Bent Sorensen Wins BASCA Award
Danish composer Bent Sorensen’s piano concerto, La Mattina, was presented with a 2011 British Composer Award sponsored by BASCA (British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors), which recognizes contemporary classical music showing “flair, originality and the power of communication.” La Mattina, which was written for Leif Ove by Mr. Sorensen, will receive its West Coast premiere during the Festival’s June 9 evening concert.
Leif Ove Andsnes and eighth blackbird Earn Grammy Nominations
2012 Music Director Leif Ove Andsnes received two Grammy nominations for his recording of Rachmaninov with the London Symphony Orchestra in the ‘Best Classical Instrumental Solo’ and ‘Best Engineered Album’ categories.
Another Grammy nod goes to composer Steve Mackey’s “Lonely Motel,” which the 2009 Music Director eighth blackbird premiered at the Festival as Slide. The work received nominations both for ensemble performance and contemporary classical composition.
View the 2012 Festival curated by Leif Ove Andsnes
Read the rest of the Classical Music Grammy nominations
Andsnes and Hamelin: A Music World Bromance
Ah, collaborative friendships…sometimes two minds really are better than one. From Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to Spock and Captain Kirk, the “bromance” is alive and well in all areas of popular culture. But they aren’t just for movies or books…if you know where to look, bromances can be found in the world of music as well.
For instance, take pianists Leif Ove Andsnes of Norway and Marc André-Hamelin of Canada, who are prolific collaborators on stage and good friends off it. Take a look at this behind-the-scenes video as they prepare for a rehearsal of Stravinsky’s arrangement of Rite of Spring for two pianos as part of Risør in Brussels last year…you’ve got to love the debate over which piano to take!
As both artists mention in the video, the piano arrangement offers a different interpretation of the regularly-heard orchestral version, and may not even have been intended for concert performance. Luckily for us, Andsnes and Hamelin are going to bring the dual piano version–and their rehearsal antics–to Ojai for the Sunday Night Concert. We hope you’ll join us and help welcome one of the bromances of the music world to the Ojai Music Festival in June 2012!
Leif Ove…it’s like Billy-Joe or Jean-Pierre…
During a recent Facebook conversation with our Ojai Music Festival friends, the question was posed “How DO you pronounce 2012 Music Director Leif Ove Andsnes‘ name?” – a very valid question, indeed. So, we went trolling on the internet to make sure we could answer this correctly, and it seems that this has been asked before… In a 1996 article for the Baltimore Sun, Andsnes explained, “It’s really not that difficult,” says the pianist, 26, speaking by telephone from California where he was performing Beethoven with the San Francisco Symphony. “It’s ‘LAYff oo-VAY ANS-ness’,” he says. “Just keep in mind that, in Scandinavian double first names, the second one is as important as the first — like ‘Billy Joe’ or ‘Jean-Pierre.’ ” So when we see him in Ojai next June we’ll be certain to welcome him confidently as Leif Ove...
You can read the complete article by clicking here .
Check out what Leif Ove and his artistic collaborators have in store for us at the 2012 Festival
The Festival Advantage
Each fall, about 15 of my peers who lead the top classical music festivals of the Western United States gather. This year, we converged in Portland for three days of lively discussion about the future of audiences, role of the Internet in reaching audiences and artists, ways we can collaborate on various projects, and learning more about the artistic successes of each of our pursuits. As I made my way back to Ojai, I was struck by the advantage festivals have over traditional orchestras, in that we have much greater freedom and opportunity to explore a broader range of repertoire and more meaningful ways of connecting to our audiences.
Ojai in particular holds a great advantage in that all of its concerts and events are packed into just four days. There is no other festival that offers so many opportunities in such a condensed time period. This also gives Ojai another advantage that all of its artists are present at the same time. Rarely do audience members or artists come in and out during the festival…you are either in Ojai for the festival or not!
While it is clear that each festival is working significantly harder to maintain their programs (Ojai is not an exception to this!), each of us are still finding new, passionate audiences for our work when we hold a clear artistic perspective and stick with it.
…….for those of you who know or plan to visit Portland, let me share a few highlights. We ate at Andino Peruvian Tapas restaurant in the Pearl District. This was a fantastic restaurant and we were feted with a taste of the entire menu! My favorites were the empanadas, ceviche, and hand made licorice chocolate truffles. The space was also quite interesting as it had many different rooms and nooks. I also enjoyed starting my day at the Pearl Bakery with one of their incredible breads cooked on the premises. Finally, a highlight of the trip was meeting Michael Powell, owner of the famous Powells Books. He hosted us for a reception in his rare book room and we talked about how he has made book buying an experience and not just a transaction. Of course, Portland was cloudy most of the time, but the periodic rain adds to the charm of this vibrant city. Next year, Aspen…
A gathering among friends
Last week’s Annual General Meeting was a bit like the Festival itself…a reunion of close friends getting together, swapping stories and talking about what they enjoyed at the Festival, and of course, what they didn’t. After all, this was the Ojai Festival crowd, and that meant plenty of provocative and lively discussion at every table!
