For our younger audience members, we want to make sure you can soak up all the music and magic the Festival has to offer! OJAINEXT is our way of welcoming the next generation of Festival-goers into the mix. Just fill out the form at the bottom of this page to enjoy all the perks of membership.
Membership is free of charge with zero commitments; all you have to do is sign up to join this community!
Who It’s For:
College students* (graduate and undergrad)
Young professionals interested in the arts
Artists and musicians inspired by the Ojai Festival
Parents raising a music-loving family*
Anyone ready to support local arts non-profits!
Perks of Membership:
Invitations to special events throughout the year
Discounts on select concerts
Drink vouchers for the Festival Bar
Annual OJAINEXT Member Event during the Festival
A community of music-minded folks
Other unexpected deals, invitations, and opportunities!
The Lawn at Libbey Bowl is the perfect spot for families to enjoy concerts. Bring a picnic, relax with your kids and take advantage of the easy access to the playground and bathrooms. Pricing for children at Libbey Bowl:
Ages 0-5: FREE admittance on the lawn, no reservation needed
Ages 6-11: $5 lawn tickets
Students 12 and up are given entry to the Libbey Bowl reserved seating, and are eligible to utilize our student discounts (below). Children are welcome to attend any of the free Ojai Music Festival events!
Students, from elementary school through graduate university, receive 30% off Festival tickets and opportunities for gas rebates. College faculty receive 15% off. Learn more at the page below.
Jay Campbell is a cellist actively exploring a wide range of creative music. He has been recognized for approaching both old and new music with the same curiosity and commitment, and his performances have been called “electrifying” by the New York Times and “gentle, poignant, and deeply moving” by the Washington Post.
The only musician ever to receive two Avery Fisher Career Grants — in 2016 as a soloist, and again in 2019 as a member of the JACK Quartet — Campbell made his concerto debut with the New York Philharmonic in 2013 and in 2016, he worked with Alan Gilbert as the artistic director for Ligeti Forward, part of the New York Philharmonic Biennale at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2017, he was Artist-in-Residence at the Lucerne Festival along with frequent collaborator violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, where he gave the premiere of Luca Francesconi’s cello concerto Das Ding Singt. In 2018 he appeared at the Berlin Philharmonie with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. He has recorded the concertos of George Perle and Marc-Andre Dalbavie with the Seattle Symphony, and in 2023/2024 will premiere a new concerto, Reverdecer, by Andreia Pinto-Correia with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Portugal, and in Brazil with the Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo. In 2022 he returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic as curator and cellist for his second Green Umbrella concert, premiering two concertos by Wadada Leo Smith and inti figgis-vizueta.
Campbell’s primary artistic interest is the collaboration with living creative musicians and has worked in this capacity with Catherine Lamb, John Luther Adams, Marcos Balter, Tyshawn Sorey, and many others. His close association with John Zorn resulted in two discs of new works for cello, Hen to Pan (2015) and Azoth (2020). Deeply committed as a chamber musician, he is the cellist of the JACK Quartet as well as the Junction Trio with violinist Stefan Jackiw and pianist Conrad Tao, and multidisciplinary collective AMOC.
The Ojai Music Festival was delighted to participate in the California Festival, a statewide initiative organized by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony. This showcase of 100-plus California organizations, which runs from November 3 to 19, closely aligned with the Ojai Festival mission and history in celebrating new and adventurous music.
Our performance was a “maiden voyage” of presenting a non-summer concert on November 11 at the Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. With a supportive and enthusiastic audience, the program presented smaller-scale recent works by Samuel Carl Adams, Reena Esmail, Dylan Mattingly, and M.A. Tiesenga, performed by pianist Conor Hanick, clarinetist Sérgio Coelho, vibraphone player Sidney Hopson, violinist Gallia Kastner, vocalist Saili Oak, multi-instrumentalist M.A. Tiesenga, and Zelter String Quartet. These same forward-looking composers were then featured at the Green Umbrella concert, at the Walt Disney Hall, on November 14.
Take a look at some of our favorite moments from our Creative Lab concert on November 11 in Ojai. Special thanks to the Ojai Valley School.
On behalf of the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee, thank you so much for another wonderful year of this fabulous tradition! Keep your eye on your inbox for a survey from us. We’d love to hear from you. Thank you for shopping at the Holiday Marketplace! We hope this is not the last you see of the incredible vendors. Please visit the link below to connect with them on their websites and social media!
Mark your calendar for next year: November 9 and 10, 2024
The Ojai Holiday Home Tour and Marketplace is a benefit for the Ojai Music Festival and its BRAVO Music Education & Community Programs. By supporting this treasured tradition, you ensure that the Festival continues providing free music education in Ojai public elementary schools and presenting the internationally renowned 78th Festival, June 6-9, 2024. Your support for BRAVO is deeply appreciated.
Noted for her “dazzling, virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe), Lucy Fitz Gibbon is a dynamic musician whose repertoire spans the Renaissance to the present. She believes that creating new works and recreating those lost in centuries past makes room for the multiplicity and diversity of voices integral to classical music’s future. As such, Ms. Fitz Gibbon has given modern premieres of rediscovered works by Baroque composers Francesco Sacrati, Barbara Strozzi, and Agostino Agazzari, as well by 20th century composers including Tadeusz Kassern, Florence Price, and Jean Barraqué. She has also worked closely with numerous others, workshopping and premiering works by Kate Soper, Sheila Silver, Reena Esmail, Roberto Sierra, and Pauline Oliveros, to name just a few. In helping to realize the complexities of music beyond written notes, the experience of working with these composers translates to all music: the commitment to faithfully communicate not only the score, but also the underlying intentions of its creator.
In concert, Fitz Gibbon has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra; the Albany, Eureka, Lexington, Richmond, and Tulsa Symphonies; and the American Symphony Orchestra in her Carnegie Hall debut. In 2022-2023, she appears in concerts presented by Kneisel Hall, the Copland House, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Eureka Chamber Music Society, the Sacramento Chamber Music Society, Musicians from Marlboro, and Cornell, Bucknell, and Duke Universities. She will also cover the role of Laila in the premiere of Sheila Silver’s A Thousand Splendid Suns with Seattle Opera, and appear in Earl Kim’s Where Grief Slumbers at Boston’s Jordan Hall.
As a recitalist Ms. Fitz Gibbon has appeared with her husband and collaborative partner, pianist Ryan McCullough, in such venues as London’s Wigmore Hall; New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Park Avenue Armory, and Merkin Hall; Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center; and Toronto’s Koerner Hall. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, they recorded performances at home and in concert halls to be broadcast around the world; their recent appearance on PBS’ Great Performances was praised by the Wall Street Journal as “breathtaking.” Their discography includes Descent/Return, featuring works by James Primosch and John Harbison (Albany Records, May 2020) and Beauty Intolerable: Songs of Sheila Silver alongside artists including Dawn Upshaw and Stephanie Blythe (Albany Records, February 2021). A forthcoming album, The Labor of Forgetting, includes the world premiere recording of Katherine Balch’s estrangement.
