Ojai Music Festival

San Francisco Classical Voice Spotlights Leif Ove Andsnes

Gina Gutierrez — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:06:10 +0000

2012 Music Director and celebrated pianist Leif Ove Andsnes continues his extensive U.S tour. In this recent SFCV web article, he talks about his music and his “big” celebration!

“Leif Ove Andsnes has been in the spotlight for over two decades. His long list of accomplishments includes eight Grammy nominations, five Gramophone Awards, and the prestigious honor of Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. He has performed with the world’s best orchestras on the world’s most famous stages. He has guided countless students into the realm of professional music at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and the Royal Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. His resume is long and awe-inspiring, but when my call was answered at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia, I found the famous Leif Ove not just coming fresh off a performance, but rather a gentle man in love with his piano….”

Read the entire Q&A here…

Home Page Box

ojaimusic — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:18:00 +0000

Getting To Know Christianne Stotijn

Caitlin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:51:29 +0000

This week mezzo-soprano and 2012 Festival artist Christianne Stotijn will be performing Mahler 2 and 3 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, as part of the Phil’s month-long Mahler Project. Delft-born Stotijn is known throughout the world for her passionate and nuanced interpretations of lieder. Here are five things we’ve learned about Stotijn in preparation for her arrival in Ojai:

- She’s not only a singer, but an accomplished violinist as well.

- She is the recipient of several awards, including the ECHO Rising Stars Award (2005/2006) and the Nederlands Muziekprijs (2008). In 2007, she was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist and her recording of Tchaikovsky songs with pianist Julius Drake won a BBC Music Magazine award.

- Stotijn has performed with leading orchestras throughout the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and now, the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

- She has appeared in major roles with the Paris Opera, the Royal Opera House in Convent Garden, the Nederlandse Opera and the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels.

- BBC Music Magazine hails her as “that artist in a thousand whose personality shines through in everything she does.”

From what we’ve learned, Stotijn is an artist who is not to be missed and we’re excited to welcome her to Ojai in June. You can catch Stotijn in Ojai throughout the Festival weekend, where she will be performing works by Shostakovich, Wagner, and William Bolcolm, among others. Click here to see her concerts and to buy tickets to the 2012 Festival.

And if you can’t wait until June, here’s a little behind-the-scenes YouTube video to tide you over: Christianne Stotijn Recording Schubert, Berg, Wolf

Learn more about Christianne Stotijn at her website.

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS WORK NAMED ONE OF THE BEST CLASSICAL PERFORMANCES BY ALEX ROSS

Gina Gutierrez — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:51:07 +0000

The New Yorker’s Alex Ross recently posted his choices for best classical performances in 2011 and included John Luther Adams’ work, Inuksuit, as one of them:
“John Luther Adams’s percussion symphony “Inuksuit,” which made a glorious noise at the Park Avenue Armory, is the work of an Alaskan activist composer who has long campaigned against the despoliation of his home state.”

BOSTON GLOBE REVIEW OF LEIF OVE ANDSNES’ PERFORMANCE

Gina Gutierrez — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:26:23 +0000

2012 Music Director Leif Ove Andsnes began his U.S. tour last week stopping in Boston to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Boston Globe music critic Jeremy Eichler described the performance in his review – “Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with soloist Leif Ove Andsnes. This excellent Norwegian pianist plays with a rare blend of fluidity and control, and his Beethoven last night grew more daring and boldly profiled as the work progressed, ending with a finale that was irresistible.”

Read the full review here

Happy New Year from the Ojai Music Festival

Jeff Haydon — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:08:47 +0000

Happy New Year! January is a time when most of us take stock on our success last year and how we want to improve ourselves going forward. For the Festival, January is the time when the staff really starts to feel the clock ticking very quickly toward June and all of the exponential number of details that need to be addressed (upcoming gala, brochures, annual fund appeals, program book notes, corporate sponsorships, education concert, and did I mention fundraising?).

