An Open Invitation to Explore: Highlights of Ojai 2013
AN OPEN INVITATION TO EXPLORE
by Christopher Hailey
Walk right in, sit right down/Daddy, let your mind roll on. Not that we’ll be hearing Gus Cannon’s 1929 country blues classic at the 2013 Ojai Music Festival, but his lyrics are a perfect fit for what Mark Morris has in store for us. It’s an informal, open-ended invitation to explore some of the most mind-expanding music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. American voices mostly, mostly West Coast, and very in the box: Lou Harrison, his teacher Henry Cowell, his friend and colleague John Cage, their patron saint, Charles Ives, and a couple of latter-day disciples in Terry Riley and John Luther Adams. Names we know, music we don’t. These are composers who have all challenged conventional High/Low, East/West, Music/Noise dichotomies and embraced what Morris calls a more inclusive idea of “Culture”.
Accordingly we’ll hear unusual mixtures of styles and instruments as in Harrison’s Concerto for Piano and Gamelan, Cowell’s Atlantis for voices, percussion and strings, and John Luther Adams’ songbirdsongs for percussion, piccolos and celesta (performed by red fish blue fish, the MMDG Music Ensemble, and UC Berkeley Gamelan Sari Raras). In the same spirit, we’ll see the Mark Morris Dance Group performs to string quartets by Cowell (played by the legendary American String Quartet), hear little-known songs by Cage, Cowell, Harrison, and Ruggles, and experience Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in an arrangement by the amazing The Bad Plus jazz trio. Morris has even re-imagined the concert experience itself by separating shorter, discrete musical segments with generous intervals that encourage the audience to discuss and explore. And there will be lots to explore because Morris aims to make year’s Ojai Festival a “valley-wide” experience with scheduled and spontaneous events scattered about town – extra concerts, films, talks, social dancing, toy pianos, and possibly even a marching band down Ojai Avenue. People on the move, taking notice, getting involved: Everybody’s talkin’’bout a new way of walkin’. And listening – thanks to Lou, Henry, John, and Charles.
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Press Kit
Welcome to the Festival’s virtual press room. Please call a member of our press team to set up interviews or for more information.
Press team:
Gina Gutierrez, Director of Marketing and Communications
805 646 2094 ext. 104 | [email protected]
Nikki Scandalios, National/International
704 340 4094 | [email protected]
Laura Cohen, Regional
310 867 3897 | [email protected]
Ojai Music Festival Press Kit
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Festival Bio
The Ojai Spirit, by Christopher Hailey
Festival Milestones
Roster of Music Directors
Quotes from the Artists
Excerpts from the Press
Eva Soltes, filmmaker
Eva Soltes – Filmmaker/Performing Arts Producer has, over the course of her decades-long career, produced, directed and/or written nearly one thousand music, dance, theater and media works for national and international audiences. Soltes has also facilitated the creation of new work by gifted artists and documented historic figures who would otherwise have been under-recognized.
Yulia Van Doren, soprano
Recently recognized by Opera Magazine as “A star-to-be” following her Lincoln Center debut, young Russian-American soprano Yulia Van Doren’s recent debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra was acclaimed as “This year’s big revelation… a ravishing lyric voice and an ease with vocal ornamentation that turned her into an enchanted songbird” (Toronto Star).
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John Adams
Composer, conductor, and creative thinker – John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His works, both operatic and symphonic, stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Over the past 25 years, Adams’s music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language, entirely characteristic of his New World surroundings.
Leif Ove Andsnes, 2012 Music Director
The New York Times has called Leif Ove Andsnes “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power and insight.” With his commanding technique and searching interpretations, the celebrated Norwegian pianist has won worldwide acclaim, prompting the Wall Street Journal to call him “one of the most gifted musicians of his generation.” He gives recitals and plays concertos each season in the world’s leading concert halls and with the foremost orchestras.
Eivind Buene
Eivind Buene studied pedagogics and composition at the Norwegian State Academy of Music from 1992 to 1998, and in 1999 and 2000 he was composer in residence with the Oslo Sinfonietta. Since 2000 he has been a freelance composer living and working in Oslo, writing for a wide array of ensembles and orchestras. He has recieved commissions from among others Ensemble Intercontemporain, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Fondation Royaumont and most of the Norwegian Orchestras and ensembles.
Antoine Tamestit, Viola
Antoine Tamestit was born in Paris and studied with Jean Sulem, Jesse Levine and Tabea Zimmermann. He was the recipient of several coveted prizes which lauched him at the highest level – First Prize at the Maurice Vieux Competition (Paris, 2000) and the William Primrose Competition (Chicago, 2001), First Prize at the Young Concert Artists (YCA) International Auditions which led to his New York, Boston and Washington recital debuts in 2003. In September 2004, he took First Prize at the 53rd ARD Munich International Music Competition.
Lucy Shelton, soprano
Winner of two Walter W. Naumburg Awards—as chamber musician and solo recitalist—soprano Lucy Shelton continues to enjoy an international career bringing her dramatic vocalism and brilliant interpretive skills to repertoire of all periods. An esteemed exponent of 20th- and 21st-century repertory, she has premiered over 100 works.
Christianne Stotijn, Mezzo Soprano
Mezzo soprano Christianne Stotijn was born in Delft, the Netherlands and received her first solo diploma for violin in 2000. She then Pursued intensive vocal studies with Udo Reinemann at the Amsterdam Conservatory graduating cum laude. S he furthered her studies with Jard van Nes, Noelle Barker and Dame Janet Baker.