A graduate of Yale University, Ms. Fitz Gibbon also holds an artist diploma from The Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory and a master’s degree from Bard College-Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program; her principal teachers include Monica Whicher, Edith Bers, and Dawn Upshaw. She has spent summers at the Tanglewood Music Center (2014-2015) and Marlboro Music Festival (2016-2019, 2021-2022). She previously was Interim Director of Vocal Programs at Cornell University and now serves on the faculty of Bard College Conservatory’s Vocal Arts Programs. She also appeared as voice faculty and guest artist for the Kneisel Hall (2020-21) and SongFest (2022) summer festivals.
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding,” raves the London Independent; the New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism”; the Philadelphia Inquirer praises its “seemingly infallible instincts for finding the center of gravity in every phrase and musical gesture”; and the Times (London) opines, “the Brentanos are a magnificent string quartet…This was wonderful, selfless music-making.” The Quartet has performed across five continents in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Tokyo’s Suntory hall; and the Sydney Opera House. Festival appearances include Aspen, the Ojai Music Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, and the Seoul Spring Festival of Chamber Music.
The Quartet has launched numerous projects that reimagine the standard concert program. In 2002, they celebrated their tenth anniversary by commissioning ten composers to write companion pieces for selections from Bach’s Art of Fugue, the result of which was an electrifying and wide-ranging single concert program. Fourteen years later, they revisited Bach’s masterpiece, performing the entire work in an ambitious multimedia project at the 92nd Street Y in New York with dancers, narrated excerpts, and an installation by artist Gabriel Calatrava. Recently, the Quartet presented a second multimedia project at the Y, which juxtaposed the poetry of Wallace Stevens with late Beethoven and music by composer Martin Bresnick. Other projects have included a three-program examination of Late Style, presented at Carnegie Hall; a program surveying the music of lamentation over the last 300 years crowned by Bartók’s Second Quartet; and numerous adaptations of music from Renaissance and early Baroque, including works by Josquin, Gesualdo, Purcell and Monteverdi.
The Quartet has been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, as well as pianists Jonathan Biss, Richard Goode and Mitsuko Uchida. The Quartet also maintains a strong commitment to new music, and has expanded the quartet canon by commissioning works from some of the most important composers of our time, among them Bruce Adolphe, Matthew Aucoin, Gabriela Frank, Stephen Hartke, Vijay Iyer, Steven Mackey, and Charles Wuorinen. Upcoming commissions and collaborations include a new quartet from Chinese composer Lei Liang; a viola quintet from James MacMillan; and a large-scale dramatic work, “Dido Reimagined,” based on the story of Dido and Aeneas, from composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, to be performed with soprano Dawn Upshaw.
Dedicated and highly sought after as educators, the Quartet are currently Artists-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music, where they perform in concert each semester, work closely with students in chamber music contexts, and spearhead the instruction at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in the summers. The Quartet has given numerous master classes and workshops across the country, and returns annually to the Taos School of Music as visiting faculty. In 2013 and 2017, the Quartet assisted at the Cliburn International Piano Competition, performing quintets with competitors in the final rounds. Before coming to Yale, the Quartet served for fifteen years as Ensemble-in-Residence at Princeton University.
The Quartet has recorded extensively, releasing discs of quartets by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as a recording of the Schubert Cello Quintet with Michael Kannen. The Quartet has also recorded music by several contemporary composers, among them Bruce Adolphe, Chou Wen-chung, Steven Mackey and Charles Wuorinen. The Quartet’s recording of Beethoven’s Quartet, Op. 131 was featured in the film “A Late Quartet,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, released in 2012. In 2017, they recorded a live album with Joyce DiDonato, “Into the Fire—Live from Wigmore Hall,” which included works by Strauss, Debussy, Guillaume Lekeu and Jake Heggie for Warner Classics. Their most recent release features the K. 428 and K. 465 (“Dissonance”) Quartets of Mozart for the Azica label.
Awards and honors include the first Cleveland Quartet Award (1995); the Naumburg Chamber Music Award (1995); inaugural members of Chamber Music Society Two at the CMS of Lincoln Center (1996); and the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut (at Wigmore Hall in 1997.)
The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”, the intended recipient of his famous love confession.
Violinist Alexi Kenney is forging a career that defies categorization, following his interests, intuition, and heart. He is equally at home creating experimental programs and commissioning new works, soloing with major orchestras in the USA and abroad, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of our time. Kenney is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.
Following the 2021/22 season, which included solo appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Kenney devotes the first part of 2023 to the debut of his new project Shifting Ground, bringing it to the Celebrity Series of Boston, Cal Performances, Princeton University Concerts, and the Phillips Collection. Shifting Ground intersperses seminal works for solo violin by J.S. Bach with pieces of our time by Samuel Adams, Matthew Burtner, Steve Reich, Paul Wiancko, and Du Yun, as well as commissions by composers Salina Fisher and Angélica Negrón.
In recent years, Kenney has performed as soloist with the Detroit Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, California Symphony, and Sarasota Orchestra, as well as in a play-conduct role as guest leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, on Carnegie Hall’s ‘Distinctive Debuts’ series, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, 92nd Street Y, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild Competition and laureate of the 2012 Menuhin Competition, Kenney has been profiled by Musical America, Strings Magazine, and The New York Times, and has written for The Strad.
Chamber music continues to be a major part of Kenney’s life, regularly performing at festivals including Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Chamber Music Northwest, Kronberg, La Jolla, Ojai, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Seattle, and Spoleto, as well as on tour with Musicians from Marlboro and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is a founding member of Owls, a new quartet collective with violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko.
Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Kenney is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he received an Artist Diploma as a student of Miriam Fried and Donald Weilerstein. Previous teachers in the Bay Area include Wei He, Jenny Rudin, and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow by François-Nicolas Voirin.
Outside of music, Kenney enjoys hojicha, modernist design and architecture, baking for friends, and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO), founded in 1997, has established a distinct sound and independent artistic identity. The Orchestra’s philosophy, inspired by founding mentor Claudio Abbado, emphasizes the power of listening and communication both structurally and musically; they call it The Sound of Listening. It allows the Orchestra, its musicians and managing office, to operate as a democratic collective. Engaging with Artistic Partners, including Mitsuko Uchida, Yuja Wang, Pekka Kuusisto, Conductor Laureate Daniel Harding, Artistic Advisor Daniele Gatti, and Artistic Partner for Immersive Experiences Henrik Oppermann/Schallgeber; the MCO undertakes multiyear projects that explore diverse artistic themes.
