 Festival Gallery
The 2019 Ojai Music Festival was a memorable four-day collective experience. Check out our gallery below to relive all the fun!
Photos by David Bazemore and Sierra Dudas
2020 Music Director Matthias Pintscher Shares Initial Programming
Incoming Artistic Director Chad Smith and Matthias Pintscher Announce
the 74th Festival, June 11 to 14, 2020
Download Press Release PDF Version
“It is a tremendous pleasure and incredible honor to be music director for the 2020 Ojai Festival, something I have dreamed about since moving to New York twelve years ago. I feel a combination of joy and responsibility to showcase composers and works that create something like an INVISIBLE BRIDGE between the two continents in which I am living and working: Europe and the USA. I have realized that my role as musical communicator – as composer, conductor, educator, and festival director – is to actively strengthen the interactions and connections between the music of today and its heritage in the US and on the “old continent”. As a European living in New York and Paris, I want to explore this INVISIBLE BRIDGE as one of the key elements for my programming of the 2020 Ojai Festival: thoughtful, innovative, loving, provocative, and poetic. Music speaks most directly from human to human, and Ojai is a perfect place to showcase this. I am excited. See you in 2020. – Matthias Pintscher, 2020 Music Director
(May 30, 2019 – Ojai, California) – As the Ojai Music Festival anticipates the upcoming 73rd Festival (June 6 to 9, 2019) with Music Director Barbara Hannigan, the Festival’s 2020 Music Director Matthias Pintscher and incoming Artistic Director Chad Smith share initial programming for the 74th Festival, June 11 to 14, 2020.
Chad Smith begins his tenure as the Ojai Music Festival’s Artistic Director with the 2020 Festival in partnership with 2020 Music Director Matthias Pintscher. Mr. Smith succeeds Thomas W. Morris, who has shaped Ojai’s artistic direction for sixteen years and will be retiring from the Festival following the upcoming 73rd edition.
“For nearly 75 years, the Ojai Music Festival has been Southern California’s home for the most probing, adventurous, and visionary musicians, and I couldn’t be more excited to be joining this organization as its next Artistic Director. I first experienced the unique spirit of Ojai in 2001, when Esa-Pekka Salonen was the Festival’s Music Director. I was struck by the uncompromising programming, the incredibly devoted and informed audience, and the pure joy in the performances emanating from Libbey Bowl. In that weekend, in that first experience with Ojai, I came to understand the special nature of making music in this part of the world, and I was hooked. From my seat in Los Angeles, I have watched as Tom Morris has expanded the possibilities of what this Festival could be, making it more international, more inclusive, and ultimately more relevant year by year. Tom is one of the lions in our field, and I could not be more humbled, but also inspired, to take the reins from him. This Festival is poised for even greater things; I am thrilled to be a part of that future. To imagine the start of my tenure with Ojai, I can’t think of a more fitting partner than my good friend, conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher. We are excited to share initial plans for our 2020 Festival,” said Chad Smith, incoming Artistic Director.
Programming for the 2020 Festival will feature the music of Pierre Boulez, Chaya Czernowin, Helmut Lachenmann, Olga Neuwirth, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and several works by Pintscher, among many others. Ojai will welcome the Ensemble Intercontemporain, of which Mr. Pintscher is music director, as the 2020 Festival’s ensemble-in-residence. Founded by Pierre Boulez, the world-renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pintscher collaborate closely with composers to explore instrumental techniques and develop projects which interweave music, dance, theater, film, and the visual arts. This will mark the Ensemble’s first appearance in Ojai. Additionally, members of IRCAM, the Paris-based Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music, will collaborate on several 2020 Festival performances. Programming details for Ojai 2020 will be announced in the fall.
Matthias Pintscher, 2020 Music Director
Matthias Pintscher is the Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the world’s leading contemporary music ensemble founded by Pierre Boulez. In addition to a robust concert season in Paris, he toured extensively with them throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States this season including concerts in Berlin, Brussels, Russia, and the United States. Known equally as one of today’s foremost composers, Mr. Pintscher will conduct the premiere of his new work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra, performed by Georg Nigl and the Chorus and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks at their Musica Viva festival in February 2020.
In the 2019/20 season, Mr. Pintscher makes debuts with the symphony orchestras of Montreal, Baltimore, Houston, Pittsburgh, and with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at Interlochen. He also makes his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting the premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s new opera Orlando, and returns to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin to conduct performances of Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee, which he premiered in January 2019. Re-invitations this season include the Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In summer 2020, Mr. Pintscher will serve as Music Director of the 74thOjai Music Festival.