However, January is also the time when we typically implement new systems we have been developing since the last Festival ended. This week, we are implementing our new financial software, Financial Edge, that links directly to our ticketing and fundraising software. This should allow us to streamline our data entry, improve our reporting and analytical capabilities, and reduce the amount of paper forms we need to use. Like the previous two software modules, the Financial Edge installation is funded by a generous Arts Regional Initiative grant from the James Irvine Foundation to improve our Financial Sustainability with better tools. Needless to say, we are both excited and a bit nervous for such a big change. It is important for us to implement this change now before the upcoming wave of single ticket sales (if you haven’t bought your subscription yet—it is best to do it this month before the single tickets go on sale!) and expense checks related to the Festival that start going out in May.

This is just one of a few new “resolutions” for us—one which most of you would never know about (or maybe even care about!), but it should have a big benefit to helping the Ojai Music Festival operate with greater efficiency and provide us with more powerful data needed to navigate a growing Festival through a rapidly changing landscape. Here’s to better bean counting!

Robert Spano Returns to Ojai!

Caitlin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:34:24 +0000

It’s been a few years since we saw conductor/composer Robert Spano in Ojai—his last foray was when he brought the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as part of the memorable 60th Festival in 2006. Since then he’s been appointed as Music Director of the prestigious Aspen Music Festival. On February 11, however, Spano will once again be in Ojai as part of the Festival’s annual gala event, “To Ojai, With Love.” This fundraiser at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa will showcase Spano’s talents as a pianist and composer in an intimate concert with clarinetist Laura Ardan, featuring the West Coast premiere of his piece under water. Hailed as a “cohesive and . . . lovely solo piano work” by the NY Times, under water pays homage to Debussy’s Engulfed Cathedral. Tickets for this special event begin at $250 and include cocktails, dinner, and the concert. Proceeds benefit the Ojai Music Festival and its BRAVO! Music Education program.

For those who wish to extend the Gala celebration into an Ojai weekend getaway, there are several “Patron Packages” offering unique experiences in the Ojai Valley and beyond, from wine tastings to orchard tours, to Hollywood film scoring sessions. For more information on these packages, click here, or contact Anna Wagner at 805.646.2094 x.105.

We hope you will be able to the Festival and Robert Spano for this special, once-in-a-lifetime event.

A Little Piece of Festival History

Caitlin — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:23:21 +0000

In doing our semi-annual office clean-out, we discovered several lost (and dusty!) treasures…including this seating chart from 2006:

Ojai Music Festival Seating Chart, circa 2006 – click for a larger view

If this looks a long way off from the receipts that you receive today, it’s true. Way back before we had a computer-based ticketing system, Festival ticket buyers were handwritten into a paper seating chart—one chart for each concert during Festival weekend. This chart is from the 2006 Saturday Morning concert. Seats that are X’d off are series subscriber seats, while single ticket buyers have been written in between. You can also see the obstructed view seats that were blocked off and the multiple layers of white-out that we had to use when making corrections in the days leading up to the Festival. In the words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

This was an inherited system from Betty Izant, who was the Festival’s first administrator during Lawrence Morton’s tenure as Artistic Director. Betty had an almost photographic memory for Festival-goers and could remember their names exact seats with incredible precision. Back then, records were meticulously kept on index cards and updated by hand with new information each year.

Needless to say, things are much easier now. All seating information is stored in our computer system and ticket buyers can even purchase seats online (something almost unheard of only five years ago!). The one thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the care and attention that we give when seating patrons for each year’s Festival.The seating for this year’s 2012 Festival will be especially interesting, as we’re already close to selling out the AA and A sections of Libbey Bowl. If you haven’t yet bought your tickets, you can do so online here or by calling me in the Box Office at (805) 646-2053.

LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP 2011 DANCE PICKS INCLUDE MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP

Gina Gutierrez — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:54:22 +0000

The Festival’s 2013 Music Director Mark Morris received high praise from the Los Angeles Times for the revival of Morris’ two-act masterwork, “L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, ” described as both classic and innovative. The production was presented as a collaboration between last May by the Music Center and the LA Opera.

Read Mark Morris bio

Thomas W. Morris named one of Persons of the Year by Alex Ross

ojaimusic — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:35:45 +0000

Alex Ross, Music Critic for the New Yorker Magazine (and one of the most influential writers on music today) named Persons of the Year — Jane Moss and Ojai Music Festival’s Thomas W. Morris, for their hearteningly inventive programming at Lincoln Center and Spring for Music/Ojai.

Click here for the direct link