With musicians representing 27 nationalities, residing in different parts of the world, the MCO reaches live audiences across 40 countries on five continents. The Orchestra maintains residencies at renowned venues including Carnegie Hall, Southbank Centre, Lucerne Festival, Mozartwoche Salzburg, and Festival de Saint-Denis. They are frequent guests at Philharmonie Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Musikverein Vienna, and Beethovenfest Bonn, and regularly tour Iberian and Asian regions. Their worldwide presence enables them to authentically engage with a global audience, fostering connections that resonate across borders and cultures.
In the realm of Outreach and Education, the MCO conducts three flagship projects. The MCO Academy allows orchestra members to share their expertise with the next generation of musicians in collaboration with Orchesterzentrum|NRW and undertake residencies at Konzerthaus Dortmund, Kölner Philharmonie and the Philharmonie Essen. Feel the Music introduces music to deaf and hard-of-hearing children, encouraging a multi-sensory experience. And Welcome Home: a concert about finding the place where you belong, in which school groups are invited on a multicultural journey, fostering introspection and contemplation on the theme of “Belonging”. These endeavors highlight the MCO’s commitment to enriching lives through music and promoting inclusivity.
In collaboration with Artistic Partner for Immersive Experiences Henrik Oppermann/Schallgeber, the MCO explores new digital technologies in and beyond the concert hall. Their virtual reality series immerses listeners deeper into performances and brings them closer to the music.
Through its vibrant performances, global reach, educational initiatives, and distinct entrepreneurship, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra continues to make a profound impact on the world of classical music.
I am writing on an impossibly beautiful Ojai afternoon, as a lingering summer breeze warms this autumn afternoon. The serenity of this setting is a startling contrast to the current moment, with such anguish and tragedy across the world.
It is often tempting to regard music and the arts as either a balm or an escape from the sorrows of the world around us. In reality, music is one of the truest utterances of simply being human and, as such, reflects the entire range of our experience. In a speech that the stage director (and 2016 Ojai Music Director) Peter Sellars gave many years ago, he observed that our individual response to the arts remains one of the few truly private experiences left to each of us.
And so, in response to the turmoil around us, I found myself listening to one of Mozart’s most personal and inward pieces, a work that seems to contain a deeply private world of sorrow.
Not coincidentally, it is also a reminder of the sublime artistry of pianist Mitsuko Uchida, who will grace the 2024 Ojai Festival as our Music Director.
Another of our 2024 Festival artists, clarinetist Anthony McGill, found solace during the isolation of the pandemic in a work by composer Jessie Montgomery that directly reflected her experience as an artist alone. The result is a meditative, quietly personal work that has the duality of being utterly private yet creates a communicative arc that reaches outward to each of us.
And here is the complete work:
We are so fortunate in the company we keep. In the coming weeks, we will be making the initial announcement of the program highlights for the 2024 Festival. Stay tuned…
The Ojai Festival’s long history of musical discovery and innovation has found its match in the upcoming California Festival – co-created by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego, and San Francisco Symphonies – to celebrate new music across the state during two weeks in November. A remarkable 100 organizations are taking part across the state, vivid testimony to vibrant the creativity to be found here. We are delighted to be participating with a special concert in Ojai on November 11, at the Ojai Valley School’s Greenberg Center – a site of numerous special events during the past two summer festivals. The program celebrates four of the freshest voices in a new generation of California composers: Reena Esmail, Dylan Mattingly, M.A. Tiesenga and Samuel Carl Adams, with works composed as recently as this year. Pianist Conor Hanick, fondly remembered from his performances as a member of AMOC* in the 2022 Ojai Festival, will be joined by a group of gifted young Southern California musicians, including composer M.A. Tiesenga playing the electronic hurdy-gurdy (when was the last time you encountered that?). The evening also includes a reception with the composers and performers. Click the button below for more details:
While our response to a work of art may be the ultimate private experience, there is much joy and comfort to be found in our community of people who gather together to experience the arts. I look forward to being in your company in the coming weeks and months.
Annie Mosites, founder and principal designer of Free Range Interior Design, was brought up in Pittsburgh, PA in a family that instilled in her a love of art, architecture, and design. Her upbringing nurtured a fervor for designing visually stunning environments that seamlessly blend unique and high-quality elements into a room.
Later, a 10-year stay in the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming provided her with a deep understanding of the interplay between nature and design. The rugged beauty of the natural surroundings, the use of organic materials, and the rustic charm of mountain towns all had a significant impact on Annie’s design philosophy.
After her time in the mountains, Annie relocated to Ventura where she founded Free Range Interior Design. Her unique perspective from living in the city, mountains and now the coast is reflected throughout her designs. With projects throughout the country, Free Range’s mission is to create beautiful, timeless, and cohesive designs unique to its clients and the environment in which they are building.
Annie believes that every space should reflect the client’s unique personality and location. She is delighted to have collaborated with the homeowner of Gwynne Cottage to add holiday floral designs to a home that reflects her love of a cozy, eclectic, and calming space, full of warm earthy color and a lifetime collection of unique treasures.
Lila Glasoe Francese, OHI HOME
Designer, Oak Creek Oasis
Lila Glasoe Francese is the co-owner of OHI HOME, LLC an Ojai-based home staging and styling company she founded alongside her husband Dines in 2009. Lila began her career in Los Angeles, as a personal assistant to studio heads and producers. She found inspiration from the notable designers working in their homes.
Lila and her husband Dines began buying, redesigning, and selling homes in 2001. This allowed them to leave Los Angeles in 2006 and purchase a home in Ojai, not far from where Dines was raised. When their daughter began Oak Grove School in 2008, their vision for OHI HOME was set into motion. Almost 15 years later, they continue to create one-of-a-kind interiors.
Lila believes when she acts as a designer, her job is to elevate her client’s vision for their home. Her pleasure is when staging clients become design clients and friends, as occurred with the homeowners of Oak Creek Oasis. After staging their former home for sale, they reconnected with her to assist in the redesign of the kitchen and bathrooms of their current home. Continuing their bond of friendship and design compatibility, they have enjoyed a rich and rewarding experience staging holiday decor for this year’s Home Tour.
Lila’s home staging and interior design work has been featured in the Architectural
Digest, Dwell, Ventana, and other publications. Her work can also be seen on Houzz.com and on her blog ohihomestyle.com. She is also an award-winning author, speaker and founder of Ojai’s non-profit art foundation, The Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation and it’s initiative The Ojai Institute.
Kim Barnes
Designer, Maison Ojai
A home is a means of creative expression reflecting the changes that one goes through in life. Designer John Wheatman wrote, “a good house is never done.” Kim Barnes believes this applies to more than houses.