Highlights of Mr. Pintscher’s 2018/19 season included serving as the Season Creative Chair for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, as Artist-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and concluding a nine-year term as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Artist-in-Association. Last season, Mr. Pintscher made his debuts with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Staatsoper Berlin, and returned to the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, the New York Philharmonic, the New World Symphony in Miami, and the Music Academy of the West. In Europe, he conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival and returned to the Orchestre de Paris, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and Helsinki Philharmonic. Mr. Pintscher also conducted the premiere of his work Nur, a new concerto for piano and ensemble, performed by Daniel Barenboim and the Boulez Ensemble in January 2018. An enthusiastic supporter of and mentor to students and young musicians, Mr. Pintscher served as Principal Conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra from 2016-2018 and worked with the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic in their 2017/18 season, culminating in a concert at the Philharmonie.
Matthias Pintscher began his musical training in conducting, studying with Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös in his early twenties, during which time composing took a more prominent role in his life. He rapidly gained critical acclaim in both areas of activity, and continues to compose in addition to his conducting career. As a composer, Mr. Pintscher’s music is championed by some of today’s finest performing artists, orchestras, and conductors. His works have been performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris, among many others. Bärenreiter is his exclusive publisher, and recordings of his compositions can be found on Kairos, EMI, Teldec, Wergo, and Winter & Winter. Mr. Pintscher has been on the composition faculty of The Juilliard School since 2014.
Ensemble Intercontemporain
In 1976, Pierre Boulez founded the Ensemble Intercontemporain with the support of Michel Guy (who was Minister of Culture at the time) and the collaboration and Nicholas Snowman. The Ensemble’s 31 soloists share a passion for 20th to 21st century music. They are employed on permanent contract, enabling them to fulfill the major aims of the Ensemble: performance, creation, and education for young musicians and the general public.
Under the artistic direction of Matthias Pintscher the musicians work in close collaboration with composers, exploring instrumental techniques and developing projects that interweave music, dance, theater, film, video, and visual arts. In collaboration with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), the Ensemble Intercontemporain is also active in the field of synthetic sound generation. New pieces are commissioned and performed on a regular basis with the support of the Fondation Meyer.
The Ensemble is renowned for its strong emphasis on music education: concerts for kids, creative workshops for students, training programs for future performers, conductors, and composers. Since 2004, the Ensemble soloists have been tutoring young instrumentalists, conductors and composers in the field of contemporary repertoire at the Lucerne Festival Academy, a several week educational project held by the Lucerne Festival.
Resident of the Philharmonie de Paris, the Ensemble performs and records in France and abroad, taking part in major festivals worldwide. The Ensemble is financed by the Ministry of Culture and Communication and receives additional support from the Paris City Council. New commissions by Ensemble Intercontemporain are supported by Fondation Meyer.
IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music
IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music directed by Frank Madlener, is one of the world’s largest public research centers dedicated to both musical expression and scientific research. This unique location where artistic sensibilities collide with scientific and technological innovation brings together over 160 collaborators.
IRCAM’s three principal activities – creation, research, transmission – are visible in IRCAM’s Parisian concert season, its productions throughout France and abroad, and in its two annual rendezvous: ManiFeste, which combines an international festival with a multidisciplinary academy, and the Vertigo forum, which presents technical mutations and their tangible effects on artistic creation.
Founded by Pierre Boulez, IRCAM is associated with the Centre Pompidou, under the tutelage of the French Ministry of Culture. The mixed STMS research lab (Sciences and Technologies for Music and Sound), housed by IRCAM, also benefits from the support of the CNRS and Sorbonne University.
Chad Smith, Incoming Artistic Director
Chad Smith is the Chief Operating Officer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Mr. Smith joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association in 2002, serving as VP of artistic planning for over a decade before becoming COO in 2015. As COO, he is responsible for the artistic oversight and coordination of the orchestra’s programming, as well as the organization’s strategic planning, marketing, PR, production, orchestra operations, media, and educational initiatives.
During his tenure, Mr. Smith has implemented an expansive vision of what an orchestra can be through a deep commitment to living composers, the development of multi-disciplinary collaborations, and thematic festivals which have positioned the Philharmonic at the center of the city’s cultural discourse. Committed to making classical music more inclusive, he has overseen the launch of many of the organization’s defining educational programs, including YOLA, a program which has provided daily after-school music training to thousands of children in several of LA’s most underserved communities.