There were many highlights to the lovely afternoon at the Ranch House, but what everyone eagerly waited upon was getting inside details of the 2012 Festival from Artistic Director Tom Morris. Tom shared that he and Music Director Leif Ove Andsnes had been working over the past months to craft a program that reflects Andsnes’ wide-ranging and diverse interests. Like the reputable Risor Festival in Norway which he helped co-found, Ojai will embrace a sense of community not only between artists on the stage, but between audience and artists. We can expect some adventurous mix of elements and as Tom said a “wall-to-wall’ weekend of music and discussion.
Tom also highlight that Ojai already places music of our time at the center of what it does, but unlike some contemporary music festivals that concentrate on just what’s new, Ojai builds a case for how the music of today fits into the context of the longer musical historical conversation.
More discussions on this very topic will start to percolate these next several months and definitely during the Festival. Stay tuned!
Leif Ove Andsnes, 2012 Music Director
LEIF OVE ANDSNES, 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. Andsnes is also an active recording artist, as well as an avid chamber musician who has joined select colleagues each summer at Norway’s Risør Festival of Chamber Music. He will serve as Music Director of the 2012 Ojai Music Festival in California.
Beethoven will figure prominently in Leif Ove Andsnes’s 2011-12 season and beyond, in concerto performances, recitals and recordings. Together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jiří Bělohlávek, he will perform the Third Concerto in London and on tour in Spain. Soon after, he performs the First Concerto with the Vienna Symphony and Andris Nelsons, including concerts in Vienna’s Musikverein. Andsnes will play the same two concertos with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in Gothenburg and Oslo. He then heads to North America for a series of fall performances of the First Concerto: with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck; the Montreal Symphony with Roger Norrington; and, in January, the Boston Symphony under David Zinman, before returning to the Third Concerto, which he performs with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Herbert Blomstedt. Andsnes will play and direct both concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra in Örebro, Sweden; and with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra in Trondheim, Norway. He will tour with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Italy – including performances in Brescia, Lugano, Torino, Bergamo – as well as Dresden, Prague, and Bergen. The Prague concerts will be recorded live by Sony Classical – his label debut – and are the beginning of a multi-year project, entitled “Beethoven – A Journey,” to play and record all five of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos.
Other highlights of the 2011-12 season include performances of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Hannover’s NDR Radiophilharmonie, Japan’s NHK Symphony, and his hometown orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic. While in Japan, he will also give recitals in Tokyo and Nagoya. Music by Chopin, Debussy, Bartók and Haydn will be featured on a recital program in North America and Europe. The first leg of the tour includes performances in Los Angeles; Morrow and Savannah, Georgia; Washington, DC; New York’s Carnegie Hall; Chapel Hill, NC; and Chicago. A nine-city European tour includes performances in Schloss Elmau (Munich), Brussels, Oslo, Paris, Birmingham, London, Florence, Genova, and Berlin. A spring recital tour featuring songs by Mahler and Shostakovich brings Andsnes back to the States for performances with baritone Matthias Goerne in San Francisco, St. Paul, Kalamazoo, Detroit, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Among the many highlights of Leif Ove Andsnes’s 2010-11 season were two residencies: as Pianist in Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he performed five diverse programs including chamber music, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with conductor Bernard Haitink, and a solo recital. He also served as Artist in Residence with his hometown orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic. He toured Europe with the London Philharmonic and Vladimir Jurowski as well as Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and performed concertos with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris.
Last fall, EMI Classics released a recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 with Andsnes, Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra; in the spring his recording of Schumann’s complete Piano Trios with violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his sister, cellist Tonja Tetzlaff was also released on EMI Classics.