Kim’s life as a San Francisco-based, hard driving publishing and internet executive took a turn when a 1998 one-week vacation evolved into a single-woman idyll revolving around a “castle” near Aix En Provence with French friends. Two years later, resolving to create “Provence in her own backyard,” Kim returned to San Francisco and became immersed in selling luxury property. While there was never a time that Kim wasn’t styling and redoing homes for friends and family, her design talents took flight making her real estate clients’ homes memorable from opening the door to closing the sale.
Kim’s drive to beautify also led her to found and direct the successful “Friends of Lafayette Park” in Pacific Heights for which she was honored in 2009 by then Mayor Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi.
Change happens. In 2018, Kim and her new husband, Clay Creasey who yearned for the farm of his youth, went on a quest that brought them to Ojai where they created Maison Ojai – an homage to beautiful memories. Kim’s highest values of beauty and friendship find expression in her home with its natural setting and outdoor spaces created for welcoming others to enjoy it. John Wheatman would be pleased to know that more surprises are in store at Maison Ojai.
Lynn Malone
Floral Designs, Maison Ojai
The previous owner of Digs, one of Ojai’s favorite floral design studios, and for many years, one of the Holiday Home Tour’s stand-out designers, Lynn is happy to return this year to collaborate with homeowner, Kim Barnes, of Maison Ojai. Together they have designed an organic, yet sophisticated holiday palette inspired by the home’s natural surroundings and it’s stunning interior. So much inspiration abounds in this home and surrounding gardens, you won’t want to leave! When you do, we hope you’ll take some unique Holiday design inspiration home for yourself.
Elizabeth Cohn,Forage Ojai
Designer, Smiley’s House
Elizabeth Cohn is a professional real estate investor, interior designer, and floral designer with over 25 years of experience. She is passionate about creating beautiful and functional spaces that reflect her clients’ unique personalities and styles.
Liz loves to travel the world for inspiration, and her designs often incorporate elements from different cultures and traditions. When she isn’t off exploring the world, or with her family at one of their vacation rentals, she enjoys being at home in Ojai creating florals for weddings and events in her design studio, Forage Ojai.
As a floral designer, Liz has a deep understanding of the power of flowers and botanicals to transform a space and create a mood. Liz is particularly excited to design fall and Thanksgiving arrangements for this home in Ojai. She sees this as an opportunity to create florals that are both inspired by the natural beauty of the area and reflective of the home’s unique style.
NOTE: This page will be updated with the information for 2024 in the coming weeks. Join our mailing list at the bottom of the page to stay up-to-date!
Saturday and Sunday, November 11 & 12, 2023 10am to 4:30pm
Libbey Park in downtown Ojai
Get a head start on your holiday shopping! Enjoy a collection of curated lifestyle and fashion items from local and regional vendors, perfect for gift-giving or your own indulgence. A portion of all proceeds from every vendor at the Marketplace go towards the Ojai Festival and its BRAVO Education and Community Programs. Libbey Park will also have a “Letters to Santa” mailbox, as well as the man himself for kids to meet!
While there is no designated parking for this event, Ojai has several free parking lots, as well as free street parking. The Lower Libbey Parking Lot has the shortest walk to the park!
Marketplace admission is FREE and open to the public.
This year, we welcome the new tradition of an annual ornament handmade by a local artist. We are pleased to announce that this inaugural ornament was designed and crafted by Ritual Ceramics. These beautiful ceramic treasures will be available for purchase in Libbey Park at the Marketplace Cashier.
NOTE: This page will be updated with the information for 2024 in the coming weeks. Join our mailing list at the bottom of the page to stay up-to-date!
Top row from left to right: Lavender Blue, Lupa Jewelry, From the Heart of Ojai Bottom row from left to right: JC Dog Accessories, Ambrosia Long Life Linen, Tierra
Meet the vendors! All of the following small businesses, artists, and artisans will be participating in this year’s Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace. The Marketplace is free and open to the public at Libbey Park, November 11 & 12, 2023, from 10am – 4:30 pm. Come join us for gift shopping and holiday fun!
A portion of the sales from vendors benefits the Ojai Festival and BRAVO music education program.
Zero-waste & sustainable global goods vendor: up-cycled & plastic free alternatives to everyday items using natural materials including bowls, utensils, hammoks, and more
Sunday, February 4 2024 John Williams guides a journey through cinematic history and the soundtracks that scored Hollywood’s greatest moments
Since talkies first showed music’s power to transform moving images, composers have heightened on-screen action and illuminated unspoken drama with soundtracks as inventive and wide-ranging as the films they scored. Few have a greater appreciation for the history of film music—or a larger impact on its story—than John Williams and the maestro of the movies curates this exploration of cinematic composition featuring landmark Hollywood scores performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by David Newman.
OFWC Walt Disney Hall Trip includes:
Bus Transportation
Tiered tickets to the Concert featuring works by John Williams
$300 – Terrace
$350 – Orchestra West
$425 – Front Orchestra
Dinner at Marcello’s in Thousand Oaks
Snacks on the returned bus ride
Contribution to the OFWC
Final instructions will be sent by January 20, 2024. If you have any questions, please contact Barbara Hirsch at 805-570-0160.
November 11, 7:30pm performance Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campus
The Ojai Music Festival presents a special concert celebrating the unique musical creativity of a new generation of California composers, produced as part of the statewide California Festival: A Celebration of New Music. Our program brings together a new work for solo piano by Samuel Carl Adams for the brilliant pianist Conor Hanick (fondly remembered for his performances as part of AMOC at the 2022 Ojai Festival) and a kinetic trio for violin, clarinet, and vibes by Dylan Mattingly (whose work featured prominently at the 2021 Ojai Festival). M.A. Tiesenga’s Ganymedes brings together the otherworldly sound of an electronic hurdy-gurdy playing with amplified string quartet. And Reena Esmail’s Ragamala adds the mesmerizing sound of Hindustani vocals to a string quartet, evoking the tradition of sounding the raga as a starting point for elaboration and reflection.
This is an all-ages event. Join us for a drink and mingling with the composers at 6:30pm. Concert begins at 7:30pm.
I. Fantasie – Bihag Overlay II. Scherzo – Malkauns III. Recitativo – Basant IV. Rondo – Jog
Saili Oak vocals | Zelter Quartet
Samuel Carl ADAMS Études
I. Clear, resonant II. Rippling III. Steady, quiet IV. Rippling V. Steady, with a full sound VI. Clear, resonant
Conor Hanick piano
Études (vol. 1) was commissioned by Music Academy of the West. The first performance was given by the Piano Fellows of the Music Academy on July 17, 2023 at Hahn Hall, Santa Barbara, CA.
Samuel Adams (b. 1985) is an American composer whose music weaves acoustic and digital sound into “mesmerizing” (New York Times) orchestrations. Sought after by orchestras and contemporary ensembles alike, he has received commissions from a broad range of organizations including San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, The Australian Chamber Orchestra, and Spektral Quartet, and has collaborated with performers and conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, MTT, violinists Anthony Marwood, Jennifer Koh, Karen Gomyo, and pianists Emanuel Ax, Sarah Cahill, David Fung, and Joyce Yang.
