2015 Festival Reviews

 

The Ojai Music Festival was a colorful and continuous mix of music, conversation, gatherings, and surprises — a total of more than 32 offerings, which added up to one unforgettable Festival.

You can relive the 2015 Festival anytime by watching our archived live streaming concerts, Ojai Talks, and interview intermissions online.

Read excerpts of reviews below or download a pdf version here >>

Feeling the sonic rush at the Ojai Music Festival
Schick did not go so far as to propose compatibility and cohabitation as a festival theme. But by packing the 69th Ojai festival into marathon days of concerts from dawn (and before!) until midnight, he, in fact, turned the five-day festival into a de-facto Davos of musical diplomacy. No model society emerged, but there were helpful hints of how we might proceed.

Los Angeles Times

The Ojai Music Festival Marches to a New Beat
Bending and melding genres is an Ojai tradition, but rarely have they been stretched so far.

Wall Street Journal

 

Schick happens in Ojai
The Ojai Music Festival has always been friendly to influences from outside the Western tradition, but this year’s edition took things a step further by ushering in so much of the so-called “outside” as to render the distinction temporarily invalid.

Santa Barbara Independent

 

Percussionist Steven Schick makes Ojai Music Festival his own
he [Steven Schick] turned in what will certainly be one of the 69th annual event’s defining concerts, a solo percussion recital as the sun went down and the cool night air rolled into Libbey Bowl.

Orange County Register

 

Ojai Music Festival shows off its percussion power
The 69th Ojai Music Festival, which runs through Sunday under the inspired leadership of percussionist/composer/educator Steven Schick, is making a widespread and deep impression exploring the musical potential of sounds

– Ventura County Star

 


Morning Glories at Ojai Music Festival
One of the delights of an event like the Ojai Music Festival, with its myriad performances of 20th and 21st century music, is encountering surprises, especially early in the morning.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

 

Ojai Music Festival celebrates icon Pierre Boulez’s 90th birthday
The Ojai Music Festival is a different story. Although Boulez has had a major presence in the U.S., notably as music director of the New York Philharmonic in the 1970s, Ojai served as his most consistent American musical and spiritual haven. He was music director seven times between 1967 and 2003.

Los Angeles Times

 

Ojai Festival, Not for the Faint of Heart
Morris called this year’s five-day festival an “immersive experience,” but new- music boot camp might be more accurate. Of the 49 composers represented, 28 were new to Ojai, including Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz and Julia Wolfe, who in April won the Pulitzer Prize for her oratorio, Anthracite Fields. That’s a lot of ground to cover.

– Musical America

 

The director also drums
It was a tall, wide, sleep- and dinner-challenged order of a task, but Mr. Schick and company worked wonders here, in what was one of the smartest, edgiest and funnest Ojai Music Festival programs in the past decade.

– Santa Barbara News Press

 

Outsiders – The Ojai Music Festival
To attend Ojai is to enter a happily topsy-turvy world where longtime patrons are as avid for new music as they are for classic repertory. Works are sometimes criticized for being too accessible . . .  What is different about Ojai? It has to do, I think, simply with the power of consistency: the festival stuck to its mission, year after year, decade after decade, until, at some point, its ideal audience became the real one.
Alex Ross for The New Yorker

 

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