Leif Ove Andsnes now records exclusively for Sony Classical. His previous discography comprises more than 30 discs for EMI Classics – solo, chamber and concerto releases, many of them bestsellers – spanning repertoire from Bach to the present day. He has been nominated for seven Grammys and awarded many international prizes, including five Gramophone Awards. His recordings of the music of his countryman, Edvard Grieg, have been especially celebrated: the New York Times named Andsnes’s 2004 recording of the Piano Concerto with Mariss Jansons and the Berlin Philharmonic a “Best CD of the Year,” and the Penguin Guide awarded it a coveted “Rosette.” Like that Concerto recording, his disc of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces won a Gramophone Award. His recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos 9 and 18 was another New York Times “Best of the Year” and Penguin Guide “Rosette” honoree. He won yet another Gramophone Award for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with Antonio Pappano and the Berlin Philharmonic. A series of recordings of Schubert’s late sonatas – innovatively paired with selected songs sung by Ian Bostridge – prompted lavish acclaim, with the Chicago Tribune calling one release “Schubert playing of the highest order throughout.”
Andsnes was born in Karmøy, Norway in 1970, and studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under the renowned Czech professor Jiří Hlinka. Andsnes currently lives in Copenhagen and Bergen, and also spends much time at his mountain home in Norway’s western Hardanger area. He is a Professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, a Visiting Professor at the Royal Music Conservatory of Copenhagen, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Andsnes occasionally contributes written commentaries to NPR’s “Deceptive Cadence” blog, and in June 2010, he achieved one of his proudest accomplishments to date: he became a father for the first time.
For more, visit www.andsnes.com >>
Leif Ove Andsnes
This is the trailer for the 2012 Ojai Music Festival, featuring the 2012 Music Director, Leif Ove Andsnes.
Hear Dawn Upshaw Sing Donnacha Dennehy
Long known as a promoter of new composers and modern music, the recent Dawn Upshaw collabroations with Donnacha Dennehy are so right as to seem almost inevitable. Earlier this year, Ms. Upshawn joined Mr. Dennehy and the Crash Ensemble in Dublin for a performance of his new works. The album they produced together “Gra Agus Bas” comes out on May 3. For an advance review and music samples, check out the NPR story here.
Frank Kimbrough on Maria Schneider
I’ve been working with Maria since March of 1993 when she began a weekly gig with her orchestra at Visiones, a small, now defunct club in Greenwich Village. The gig was originally planned to last for two months of Mondays, and ended up stretching to five years. This was a period of musical bonding that gave Maria’s music room to grow and expand, with a band that understood her objectives as a composer. There have been some personnel changes over the years, but many of us have been part of this experience for nearly twenty years now. The stability of the band makes it a family, and Maria’s unfailing musical vision, coupled with her warmth, humor, and generosity make it possible. In the past few years she’s branching out with projects such as this one with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Dawn Upshaw, and her vision is extended in a way that brings beautiful new dimensions to her music. I’m so happy to be a part of it, and look forward to our California concerts in June!
– Frank Kimbrough
Betty Izant turns 100
Executive Director Jeffrey Haydon visiting Betty Izant. (photo credit – Sally Rice)
Practically since the days when there first was an Ojai Festival Box Office, Betty Izant was the one who ran it. She is still remembered fondly by many of our long time attendees, as the person who made sure that everyone was well taken care of, and we still have people walk up to the Box Office and ask about her. Betty is Festival history.
Betty recently turned 100, and the Festival is celebrating by planning a surprise party for her on April 17th. If you have fond memories of Betty, please sned them to us at [email protected] with Betty Izant in the subject line. We will compile these memories and present them to her on the 17th, where we will also unveil the new Betty Izant Box Office. Thank you for helping us celebrate Betty’s amazing contribution to the Festival.
Rehearsals for Winds of Destiny
Festival Producer and all-around wonderwoman Susan Anderson is in NYC where Dawn Upshaw and Peter Sellars are rehearsing the Winds of Destiny for the Friday Night Concert. Her dispatch:
“Wow – is this going well! I will make a later post about how moving and powerful a work this is, and how completely fascinating it is to watch Peter Sellars’ mind work. I’m used to watching musicians work together to learn a work and find it’s meaning, but Peter’s kind of vision and the power of his descriptions are really remarkable. Tom and I are blown away, as, really, are all the performers.
But I don’t have photos of anything that serious. I’m trying to leave them alone when they’re actually playing or discussing the work. So my photos taken over the last couple of days are to introduce the cast of characters and see them in more relaxed moments. Here are a few:
First, I set up some coffee, tea and snacks in the conference room across from our rehearsal studio. It works well for our breaks and lunches. Being over on 12th Avenue, just across from the Hudson River puts us a few blocks from the closest restaurants, so we’re doing take out every day. Yesterday Thai. Today sandwiches. As a personal triumph, I am happy to report that I found OJAI PIXIES and ZHENA’S TEA in the local grocery store. A big hit – and a reminder that we are nearly in Ojai (at least in spirit) despite looking out on a typical New York skyline of rooptop water towers and warehouses.”