The 2022-23 season highlights several world premieres including Echo Transcriptions, a new work for electric violin and orchestra commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra for Richard Tognetti. The work will be taken on a national tour of Australia in late 2022 and will receive North American performances in California and Toronto the following Spring. In February, pianist Conor Hanick and the San Francisco Symphony premiere a new work under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the following week, the Cincinnati Symphony premieres Adams’s Variations, a 2020 orchestral work co-commissioned by the CSO and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Other season highlights include a performance of Adams’s 2017 Chamber Concerto with violinist Karen Gomyo and the release of a new record featuring the Chicago-based Spektral Quartet.
Adams was Mead Composer In Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2015 to 2018 and in the 2021-22 season was the Composer in Residence with Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has held residencies at Civitella Ranieri (Umbria, IT), Djerassi Resident Artists Program (California, USA), Ucross (Wyoming, USA), and Visby International Centre for Composers (Gotland, SE). He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and lives and works in Seattle, WA.
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces.
Esmail’s life and music was profiled on Season 3 of PBS Great Performances series Now Hear This, as well as Frame of Mind, a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Esmail divides her attention evenly between orchestral, chamber and choral work. She has written commissions for ensembles including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Kronos Quartet, and her music has featured on multiple Grammy-nominated albums, including The Singing Guitar by Conspirare, BRUITS by Imani Winds, and Healing Modes by Brooklyn Rider. Many of her choral works are published by Oxford University Press.
Esmail is the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s 2020-2025 Swan Family Artist in Residence, and was Seattle Symphony’s 2020-21 Composer-in-Residence. She also holds awards/fellowships from United States Artists, the S&R Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Kennedy Center.
Esmail holds degrees in composition from The Juilliard School (BM’05) and the Yale School of Music (MM’11, MMA’14, DMA’18). Her primary teachers have included Susan Botti, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Theofanidis, Christopher Rouse and Samuel Adler. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India. Her Hindustani music teachers include Srimati Lakshmi Shankar and Gaurav Mazumdar, and she currently studies and collaborates with Saili Oak. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians explores the methods and challenges of the collaborative process between Hindustani musicians and Western composers.
Esmail was Composer-in-Residence for Street Symphony (2016-18) and is currently an Artistic Director of Shastra, a non-profit organization that promotes cross-cultural music connecting music traditions of India and the West.
She currently resides in her hometown of Los Angeles, California.
Sérgio Coelho was born in Portugal where he started learning clarinet and piano at the age of 9. Later he became a freelance musician and instructor in his native country where he performed regularly with the Orchestra Artave, Orchestra APROARTE and the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra. He taught at the Academia da Sociedade Filarmónica Vizelense and Escola das Artes do Alentejo Litoral where he maintained his clarinet studio and conducted youth orchestras.
Presently Coelho is a freelance musician in the Los Angeles area and he is the principal clarinet of the American Youth Symphony Orchestra. He performs regularly with orchestras from Los Angeles area such as Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Downey Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Sinfonietta and the Dream Orchestra. He was selected to be a substitute for the New World Symphony Orchestra and Runner-up for the Richmond Symphony Orchestra. Lead by passion by motion pictures, he recorded for some movies and television shows such as the Netflix show “Chefs Table”. Coelho demonstrates a great passion for new music.
As a member and founder of the woodwind trio “Sirius Trivium”, he won competitions and performed in festivals like the Harmus Festival in Oporto (2013) and the Festival Internacional de Música de Piantón during the summers of 2013 and 2014, where he performed and taught masterclasses.
Coelho made collaborated with the National Repertory Orchestra Festival and the Eastern Sierra Symphony Festival. In 2018 Coelho was invited to collaborate with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (New Zealand) during one month. As a soloist he had the opportunity to perform a solo with the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra and the USC Symphony Orchestra. About Coelho’s performance, Chad Lonski from the “Daily Trojan Newspaper” (Los Angeles, CA) described his interpretation of the Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto stating that, “Coelho’s performance was superb, to say the least, showcasing the heights of clarinet proficiency and taking the clarinet to its limits.” As a winner of the American Youth Symphony Concerto Competition, recently Coelho had the opportunity to perform the Corigliano clarinet concerto with this orchestra.
Coelho won prizes in national and international competitions such as: 1st Prize Winner, American Youth Symphony Concerto Competition (2018, USA), Semifinalist of the Jacques Lancelot International Clarinet Competition (2018, Japan), 1st Prize Winner, University of Southern California Concerto Competition (2015, USA), 2nd Prize Winner, Pasadena Showcase House Instrumental Competition (2014, USA), First Prize Winner, Inatel Prize (soloist prize from the Academia Superior de Orquestra da Metropolitana) (2013, Portugal), 3rd Prize Winner of the 8th Saverio Mercadante International Clarinet Competition (2012, Italy).
Coelho graduated with a Master of Music degree in Clarinet Performance at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, studying with Mr. Yehuda Gilad. During his Masters of Music degree he became a fellow of the Latin Grammy Awards Foundation after being selected for a scholarship from this institution. Coelho received his Bachelor of Music degree in Clarinet and Orchestra Performance in the Metropolitan National Academy of Orchestra, Portugal, where he studied with Mr. Nuno Silva.
Currently, he is pursuing an Artist Diploma Degree at the University of Southern California under the tutelage of Mr. Yehuda Gilad.
Conor Hanick
Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick has recently performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, been presented by the Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Caramoor, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Park Avenue Armory, and worked with conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, Alan Gilbert, and David Robertson.
A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich, to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Samuel Carl Adams, and Anthony Cheung. This season Hanick presents recitals in the US and Europe, including performances with Julia Bullock, Jay Campbell, Joshua Roman, Seth Parker Woods, AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), and the Takt Trio. Hanick also makes his San Francisco Performances debut at Herbst Theater, joins Sandbox Percussion at 92NY, returns to the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and, in Ojai as part of the California Festival, performs a new set of piano etudes by Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano concerto No Such Spring Hanick premiered last year to wide acclaim with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Hanick is the director of Solo Piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Mannes College, and the CUNY Graduate Center.
The epitome of the citizen-artist, Sidney Hopson slams out rhythms, articulates the power of the arts, and defines how culture orgs should act, like no one we’ve ever met. Genius of the dad joke, and aspiring curry-ist, Hopson’s mic is never unmuted at the wrong time on a digital meeting. He’s built a music program in Jordan to deter refugee-artists and their communities from joining regional terror organizations (who sought to exploit their economic vulnerability and despair). He’s designed and co-produced shows that challenged archaic notions of legitimacy and power, and actively worked to develop the platform of a political candidate whom he subsequently voted for. He’s failed over and over and (he reports) “often in rapid succession,” but he’s kept going. Hopson has made music with Peter Eötvös, Adele, Stevie Wonder, Ellen Reid, Garrett McQueen, Rhianna, and John Williams. He’s currently authoring a series of essays on the case for – and against – establishing a U.S. Secretary of Culture, Media, & Sport, developing domestic and foreign arts policy platform proposals for the Biden-Harris Administration, and perfecting his panang curry recipe.
