2019 Festival Schedule

 

1:00-4:30pm | Ojai Presbyterian Church
OJAI TALKS
Led by Ojai Talks Director Ara Guzelimian, these insightful sessions will include Mentoring for the Future with Barbara Hannigan, My Ojai Adventure with Thomas W. Morris, and The Ludwig Vision with members of LUDWIG.

5:30-6:00pm | Libbey Park Gazebo
FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS  The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies Part I 
Steven Schick, percussion

6:30pm | Libbey Park Tennis Courts
CONCERT INSIGHTS                                      
Learn in-depth details about the concerts that you are about to see with
musicologist Christopher Hailey and featured artists.

7:30-10:30pm | Libbey Bowl
STRAVINSKY  The Rake’s Progress                  
Equilibrium Artists: Aphrodite Patoulidou, soprano; Yannis Francois, bass; Elgan Llyr Thomas, tenor; Fleur Barron, mezzo-soprano; Antoin Herrera-Lopez Kessel, bass; James Way, tenor | LUDWIGLos Robles Master ChoraleEdo Frenkel, harpsichord |  Linus Fellbom, Director and Lighting Design | Barbara Hannigan, conductor

Stravinsky’s witty neoclassical masterpiece, The Rake’s Progress, is an archetypal tale of good and evil inspired by 18th-century engravings of William Hogarth. This fully-staged performance, led by music director Barbara Hannigan, features young artists from Hannigan’s innovative Equilibrium Mentoring Initiative and this year’s ensemble-in-residence, the brilliant LUDWIG.

8:00-9:00am | Ojai Art Center
DONOR EVENT*                                                         
CLARA IANOTTA  dead wasps in the jam-jar (iii)  US Premiere
TYSHAWN SOREY
 Everything Changes, Nothing Changes
JACK Quartet  

Clara Iannotta’s new recent work is a meditative investigation of surface and what lies beneath it — where the depths are revealed to be more profound than could have been imagined. Tyshawn Sorey, a composer and performer who has exhilarated Ojai audiences is showcased by his recent work, Everything Changes, Nothing Changes. Be prepared for an unexpected zen
experience.
*learn more on donor benefits

10:00am |  Libbey Park Tennis Courts
CONCERT INSIGHTS 
Learn in-depth details about the concerts that you are about to see with musicologist Christopher Hailey and featured artists.

11:00am-1:00pm | Libbey Bowl
Part I 11:00-11:45am 
JOHN ZORN The Alchemist
ZORN Hexentarot
ZORN Ghosts
ZORN The Aristos 
Stephen Gosling, piano | JACK Quartet                   

Part II 12:15-1:00pm 
JOHN ZORN
 Ouroboros
ZORN The Unseen
ZORN Necronomicon 
JACK Quartet | Jay Campbell. cello Alexa Ciciretti, cell0

John Zorn is a universalist, a composer, performer, filmmaker, cultural manager, and aesthetic philosopher who has forged an independent path through stylistic domains that range from the classical avant-garde to virtually all popular idioms. This two-concert survey of his chamber music includes recent works by one of the most fertile, thought-provoking, and idiosyncratic music minds of our time.              

2:00- 3:00pm |Ojai Presbyterian Church 
OJAI FILM: Zorn II (2016-2018)
Zorn II is a film by Mathieu Amalric, who captures the energy of John Zorn’s music, his focused musicianship and his constellation of musicians rehearsing, performing, and searching…all around the world.

5:30-6:00pm | Libbey Park Gazebo
FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT 
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS  The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies Part II 
Steven Schick, percussion

6:00-7:00pm |  Libbey Park
SUPPER IN THE PARK                             
Enjoy a family-style dinner under the oaks in Libbey Park with Festival friends.

6:30pm |  Libbey Park Tennis Courts
CONCERT INSIGHTS                                      
Learn in-depth details about the concerts that you are about to see with musicologist Christopher Hailey and featured artists.

7:30-10:00pm | Libbey Bowl
Part I 7:30-8:30pm
DEBUSSY
Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut 
RAVEL Une barque sur l’ocean 
MESSIAEN Un reflet dans le vent                                                 
SCHOENBERG String Quartet No. 2 
Barbara Hannigan, soprano | Stephen Gosling, piano | JACK Quartet 
           
Part II 9:00–10:00pm
DEBUSSY
  Syrinx                                                                                       
SCHOENBERG  Verklärte Nacht
VIVIER Lonely Child                          
Aphrodite Patoulidou, soprano | LUDWIGBarbara Hannigan, conductor

Works by Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, and Schoenberg take us on imaginary journeys through shadowy forests, across oceans, soaring through the wind, basking in the light of the moon, breathing the air of another planet. And then a dream beyond time as Barbara Hannigan leads Vivier’s powerfully enigmatic Lonely Child performed by emerging soprano Aphrodite Paloulidou. 

10:15-11:30pm | Ojai Art Center 
DONOR EVENT
DANCING UNDER THE STARS with the LUDWIG Ballroom Band and Bill Elliott 
Dance under the stars to the waltzes, fox trots, and tangos with the Ludwig Ballroom Band!   
(Learn more about the Donor Event

8:00-9:00am |  Zalk Theatre
MUSIC DAWN 
JAMES DILLON  La Coupure  
Steven Schick, percussion | Ross Karre and William Brent, video and sound design

James Dillon describes his Nine Rivers cycle as “a mythos of imagined waters, of fairies and snake-gods, a melancholy of flow, a requiem for poisoned rivers, an odyssey, a theatre of memory.”Inspired by the poetry of Rimbaud, La Coupure (The Cut) – the cycle’s central work – fuses percussion, live electronics and video into a beguiling whole – a commanding performance by Steven Schick.

