One-Night Only!
When: SAT 01.31.26 | 6pm to 10pm
Where: The Red Canteen, 703 El Paseo Road (former Matilija Cafeteria)
Ojai Music Festival and Black Barn Sessions present Sound Unseen, a unique musical experience where the visual element of the performance is removed, and the audience is enveloped in sound as the music fills the space and surrounds the listeners. Featuring performers from LA-based orchestral collective Wild Up and a new composition by Mattie Barbier. Creative concept by Will Thomas and Chris Hacker.
How it will work: There will be four music sessions starting at 6pm for attendees to select from, each being 45-minutes in length. Additional details to come when tickets go on sale in the new year.
Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday 01.07.26.
Sound Unseen is part of the Ojai Music Festival’s Creative Lab series. Special thanks to the City of Ojai and Arts Commission for funding this initiative.
About Wild Up
Called “a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant…fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” (The New York Times), Wild Up has been lauded as one of new music’s most exciting groups by virtually every significant institution and critic within earshot. Artistic Director Christopher Rountree started the orchestral collective in 2010 to eschew outdated concert traditions by experimenting with different methodologies, approaches, and contexts.
After a decade and a half of rampant creativity and curiosity Wild Up is an ambassador of West Coast music. The group has collaborated with a wide range of composers, performers, and cultural institutions, premiering and creating hundreds of new works. They accompanied Björk at Goldenvoice’s FYF Fest, sung into a Picasso with Pamela Z at LACMA, and created Democracy Sessions—playing against growing autocracy with Raven Chacon, Ted Hearne, Chana Porter, Ursula K. LeGuin, Harmony Holiday, Saul Williams, and Karlheinz Stockhausen at MOCA. They premiered David Lang and Mark Dion’s anatomy theater at LA Opera, often collaborated with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and performed scores for Under the Skin by Mica Levi and Punch-Drunk Love by Jon Brion at the Regent Theater and Ace Hotel. They were booed out of Toronto for playing a piece too quietly. Wild Up premiered a new opera by Julia Holter at National Sawdust, debuted an avant-pop work by Scott Walker at Walt Disney Concert Hall, sustained 12 hours of Ragnar Kjartansson’s Bliss at REDCAT, and championed Julius Eastman’s music worldwide. They blared a noise concert as a fanfare for the groundbreaking of Frank Gehry’s building on Grand Avenue and First Street. The group has been lavished with praise by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR, Pitchfork, and many more publications and critics.
Their decade-long, critically acclaimed, multi-Grammy nominated Julius Eastman Anthology has been celebrated as “a masterpiece” (The New York Times), “instantly recognizable” (Vogue), and “singularly jubilant…a bit in your face, sometimes capricious, and always surprising” by NPR, which named the anthology’s first installment, Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine, among its top 10 records of 2021 in all genres.
About Mattie Barbier
Mattie Barbier is a LA-based musician and sonic researcher focused on experimental intonation, latent acoustic worlds, and the physical processes of their instrument. Their playing has been described by the LA Times as being “of intense, brilliant, virtuosic growling that gave the striking impression that Barbier was dismantling the instrument while playing it,” by the Wire as “exploring the nooks of instrumental tone far beyond the reach of most mortals,” and by the New Yorker as being a “diabolically inventive trombonist-composer.”Mattie engages in collaborative relationships with a range of musicians including Weston Olencki, Ellen Arkbro, Clara Iannotta, Sarah Davachi, Michelle Lou, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Jacob Kirkegaard, and Katherine Young. As an interpreter they have given premieres by and collaborated with a broad spectrum of sonic practitioners including George Lewis, Catherine Lamb, Liza Lim, Lester St. Louis, Kevin Drumm, Kaori Suzuki, Raven Chacon, Chaya Czernowin, Nate Wooley, and British pop maverick, Scott Walker. Additionally, they have performed as an orchestral soloist with the Helsinki Philharmonic, SWR Symphonieorchester, and Wild Up.Mattie is a member of RAGE Thormbones, wildUp, echoi, Diapason, and is an active soloist and improviser on low brass instruments and bagpipes. They teach at CalArts.Mattie has presented and created work with and for the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Getty Center and Villa, Monday Evening Concerts, Lampo, San Francisco Exploratorium, Indexical, Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, Bemis Center’s LOW END, Roulette Intermedium, NyMusikk, RedCat, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Apparat, Factory Seconds Brass Trio, and Issue Project Room as well as in collaboration with holographer Tristan Duke. They have made a wide array festival appearances including: Borealis (NO), IMD Darmstadt (DE), Donaueschinger (DE), Musica Nova Helsinki (FI), Maerzmusik (DE), Bludenz Tage zeitgemäßer (AT), Spor (DK), Chicago’s Frequency Festival, Dartington International Summer School (UK), Kalv Festival (SE), JAMA (SK), Minu (DK), and the 2025 Ojai Music Festival. Mattie has held guest residencies at a broad spectrum of institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, UCSD, and the University of Chicago. Various recording projects as a soloist and ensemble member have been released on Sofa Music, Dinzu Artifacts, Carrier, Tripticks, Populist, Mode, Hat Hut, Innova, Late Music, Faux Amis, Ideologic Organ, New Focus, Domino, New Amsterdam, and Kairos Records.