Dylan Mattingly is a composer who creates music which offers ecstatic, transformative experience and provides an opportunity to alter the way we see our world and place within it. Many of Mattingly’s projects exist on a massive scale, the results of a dedication to the pursuit of bringing to life the most meaningful projects in the wild reaches of imagination — wherever that path leads — and building a path for the realization of these dreamworks from the ground up, often across many years. This practice has been informed by the decade-long process of creating, developing, and bringing to life Stranger Love, an ecstatic 6-hour durational opera, which offers a grand celebration of being alive. Stranger Love will see its premiere on May 20, 2023 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, commissioned by the LA Phil and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. At the heart of all of Mattingly’s work is a commitment to joy, and to what Hannah Arendt refers to as amor mundi — an ever-renewing quest to find the capacity to love the world, in the complex totality of its experience.
Mattingly’s music has been described as “gorgeous” by the San Francisco Chronicle, “transcendent” and “the most poignantly entrancing passages of beautiful music in recent memory” by LA Weekly, and “in the pantheon of contemporary American composers” (Prufrock’s Dilemma). Additionally, Mattingly is the Executive and Co-artistic Director of the NYC-based new-music ensemble Contemporaneous. With Contemporaneous, much of his work has focused on creating an opportunity for other composers and musical creators to follow their own wildest dreams, dedicating the resources of the organization to the creation of large-scale new work and allowing artists a path to create the work they most want to create, regardless of scale and conventional practical constraints.
Mattingly’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Ojai Music Festival, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Berkeley Symphony, the Del Sol String Quartet, Sarah Cahill, Kathleen Supové, the Albany Symphony, Contemporaneous, ZOFO Duet, John Adams, Marin Alsop, and many others. Mattingly was the Musical America “New Artist of the Month” for February 2013 and was awarded the Charles Ives Scholarship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2016. Mattingly has held residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Harrison House Music, Arts & Ecology, and holds a B.A. in Classics from Bard College, a B.M. in Music Composition from the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and an M.M. from the Yale School of Music. Mattingly lives in Berkeley, CA with his partner Hannah and dog Oly.
A native of Mumbai, began studying music at the age of 3. A finalist on the popular reality TV series “Zee Marathi SaReGaMaPa,” Oak is a senior disciple of Dr. Ashwini Bhide Deshpande, a leading vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana. Oak won the All India Classical music competition when she was barely 17. She completed her Sangeet Visharad from the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal and has earned awards including the prestigious Pt.Jasraj Yuva Award, Pt Vasantrao Deshpande Yuva Award, and the Gaanwardhan Award. Her performances have been admired for her meticulous architecture of ‘khayal,’ her systematic and well-crafted raga exploration and impressive command over the ‘laya.’
Oak is also known for her distinguished work in the Indian/Western Classical music crossover space. She has performed with notable western music ensembles including the Albany Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Tonality choir, Salastina Music Society. She has been featured on several albums including ‘Beyond’, ‘American Mirror’, ‘Sing about it’ and ‘KALA’.
Oak serves as the Programs Director of a non-profit organization ‘Shastra’, where she co-hosts the “Composing with Indian Voice” annual workshop in the U.S., and “Raga Meets Symphony” in India. She is also a Vocal Mentor for the non-profit organization Street Symphony in Los Angeles.
A passionate educator, Oak maintains a vocal studio ‘SailiMusic’ where she trains the next generation of upcoming artists and is a frequent guest speaker, panelist and workshop participant at conferences and universities across America. She has presented her work at the Composition in Asia Conference at the University of South Florida, taught master classes at the Salem State University, Smith College in Northampton MA, Kaufmann Music Center NY, and the University of Texas at Austin.
Apart from her musical training, Oak also holds a Master’s Degree in Accountancy and has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst Program by the CFA Institute, USA.
M.A. Tiesenga is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice delves into the intricate interplay of procedure and enaction within collaborative performance contexts, deftly shaping these dynamics through various idioms. Inspired by an affinity for the outdoors and puzzles, Tiesenga draws analogies between these concepts and the art of cartography, illuminating the parallels between a map and a musical score. This exploration opens doors to musically navigate, inhabit, and realize theoretical terrains.
As a composer, interdisciplinary artist, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser, Tiesenga seamlessly merges these creative identities, emphasizing the power of connection in their work. Tiesenga ventures beyond conventional score-making and interpretation, embracing the potential of expanded notation systems. Their lifelong passion for collage, maps, and asemic languages fuels an enchantment with encoding and decoding creative territories, allowing lexical approaches to transform into palpable musical expressions. Within their artistic vision, Tiesenga seeks to convey inner worlds where protocols and rules converge with intuition and mystique.
Tiesenga’s creative collaborations include work with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Wild Up, Théâtre Musical Tokyo, Long Beach Opera, Kunsthalle for Music, SPEAK Percussion, Dog Star Orchestra, Ensemble Supermusique, and ensembles at the Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, California Institute for the Arts, Yale University, and Darmstädter Ferienkurse.
Tiesenga holds an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices and an MFA in Experimental Animation with a Concentration in Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts, where they studied with Michael Pisaro, Sara Roberts, Eyvind Kang, Alexander Stewart, Pia Borg, and Tom Leeser. Previously, Tiesenga earned a Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music in saxophone performance under the guidance of Dr. Chien-Kwan Lin.
Praised by LA Opus for their “seemingly effortless precision and blend”, the Zelter String Quartet formed in Los Angeles in 2018. Recently, the quartet was awarded First Prize of the 2023 Plowman Chamber Music Competition, as well as being the Gold Prize Winners of the 2021 Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition. The quartet is comprised of violinists Kyle Gilner and Gallia Kastner, violist Carson Rick, and cellist Allan Hon. In 2019, the Zelter String Quartet was awarded a full scholarship to participate in the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar, where they worked with members of the St. Lawrence and Danish String Quartets. They were also invited to participate in the Rencontres Franco-Américaines de Musique de Chambre as part of the USC Thornton School of Music Ofiesh Chamber Music Competition in the Saint-Gildas-des-Bois area of France in 2020. Most recently, they participated in the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, and the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival, where they worked with the Pacifica, Escher, and American String Quartets.
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 is Musical America’s 2022 Artist of the Year, and a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist across the 2022/3, 2023/4 and 2024/5 seasons. Her latest recording, of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, was released to critical acclaim earlier this year, has been 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.
