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 | LUDWIG | Los Robles Master Chorale | Edo 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 | LUDWIG | Barbara 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
LUDWIG | Stephen 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 Artists | Edo Frenkel, piano
Part III 9:30-10:15pm
GRISEY Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil
Barbara Hannigan, soprano | LUDWIG | Steven 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
LUDWIG | Barbara 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 | LUDWIG | Barbara 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.