He currently serves as a trustee of the New England Conservatory of Music, as a member of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Prize executive committee, and on the artistic advisory board for the Music Academy of the West. Mr. Smith began his career in 2000 at the New World Symphony, after receiving his B.M. (Vocal Performance) and B.A. (European History) in the NEC/Tufts dual degree program. He received his M.M. in 1998 in Vocal Performance from NEC.
The Ojai Music Festival
From its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has become a place for groundbreaking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic setting 75 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The Festival presents broad-ranging programs in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. The four-day festival is an immersive experience with concerts, free community events, symposia, and gatherings. Considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai has remained a leader in the classical music landscape for seven decades.
Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing an annual Music Director, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including 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, Peter Sellars, Vijay Iyer, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Following Barbara Hannigan’s 2019 Festival, Ojai welcomes Mathias Pintscher as its 2020 Music Director.
As the Ojai Music Festival approaches its 75th anniversary and looks toward the future with incoming Artistic Director Chad Smith, the innumerable contributions of outgoing Artistic Director Thomas W. Morris over his sixteen-year tenure will continue to be felt through the 2019 Festival and beyond.
Live video streaming of the Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival continues to draw thousands of curious and engaged music enthusiasts from across the country. Ojai includes free access to the Festival experience through live and archived video streaming online at OjaiFestival.org. This year’s live streaming runs June 6 through June 9 and will include guest interviews throughout the webcasts. Hosting this year will be Director of Publications for National Sawdust and longtime journalist Steve Smith and Los Angeles-based composer and Classical KUSC host Thomas Kotcheff.
Series Passes for 2020 Ojai Music Festival
Advance 2020 series subscriptions will be available for purchase during the 2019 Festival and online at OjaiFestival.org.
Single Tickets for 2019 Ojai Music Festival with Music Director Barbara Hannigan
2019 Festival single tickets are available and may be purchased online at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. 2019 Ojai Music Festival ticket prices range from $45 to $150 for reserved seating and lawn tickets are $20. Student discounts are available.
2019 Applications for the Arts Management Intern Program Now Available
(OJAI, CA) – The Ojai Music Festival’s arts management internship program is now accepting applications for the 73rd Ojai Music Festival slated for June 6 to 9, 2019 with soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan as music director. Entering its 12th year, the Festival’s sought-after program provides hands-on experiences to college students as they are immersed in areas of production, administration, operations, special events, merchandising, live streaming, marketing, public relations, and patron services.
Students from varying fields and walks of life enjoy access to different opportunities which give them new skill sets and experiences that they take with them throughout their careers. The internship program also provides them to interact with leaders in the music industry and create lasting friendships with other students.
Applicants must be 18 or over and enrolled in a two or four year accredited college. The Festival provides housing for the duration of the internship as well as a stipend. Applications are due by March 1, 2019. Download the application here.
About the Ojai Music Festival
From its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has created a place for groundbreaking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic setting 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The Festival presents broad-ranging programs in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of rarely performed music, refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles, and works by today’s composers. The four-day festival is an immersive experience with concerts, free community events, symposia, and gatherings. Considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai has remained a leader in the classical music landscape for seven decades.
Through its unique structure of the Artistic Director appointing an annual Music Director, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, 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, Peter Sellars, Vijay Iyer, Barbara Hannigan (2019), and Matthias Pintscher (2020).
The 73rd Ojai Music Festival, June 6 to 9, 2019, will celebrate and explore the creative breadth of Music Director Barbara Hannigan, as conductor, singer, and mentor. Joining Ms. Hannigan will be the US debuts of her mentoring initiative for young professional artists, Equilibrium (EQ), and the orchestral collective from Amsterdam, LUDWIG, with whom Ms. Hannigan made her Grammy Award-winning conducting debut CD “Crazy Girl Crazy” in 2017.
The 2019 Festival program will feature works by composers central to Ojai’s history and future, including John Luther Adams, Gerard Grisey, Oliver Knussen, Catherine Lamb, Olivier Messiaen, Terry Riley, Arnold Schoenberg, Tyshawn Sorey, Igor Stravinsky, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Claude Vivier, and John Zorn. Highlights will include the staged production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with Ms. Hannigan conducting and members of EQ as the cast; Ms. Hannigan performing in Gérard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil; the Ojai premiere of John Zorn’s Jumalattaret and Girl Crazy Suite, a special arrangement by Bill Elliott of songs from the Gershwin musical.
For more information regarding the internship program for the Ojai Music Festival, please call the main office at 805 646 2094 or email [email protected]. For more information on the Ojai Music Festival, visit OjaiFestival.org.