Boston Glober Reviews Leif Ove Andsnes Performances
2012 Music Director Leif Ove Andsnes began his U.S. tour last week stopping in Boston to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Boston Globe music critic Jeremy Eichler described the performance in his review — “Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with soloist Leif Ove Andsnes. This excellent Norwegian pianist plays with a rare blend of fluidity and control, and his Beethoven last night grew more daring and boldly profiled as the work progressed, ending with a finale that was irresistible.”
Happy New Year from the Ojai Music Festival
Happy New Year! January is a time when most of us take stock on our success last year and how we want to improve ourselves going forward. For the Festival, January is the time when the staff really starts to feel the clock ticking very quickly toward June and all of the exponential number of details that need to be addressed (upcoming gala, brochures, annual fund appeals, program book notes, corporate sponsorships, education concert, and did I mention fundraising?).
However, January is also the time when we typically implement new systems we have been developing since the last Festival ended. This week, we are implementing our new financial software, Financial Edge, that links directly to our ticketing and fundraising software. This should allow us to streamline our data entry, improve our reporting and analytical capabilities, and reduce the amount of paper forms we need to use. Like the previous two software modules, the Financial Edge installation is funded by a generous Arts Regional Initiative grant from the James Irvine Foundation to improve our Financial Sustainability with better tools. Needless to say, we are both excited and a bit nervous for such a big change. It is important for us to implement this change now before the upcoming wave of single ticket sales (if you haven’t bought your subscription yet—it is best to do it this month before the single tickets go on sale!) and expense checks related to the Festival that start going out in May.
This is just one of a few new “resolutions” for us—one which most of you would never know about (or maybe even care about!), but it should have a big benefit to helping the Ojai Music Festival operate with greater efficiency and provide us with more powerful data needed to navigate a growing Festival through a rapidly changing landscape. Here’s to better bean counting!
A Little Piece of Festival History
In doing our semi-annual office clean-out, we discovered several lost (and dusty!) treasures…including this seating chart from 2006:
Ojai Music Festival Seating Chart, circa 2006 – click for a larger view
If this looks a long way off from the receipts that you receive today, it’s true. Way back before we had a computer-based ticketing system, Festival ticket buyers were handwritten into a paper seating chart—one chart for each concert during Festival weekend. This chart is from the 2006 Saturday Morning concert. Seats that are X’d off are series subscriber seats, while single ticket buyers have been written in between. You can also see the obstructed view seats that were blocked off and the multiple layers of white-out that we had to use when making corrections in the days leading up to the Festival. In the words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
This was an inherited system from Betty Izant, who was the Festival’s first administrator during Lawrence Morton’s tenure as Artistic Director. Betty had an almost photographic memory for Festival-goers and could remember their names exact seats with incredible precision. Back then, records were meticulously kept on index cards and updated by hand with new information each year.
Needless to say, things are much easier now. All seating information is stored in our computer system and ticket buyers can even purchase seats online (something almost unheard of only five years ago!). The one thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the care and attention that we give when seating patrons for each year’s Festival.The seating for this year’s 2012 Festival will be especially interesting, as we’re already close to selling out the AA and A sections of Libbey Bowl. If you haven’t yet bought your tickets, you can do so online here or by calling me in the Box Office at (805) 646-2053.
LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP 2011 DANCE PICKS INCLUDE MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP
The Festival’s 2013 Music Director Mark Morris received high praise from the Los Angeles Times for the revival of Morris’ two-act masterwork, “L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, ” described as both classic and innovative. The production was presented as a collaboration between last May by the Music Center and the LA Opera.
Listen to the KUSC 2015 Festival Preview
Listen to the 2015 Festival Preview with Artistic Director Thomas W. Morris and Gail Eichenthal of KUSC:
Special thanks to:
Who’s Afraid of New Music?
If you spend any time contemplating directions in contemporary classical music, not to say designing programs full of it, or selling tickets to said programs, no matter how adventurous the vast majority of your audience may be, you almost invariably eventually run into the response, “I just don’t get it.” This is often a kind of mask for “I just really don’t like it,” or worse. In his book, Fear of Music, David stubbs explores why people are drawn to the visual experimentations of Rothko, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into affection for Stockhausen or Cage. NPR’s excellent program, To the Best of our Knowledge just conducted a fascinating interview with Mr. Stubbs. You can hear the whole interview here.