Steven Schick, percussion/director
Percussionist, conductor and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. For the past thirty years he has championed contemporary percussion music as a performer and teacher, by commissioning and premiering more than one hundred new works for percussion. Schick is Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego and a Consulting Artist in Percussion at the Manhattan School of Music.
Norwegian Chamber Orchestra
The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1977 under the leadership of Terje Tonnesen, who still works as the orchestra’s Music Director. For many years he worked in parallel with Iona Brown, who was Music and Artistic Director until 2001. Isabelle van Keulen will share the position as Music Director together with Tonnesen and with Leif Ove Andsnes as Principal Guest Director from the start of the 2009/10 season.
Marc-Andre Hamelin, piano
Marc-André Hamelin’s unique blend of musicianship and virtuosity brings forth interpretations remarkable for their freedom, originality, and prodigious mastery of the piano’s resources. Long known for his bold exploration of unfamiliar pianistic terrain, Mr. Hamelin has increasingly turned his attention to the established masterworks of the piano literature, in performances and recordings of the piano sonatas of Haydn, major works by Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin and others.
Martin Fröst, clarinet
Martin Fröst is internationally recognized as one of the most exciting wind players around today. Forthcoming concerts include debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic with Osmo Vänskä (performing Kalevi Aho’s Concerto which was commissioned for him by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust), Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, NHK Symphony Orchestra under Sir Neville Marriner, and both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Radio Chamber Orchestra (at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw).
Hafliði Hallgrímsson
One of the most important figures in the current flowering of Icelandic music is Hafliði Hallgrímsson, born in 1941 in the small town of Akureyri on the north coast of Iceland. He began playing the cello at the age of ten and studied in Reykjavik and Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome. On returning from Rome, he continued his studies in London with Derek Simpson at the Royal Academy of Music and was awarded the coveted Madame Suggia Prize in 1966.
Bent Sørensen
“It reminds me of something I’ve never heard.” Such was the spontaneous reaction of the Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim upon hearing a work by Bent Sørensen. And it is not easy to imagine a more strangely to-the-point description of the ambiguous, almost paradoxical expressive idiom of this unique composer, who is without doubt the leading Danish composer of his generation. Sørensen’s music is not recycled, in no way does it rely on the yellowing pages of history for its musical nourishment his musical language is undeniably of the present day, both aesthetically and technically.
Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano
With polished, elegant vocalism and committed dramatic portrayals on-stage, American mezzo-soprano Jamie Van Eyck appeals to audiences and critics alike as a compelling young artist in opera and concert. This season, she makes her New York City recital debut with pianist Jocelyn Dueck in a performance sponsored by The Casement Fund.
Douglas Williams, bass-baritone
“The gifted young bass-baritone Douglas Williams” (Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times) combines a “formidable stage presence” (Seattle Times) with “a bass voice of splendid solidity” (Bernard Jacobson, Music Web International), making him one of the most appealing singing actors of the younger generation. He has collaborated with leading conductors including Helmut Rilling, Sir Neville Marriner, John Nelson, and Christoph Rousset in such prestigious venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Stuttgart’s Mozart-Saal, and the Frankfurt Alte Oper.
Learn more about 2013 Music Director Mark Morris
MARK MORRIS was born on August 29, 1956, in Seattle, Washington, where he studied with Verla Flowers and Perry Brunson. In the early years of his career, he performed with the Koleda Balkan Dance Ensemble, and later the dance companies of Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, Laura Dean, and Eliot Feld. He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980, and has since created more than 130 works for the company. From 1988-1991, he was Director of Dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the national opera house of Belgium. Among the works created during his time there were three evening-length dances: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato; Dido and Aeneas; and The Hard Nut. In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Morris is also a ballet choreographer and has created eight works for the San Francisco Ballet since 1994 and received commissions from many others. His work is also in the repertory of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, New Zealand Ballet, Houston Ballet, English National Ballet, and The Royal Ballet. Morris, named music director of the 2013 Ojai Music Festival, is noted for his musicality and has been described as “undeviating in his devotion to music.” He has conducted performances for the Mark Morris Dance Group since 2006. He has worked extensively in opera, directing and choreographing productions for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, English National Opera, and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden.
In 1991, he was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation. He has received eleven honorary doctorates to date. In 2006, Morris received the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Mayor’s Award for Arts & Culture and a WQXR Gramophone Special Recognition Award “for being an American ambassador for classical music at home and abroad.” He is the subject of a biography, Mark Morris, by Joan Acocella (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Marlowe & Company published a volume of photographs and critical essays entitled Mark Morris’ L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato: A Celebration. Morris is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. In recent years, he has received the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (2007), the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society (2010), and the Benjamin Franklin Laureate Prize for Creativity (2012).
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Carl Ruggles
Writing only 84 minutes of music in the entirety of his career, Carl Ruggles’ eight published works nonetheless attest to his complete dedication to atonality and ultra-modernism. Ruggle’s prickly personality was paired with a meticulously deliberate compositional process – Michael Tilson Thomas recalled visiting the composer and hearing him play “every sonority, every chord . . . once, twice, 10, 20, 50, perhaps hundreds of times, as loud as he could, because as he said to me, ‘I thought that if I could still stand the sound . . . after a hundred times or so, it would sound pretty good a couple of hundred years from now!”
Wu Man, pipa
Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and as a leading ambassador of Chinese music, US-based, Chinese-born musician Wu Man has carved out a career creating and fostering projects that give this ancient instrument a new role in today’s music world, not only introducing the instrument to new audiences, but commissioning and premiering over a hundred new works to grow the core repertoire. A Grammy Award-nominated artist, her adventurous musical spirit has also led to her becoming a respected expert on the history and preservation of Chinese musical traditions, reflected in her recorded and live performances and multi-cultural collaborations.