10:00am |  Libbey Park Tennis Courts
CONCERT INSIGHTS 
Christopher Hailey and featured artists

11:00am-1pm Libbey Bowl
Part I  11:00-11:30
A tribute to Oliver Knussen with music by Oliver Knussen
KNUSSEN  Masks for flute with wind chimes 
KNUSSEN Autumnal for violin and piano
KNUSSEN Sonja’s Lullaby
KNUSSEN Cantata for oboe and string trio
KNUSSEN  Eccentric Melody for cello
KNUSSEN Ophelia’s Last Dance                 
KNUSSEN  Study for Metamorphosisfor solo bassoon
LUDWIGStephen Gosling, piano | Jay Campbell, cello                          

Part II 12:00-1:00pm  
RACHMANINOFF 
 The Isle of the Dead (arr. by Thomas Beijer)    
MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE  Twice Through the Heart         
Kate Howden, mezzo-soprano | LUDWIG | Edo Frenkel, conductor 

This two-part concert opens with a tribute to the late Oliver Knussen (2005 Ojai Music Director), a composer of infinite wit, imagination, and refinement, qualities readily in evidence in this wide-ranging election of chamber works. In the dramatic scene, Twice through the Heart, Mark-Anthony Turnage (who studied with Knussen), filters his fascination with contemporary social issues through jazz and classical idioms. Rachmaninoff’s idiom is lushly Romantic. Here, though, LUDWIG presents his orchestral tone poem, Isle of the Dead, in an arrangement for chamber ensemble that would have delighted Olly.                              

2:00- 3:30pm | Ojai Presbyterian Church
OJAI FILM: Music is Music – film by Mathieu Amalric | Bout dun Monde – film by Mathieu Amalric  | Taking Risks – Accentus documentary on Equilibrium (US  premiere)
Music is Music by Mathieu Amalric shares the open process of Barbara Hannigan and LUDWIG’s award-winning CD Crazy Girl Crazy; C’est presque au bout du monde, also filmed by Amalric, is “the mystery of the birth and care of the voice” – the warm up; and Taking Risks, a new documentary by Accentus Music capturing the evolution of Equilibrium Mentoring Initiative.

5:30-6:00pm  Libbey Park Gazebo
FREE COMMUNITY CONCERT
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies Part III 
Steven Schick, percussion

6:00-7:00pm |  Libbey Park
SUPPER IN THE PARK                             
Enjoy a family-style dinner under the oaks in Libbey Park with Festival friends.

6:30pm | Libbey Park Tennis Courts
CONCERT INSIGHTS                                      
Learn in-depth details about the concerts that you are about to see with musicologist Christopher Hailey and featured artists.

7:30-10:15pm  Libbey Bowl
Part I 7:30-8:00pm
JOHN ZORN Jumalattaret 
Barbara Hannigan, soprano | Stephen Gosling, piano

Part II 8:15-9:00pm
RITES OF PASSAGE: Folk songs from around the world
Equilibrium ArtistsEdo Frenkel, piano

Part III 9:30-10:15pm
GRISEY Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil
Barbara Hannigan, soprano | LUDWIGSteven Schick, conductor

The gods and ancient heroes in the Finnish epic Kalevala are the inspiration for John Zorn’s Jumaletteret¸ a cycle of songs with Barbara Hannigan and Stephen Gosling. Rites of Passage, the second of the three concerts, features the EQ singers in a celebration of folk cultures through music. In Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil – Gerard Grisey’s haunting last work – Barbara Hannigan sings four meditations on life at the threshold of death.

8:00-9:00am | Zalk Theatre
MUSIC DAWN
CATHERINE LAMB String Quartet (US Premiere)
JACK Quartet

Slow down…listen. Composers today are revolutionizing our notions of musical time and harmonic space by delving deeply into the qualities of sound, of pitch and timbre and those spectral haloes that hover within the overtone series. Catherine Lamb’s music challenges us to discover new modes of sonic perception. Another ear-opening performance by the indefatigable JACK Quartet.

10:00am | Libbey Park Tennis Courts
CONCERT INSIGHTS
Learn in-depth details about the concerts that you are about to see with musicologist Christopher Hailey and featured artists.

11:00am-1:15pm | Libbey Bowl
Part I 11:00-11:45am
WALTON Façade: An Entertainment 
LUDWIGBarbara Hannigan, speaker

Part II 12:15-1:15pm
TERRY RILEY In C
Festival artists

The 1923 premiere of William Walton’s Façade was a scandal – Virginia Woolf was dazed and Noel Coward walked out. But Walton’s delightful and irreverent accompaniment to poems by Edith Sitwell survived to become a beloved classic of interwar cheek. Another cheeky classic, Terry Riley’s In C, premiered some four decades later, captured the public imagination as few works before or since. It was the birth of minimalism, and this Ojai performance will be a jam session for all the artists. 

4:30-6:30pm | Libbey Bowl
FINALE CONCERT 
STRAVINSKY Pulcinella (complete) 
HAYDN Symphony No. 49 “La Passione”
GERSHWIN Girl Crazy Suite (arranged by Bill Elliott)
Kate Howden, mezzo-soprano | James Way, tenor | Antoin Herrera-Lopez Kessel, bass | LUDWIGBarbara Hannigan, soprano and conductor

In this grand finale Barbara Hannigan conducts a milestone of neoclassicism, Stravinsky’s spritely commedia dell’arte ballet Pulcinella. By contrast Haydn’s La Passione presents an altogether darker side of the 18thcentury, the ardent emotions of Sturm und Drang. Can’t end with that! Barbara Hannigan’s celebration of George Gershwin, Girl Crazy, is a one-woman extravaganza combining her talents as a singer and conductor with a little help from her very embraceable, very rhythmic friends in LUDWIG. Who could ask for anything more?

Programs and artists are subject to change.