Bard Students in NYC
What a great opportunity it is to be a graduate student in voice at Bard College. Learning from Dawn Upshaw, getting to collaborate with her on concerts of new music, this is clearly not your ordinary music program. Last week, Dawn Upshaw and a group of her students performed fascinating new works at the Morgan Library. See the review here. For your own chance to see Dawn Upshaw’s influence on the next generation of music makers, join us at the Festival for the Thursday Night Concert, where students from Bard will present a concert of new music mixed with masters from the past. Tickets are on sale now!
Tom Morris on Hercules
I was recently in Chicago to attend Handel’s Hercules in a performance at Chicago’s Lyric Opera staged by Peter Sellars. It was amazing. Sellars has a thing about Handel, having staged many of his oratorios and operas including a legendary Theodora at Glyndebourne over ten years ago. I remember the first production I ever saw of his was Handel’s Orlando, produced by Boston’s American Repertory Theater in 1980. Here was an unknown work by a major composer produced not by an opera but by a theater company, staged by as yet an unknown director who had made his name in Boston by staging Wagner’s Ring with puppets and Antony and Cleopatra in the Harvard University swimming pool. Peter set Orlando in the present at the Cape Canaveral in Florida. It was produced uncut (almost 4 hours long) and played in a theater at MIT. Most extraordinarily it ran for almost 40 performances in repertory and was totally sold out. It was a revelation.
Hercules likewise was long – three and half hours. It involves five singers, a chorus and orchestra. The performance was conducted by English early music specialist Harry Bickett, who has family ties to Ojai and conducted at the Festival in the 1990’s. Sellars made the production into a contemplation about the horrors of war, and the destruction war causes not only where it is fought but back home. What is the price of war in terms of the human uncertainty and suffering at home? How does war change soldiers to such an extent they are not prepared for the return home? The Lyric Opera created public discussions of these issues around the performances with community outreach events, and by inviting veterans groups to the performances.
The production was amazing. The cast was uniformly terrific but be on the lookout for a sensational young soprano, Lucy Crowe. She brought down the house every night. Also soprano Alice Coote.
The production laid the groundwork in Sellars’ mind for his upcoming production of George Crumb’s The Winds of Destiny at Ojai this June. Again. Peter will use the production to address the problems of returning vets and make it a parable for our time. Raising questions and stimulating thoughtful debate are what Peter Sellars has devoted his career to, and Ojai will to the beneficiary in June of his latest creativity.
– Tom Morris
Maria Schneider and Dawn Upshaw at Carnegie in May
Maria Schneider’s music has been hailed by critics as “evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and beyond categorization.” For the past 20 years Schneider has written primarily for her own jazz orchestra, yet during those years she was pushing boundaries, augmenting the standard 17-piece band with an accordion here, or flamenco cajon there, mixing in Brazilian rhythms and birdcalls with her Midwest sensibilities. In recent years she has definitively embraced more classical forms and orchestras, blending unique sounds in her own recordings that include commissions from Peter Sellars and Vienna’s Mozart Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the American Dance Festival.
Now Carnegie Hall will host the New York premiere of “Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories” with Maria conducting Dawn Upshaw and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra on May 13, 2011. It was three years ago that Upshaw, then artistic partner with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, first brought forth the idea to have the orchestra commission Maria to write a work for voice and orchestra. Maria chose poetry by Brazilian poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade Carlos, with English translations by Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Mark Strand.
The world premiere took place in October 2008 at the Ordway Theater in Saint Paul and was very well received. William Randall Beard of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote this about Maria’s first foray into conducting and writing for voice accompanied by a full orchestra:
“Schneider, well known as a jazz arranger and bandleader, proved to be a compelling musical storyteller at home in the orchestral idiom. … She wisely chose to set the poems of Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade. They were rich in imagery and emotion, but spare enough to be enhanced by music. Whether depicting loss (in ’The Dead in Frock Coats‘) or bucolic nostalgia (in ’Souvenir of the Ancient World‘) she employed a panoply of styles, from jazz and pop to traditional art song and Brazilian flavors, to bring the words to life.”
When pressed to define her music as jazz or classical, Maria says that while the improvisational aspects of her work come from jazz, her formal development comes more from the classical world. “I’m often trying to evoke images and take the listener on a trip. Basically, I would say this: I’m a storyteller—in life that’s true, and in music too. I grew up playing and studying music of many different kinds simultaneously, and I can’t find a line that delineates jazz or classical parts of my expression. To me it’s all simply music.”
How sweet is this photo?