Memories & Moments

“The first time I visited, in 2001, I had no idea of the beauties to be found in this eclectic small town that has played host to some of music’s greatest luminaries. There is a very special spirit of collaboration here, fostered in part by the gorgeous natural setting and also by the friendly engagement of everyone involved. Singing the music of John Adams, Luciano Berio, and Osvaldo Golijov in three Ojai Festivals over the past decade has been a true highlight for me.”

–Dawn Upshaw, Music Director (2001)

“After nearly a dozen appearances at the Ojai Music Festival, it is difficult to choose highlights.  Certainly, among the brightest moments would include working with close personal friends Claire Chase and Vijay Iyer in their years as music director.  I also remember a poignant performance from the mid1990’s—the US premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Six Japanese Gardens—in which Kaija’s musical rain drops, inspired by her visit to the lush Moss Garden at Saiho-ji, were echoed by real drops from the massive oaks surrounding the Libbey Bowl in an unusual and beautiful foggy night.  But the true gift to me was the chance to be Music Director in 2015.  My favorite moment of that year was finishing a performance of Appalachian Spring a little after midnight and beginning the next concert just a few hours later for a crowd that camped out at the Arts Center.  I always wondered what it felt like for our audience to wake up to Morton Feldman’s glorious 5-hour piece, For Philip Guston. Another “only-in-Ojai” moment to add to the treasure trove of extraordinary experiences at the festival.”   

–Steven Schick, Music Director (2015)

“On June 12, 2011 I was in Libbey Bowl listening to Dawn Upshaw sing – and the Australian Chamber Orchestra play – the premier of Maria Schneider’s “Winter Morning Walks,” a piece commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival. The piece, set to the poems of Ted Kooser written on the American plains, evoked for me nostalgic images of my native Midwestern landscape. This is still one of the most memorable performances I’ve experienced, and I can still picture the stage, the orchestra, and the wintery images playing in my mind’s eye. Because of that moment, I attend Maria Schneider’s concerts any chance that I get!”  

– Kathryn Haydon, Festival Patron

“On June 11, 2017, at the Ojai Music Festival in Southern California, I was one of several hundred witnesses to one of the final performances of pianist-composer Muhal Richard Abrams (1930–2017). Abrams was appearing in trio with two longtime colleagues, multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell (b. 1940) and trombonist/electronic musician George Lewis (b. 1952); all three were members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a long-standing aggregate of African American composer-performers formed in 1963 on Chicago’s South Side. 

In this trio’s music-making, a guiding aesthetic invariably revealed itself: a profoundly committed ethos of rigorous listening, plaintive sonic inquiry, and elemental construction. 

That morning in Ojai, as the music proceeded in what initially appeared as irresolvable clumps, the three men carried themselves with an uncanny composure, displaying a faith in some mysterious process. Musical acts were conjured in real time, seemingly from scratch but somehow with great foresight: fragments and shards of sound from Mitchell’s soprano saxophone, plangent clusters and raw gestures from Abrams’ piano, digitally processed and multiplied drones from Lewis’ trombone. The music grew steadily more significant, as each new bit of material revealed new counterpoints and conjunctures, and the gently ebbing episodes stirred up subtle energies.

In just under an hour, as this calm, resourceful enactment of musical interdependence drew to a close, the entire Libby Bowl audience solemnly held onto the gravity of the moment, before erupting in an ecstatic ovation. It was one of the greatest performances I have ever witnessed.”

– Vijay Iyer, Music Director (2017)

UNFORGETTABLE

In June of 2008, patrons of the Ojai Music Festival were still sitting on the old wooden benches.

Although less comfortable, with trickier sight lines and spotty access to shade, those benches had one advantage and it was this: If you had a pal sitting as a singleton elsewhere, and he wanted to tuck himself in with you and your friends for company, there was always room for one more.

For years I sat with Margaret and Fritz Menninger, and Ara often joined us in a companionable squeeze. And that’s how intermission at that year’s Sunday evening concert found the four of us, held in the magical lighting of an Ojai dusk, resurfacing from the trance-like immersion of hearing Dawn Upshaw (soprano) and Kate Lindsey (mezzo-soprano) perform Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.

During the applause that followed, Margaret leaned in to let Ara and I know that she and Fritz wouldn’t be returning for the concert’s second half. As the audience rose to stretch their legs and mingle, I went out into the crowd to find my daughter and tell her she could come sit with me.

We were just settling in as the final bell chimed for intermission’s end, and that’s when I looked up the aisle and saw that Ara had had a similar thought about the empty seat—he was approaching with Dawn Upshaw at his side.

I quickly made a decision, and it was not the maternal one. I urged my daughter to climb into an empty seat behind me — no time to explain —and watched as Ms. Upshaw entered our row. Audience members on either of her extended palms and compliments as she passed, looking, in my memory at least, like long stemmed tulips bending towards the light.

She was, I would find out, so gentle, so kind. The musicians began to take the stage, and she asked me if it was OK that she had sat there? Was I sure? Hadn’t someone had to scramble into the next row? I waved away her concerns and acted as though I didn’t even know who that person was.

I have so many lovely memories of the festival, but this, I’m pretty sure, is my favorite. It captures the spirit of friendship that collects around each new season, and the connections we’re able to make with the artists. In June of 2014 I came upon Johnny Gandelsman in the park and we learned we shared friends in Brooklyn. In 2016 I reached to shake hands with Peter Sellers at a local restaurant, and he pulled me in for a hug. I think he hugged dozens, maybe hundreds of concert-goers during that weekend.

In truth, the Music Festival can feel like one giant hug. It’s the birds singing along with Messiaen in the trees, and the people you reconnect with at the beginning of each new summer. It’s the dancers who come down from the stage and begin to wind their way through the aisles. It’s the Pulitzer-prize winning composer who makes an instrument of a plant’s spreading leaves. It’s the experiences you can never predict… and the moments you’ll never forget.

– Lisa Cervantes, Festival Patron