I hope this finds you enjoying the pleasures of summer. I have the good fortune to be at the Marlboro Music Festival as I write this, tucked away in a particularly idyllic corner of southern Vermont – which mercifully was spared the worst of the recent torrential rains elsewhere in the state.
I have had the luxury of time to reflect on the recent Festival and find myself immensely grateful for the company we keep, including each one of you who create such a unique and open-hearted community at each Festival.
The 2023 Ojai Festival is now a happy memory to be savored and cherished. We were so fortunate to be in the company of the wondrous Rhiannon Giddens and all the extraordinary artists she brought to create a particularly joyous Festival community. It is next to impossible to single out individual highlights in a Festival full of them. I will only dare mention a few — Rhiannon singing Paul Simon’s American Tune with an eloquence and a to-the-moment timeliness that brought tears to the eyes, the absolutely essential American story of Omar Ibn Said as told in Rhiannon and Michael Abels’ Omar’s Journey, the indelible musical and visual images created by Wu Man, PeiJu Chien-Pott and the Attacca Quartet in a new production of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera, the encounter with the enormous creativity and fresh voices of the Iranian Female Composers Association, Kayhan Kalhor’s spellbinding artistry, the infectious joy of Seckou Keita, and Francesco Turrisi’s boundless musical imagination in creating the special Early Music program for a Sunday morning. OK, I’ll stop at that as my own list could go on for another 30 or more highlights. If you are so inspired, please write to me with your own list of highlights.
Here at Marlboro, I delight in the company of Mitsuko Uchida, a co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music Festival and our Music Director for the 2024 Ojai Festival. Mitsuko, one of the most eloquent and probing musicians of our time, is making a long awaited return next year, joined by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (who themselves are returning to Ojai since their 2018 visit with Patricia Kopatchinskaja). Her close collaboration with this immensely creative and spirited ensemble is central to her work in recent years, as they have embarked on a multi-year exploration of the Mozart piano concertos together. She explains the importance of their partnership in this video:
MCO & Mitsuko Uchida: A New Chapter
Mitsuko has long been a champion of and mentor to several generations of young musicians at the Marlboro Festival. We will have the good fortune of being joined in Ojai with some of the most gifted artists on the American musical scene — clarinetist Anthony McGill, Brentano String Quartet, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, and violinist Alexi Kenney — all of whom have rich Marlboro history. More about each of them in the months to come.
Prior to coming to Marlboro, I had the pleasure of serving on the jury of the Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany. Marina Mahler, the granddaughter of Gustav Mahler, graced the proceedings as patron of the competition. When I first met Marina some years ago, I started a painstaking description of where and what Ojai is — she interrupted me to tell me that she had attended Ojai Valley School during her most formative years! So, there you have it — a direct link between the legacy of Gustav Mahler and Ojai! We became fast friends with this knowledge of our Ojai ties. I also had the deep pleasure of serving on the jury alongside Barbara Hannigan (2019 Music Director), who continues to light up the musical world wherever she goes. While there, I discovered that Barbara had assembled a very personal playlist for Apple Music, which characteristically documents her wide-ranging imagination and generosity of spirit. She has curated a list of performances by favorite musicians who, in her words, “allow audiences into a ‘heart-to-heart’ connection with whatever music they perform.” In a lovely confluence of Ojai artists, her list includes Rhiannon Giddens!
Finally, a reflection of loss. Kaija Saariaho, who died at the age of 70 in early June, made an indelible impression with her music and her presence at the 2016 Ojai Festival with Peter Sellars. Kaija was a singular creative force in our musical world, writing with a voice that was intensely personal and affecting, a sound world unlike any other composer. She was also a cherished friend to so many of the Festival musicians over the years. We can only be grateful for having her and her music in our lives. To bid farewell, here are the final three movements of her choral work Nuits, Adieux (1991) in a recording released just this month:
Nuits, adieux (Version for 4 Voices) : VIII. Adieu III – IX. Adieu IV – X. Adieu V
We are most fortunate in the company we keep. With thanks and warm greetings,
Sign your child up for a week of music, art, games, and storytelling with Ms. Laura. There is no previous musical experience required. BRAVO Music and Arts Camp is a productive way to expose your child to music for the first time or to develop an existing passion for music over the Summer. Session one has come to a close with 31 students, but it’s not too late to sign up for the second session!
Special thanks to our partners Ojai Parks and Recreation Department and BRAVO volunteers.
When: June 22-26, and August 10-14, 2026 Ages: 5-15 Fees: $125 + $25 materials fee; scholarships are available, all are welcome!
The Ojai Music Festival offers the world the experience of Libbey Bowl through free, high-quality live streaming. To watch the Live Streams of the 2023 concerts, click the following link:
Welcome to OJAICast, where we pull back the curtain to take a sneak-peek at the upcoming Ojai Music Festival, June 8 to 11, in beautiful Ojai Valley, California. All are welcome here, from newcomers to long-time music fans. In-depth insights and special guests will help introduce this year’s programming and whet your musical appetites for what’s to come with host Emily Praetorius.
Get an inside look at the creative process with our free Virtual Ojai Talks, where we celebrate the intersection of music and ideas with the 2023 Festival artists, composers, innovators, and thinkers. Virtual Talks are free and open to the musically curious!
Nasim Khorassani is an Iranian composer, visual artist, music educator, and founder of MMCiran. She is currently a PhD candidate in Music Composition working with Katharina Rosenberger, Marcos Balter, and Rand Steiger at the University of California San Diego. She studied her second masters’ with Andrew Rindfleisch and Greg D’Alessio at Cleveland State University. The University of Tehran was where she gained her first master’s and studied composition with Mohammad Reza Tafazzoli, Kiawasch Sahebnassagh, and Sara Abazari. Mainly as a self-taught composer, Nasim started composing at eight. However, her works did not receive any performance in Iran until 2016, when she moved to the United States. Since then, Nasim’s works have been performed by No Exit New Music Ensemble, Del Sol String Quartet, Patchwork Duo, Zeitgeist, OCAZEnigma, Loadbang, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Silkroad.
During her life in Iran, she managed to create and organize a group of music students that received the DAAD Study Visit scholarship in 2009 as the first Iranian group. In 2012, she met with Peter Ablinger and Klaus Lang in Tehran and performed their music. In 2013, Nasim became among five selected sound artists from Iran for Iran-UK Sonics residency in London, where she joined various workshops by Keith Rowe and Chris Watson and had her first experimental improvisation with Veryan Weston at Queen Elizabeth Hall. The trip to Germany as her introduction to modern dance expanded throughout her life, influencing the style of music composition she follows today. Nasim has founded a free online music academy, MMCiran, to support Persian students, which is now called and co-founded as MOAASER.
A winner of 2022 Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation competition, an awardee of National Sawdust’s Second International Hildegard Commission, and a 2019 recipient of Opera America’s Discovery Grant, Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s music has been performed at numerous festivals and venues including Carnegie Hall, Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center, and Direct Current Festival at the Kennedy Center.
A founding member and co-artistic director of Iranian Female Composers Association, Nourbakhsh is a strong advocate of music education and equal opportunities. She is currently co-artistic director of Peabody Conservatory Laptop Orchestra and teaches composition at Longy School of Music of Bard College. Niloufar holds a doctorate degree from Stony Brook University and regularly performs with her Ensemble Decipher.
Praised for his “vocal power and finesse” & “irresistible hijinks,” baritone Andy Papas is sought after for his impeccable musicianship and mastery of comic repertoire. In the 2022-2023 season, Papas is pleased to make his debut with Ojai Music Festival as Owen/Johnson in Omar’s Journey, roles which he recently covered in the Boston Lyric Opera production of Omar.
Also this season, Papas reprises the title role in Don Pasquale with Opera Saratoga and Union Avenue Opera. Last season, he returned to Anchorage Opera in one of his signature roles, Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance, which he also performed with Opera Naples. In 2022 he rejoined Opera Company of Middlebury as John Styx in Orphée aux Enfers, brought his celebrated Doctor Bartolo (Il barbiere di Siviglia) to Pacific Northwest Opera, and reprised his acclaimed Don Magnifico (La Cenerentola) at Fargo-Moorhead Opera. Papas has also sung Bartolo with Union Avenue Opera, Opera Theater of Connecticut, Anchorage Opera, Painted Sky Opera, and covered the role at Boston Lyric Opera. His committed, musically sophisticated performances have consistently earned him praise for “creating a character both sinister and silly,” and for his “rich voiced portrayals… of considerable aplomb.”
Other noteworthy recent engagements for Papas include the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos with Vashon Opera, Benoit in La bohème with The Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, Baron Zeta in The Merry Widow with Opera Saratoga, Pandolfe in Cendrillon with Opera Company of Middlebury; and the title role in Falstaff and Tonio in Pagliacci with Raylynmor Opera.
An accomplished performer on the musical theater stage, Papas has brought his acting prowess to roles such as Bumble in Oliver at New Repertory Theatre and as George/Lord Boxington in My Fair Lady at The Lyric Stage Company of Boston. He has also performed the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof at Music on Norway Pond, and delighted audiences as Chef Louis in The Little Mermaid for Fiddlehead Theater.
Papas can be heard on Bridge Records as Bugs/Gent, which he also performed with Opera Saratoga, on Albany Records as Stephano in the world premiere of composer Joseph Summer’s The Tempest, and on New World Records as part of White Snake Projects recording of The Ouroboros Trilogy: Naga.
Joshua Stauffer is a restless creative who performs music from over four centuries on a variety of plucked instruments. He began his career as an electric guitarist performing jazz and improvised music before transitioning to the classical guitar via contemporary works and chamber music. His diverse musical interests converged when he encountered the theorbo, a large lute that performs primarily basso continuo, or improvised accompaniment, in chamber and orchestral works from the 17th and early 18th centuries.
A keen interest in musical collaboration has taken Stauffer across the U.S. and around the globe, including concerts in Thailand, New Zealand, England, France, Switzerland, and Canada. He is a founding member and the executive director of Time Canvas, an ensemble dedicated to performing early music and new compositions on period instruments. Recent orchestral appearances include Portland Baroque Orchestra, Atlanta Baroque, and Ruckus, and performances as a guest artist at the Juilliard School, The Orchestra Now at Bard College, and the Festival de música de Santa Catarina, Brazil.
He received his Master of Music in historical plucked instruments at The Juilliard School in New York City. Previous studies include a Master of Music in classical guitar in the studio of Jason Vieaux at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a Bachelor of Music in jazz guitar at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Joshua Rubin is a clarinetist and former artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (iceorg.org). As a clarinetist, the New York Times has praised him as “incapable of playing an inexpressive note.” His interest in electronic music has led him to work to make these technologies easier to use for both composers and performers and to build platforms for collective management of ensembles.
He has collaborated with the foremost composers and performers of our time, and this season is featured in performances on modern and on historical clarinets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Houston, Geneva, Bergen, and Berlin. He is on the faculty of the New School, Ensemble Evolution, and soundSCAPE Festival in Switzerland, teaching clarinet and electronic music. He maintains an artistic presence in New York and Los Angeles.
Mitchell Carlstrom
Michael Jones
Kosuke Matsuda
Yongyun Zhang
Camilo Zamudio
Steven Schick, director
The New York Times has called red fish blue fish a “dynamic percussion ensemble from the University of California.” Founded more than 25 years ago by Steven Schick, the San Diego–based ensemble performs, records, and premieres works from the last 85 years of western percussion’s rich history. The group works regularly with living composers from every continent. Recent projects include the world premiere of Roger Reynolds’s Sanctuary and the American premiere of James Dillon’s epic Nine Rivers cycle with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). In the summer of 2011, red fish blue fish collaborated with George Crumb, Dawn Upshaw, and Peter Sellars to premiere the staged version of The Winds of Destiny. Eighth Blackbird invited red fish blue fish to join them in performances of works by American icons John Cage and Steve Reich at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The New York Times called their “riveting” John Cage performance the “highlight” of the program. In 2012 red fish blue fish presented four concerts of percussion music alongside Percussion Group Cincinnati at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington, DC, where they performed highlights from Cage’s collection of percussion works.
Recordings of the percussion chamber music of Iannis Xenakis and Roger Reynolds on Mode Records have been praised by critics around the world. Their recording of the early percussion works of Karlheinz Stockhausen received Germany’s award for the best recording of contemporary music in 2015.
red fish blue fish has had impact on new music percussion both by virtue of their many performances and acclaimed recordings, and also through their commitment to research and pedagogy as a resident ensemble at UCSD. The group’s numerous alumni of hold major teaching and artistic positions throughout the world.
![](https://www.ojaifestival.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/housatonic-Edited-Edited-scaled.jpg "OJAINEXT Event "Housatonic" with composer Annea Lockwood at Move Sanctuary in 2025")
![](https://www.ojaifestival.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/We-Speak-Mingling-1.jpg "OJAINEXT Event "We Speak" held at Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Gallery in 2024")
![](https://www.ojaifestival.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/9de7b4a4-01ac-47a3-94e4-70ffbdfd10a5.jpg "OJAINEXT Event "We Speak" held at Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Gallery in 2024")
Joshua Rubin is a clarinetist and former artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (iceorg.org). As a clarinetist, the New York Times has praised him as “incapable of playing an inexpressive note.” His interest in electronic music has led him to work to make these technologies easier to use for both composers and performers and to build platforms for collective management of ensembles.
Mitchell Carlstrom