2026 Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian announce guest artists and ensembles for the 80th Festival: June 11-14, 2026

2026 Festival artists to include clarinetist Anthony McGill, Attacca Quartet, Colburn Orchestra, and LA Phil New Music Group

Ara Guzelimian to conclude his tenure as Artistic and Executive Director following the 80^th Festival

“The tradition of the Ojai Music Festival is that there is no tradition other than that people can do things that they wouldn’t be able to do elsewhere. Ojai invites us to dream, and it’s a place where dreams can become reality.”  – Esa-Pekka Salonen

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(Ojai CA – May 29, 2025) – As the Ojai Music Festival anticipates the upcoming 79^th Festival (June 5 to 8, 2025) with Music Director Claire Chase, the Festival’s 2026 Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian make an initial announcement of guest artists and ensembles for the 80^th Festival, June 11 to 14, 2026. 

The resident ensembles celebrate Esa-Pekka Salonen’s longstanding ties to Los Angeles, including his transformative tenure as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. At Ojai, he will be joined by members of the LA Phil New Music Group in a unique program tailored specifically for the Festival. The ensemble last played in Ojai in September 2021, where the program curated by that year’s Music Director John Adams included Salonen’s objet trouvés. Salonen has long had a strong creative relationship with the Colburn School, where he serves as Head of Conducting and leads the Negaunee Conducting Program. The 2026 Ojai Music Festival will see Salonen lead the Colburn Orchestra in two concerts, marking the ensemble’s Ojai Festival debut.

Anthony McGill is Principal Clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, where he was soloist in that orchestra’s 2023 performance of Salonen’s concerto kinema with the composer conducting, a partnership that will be renewed at Ojai.  McGill enjoys a dynamic international solo and chamber music career. Recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize, he has a multifaceted career that includes serving as faculty of The Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music. The Attacca Quartet will be returning to Ojai after acclaimed visits in 2021 at the invitation of John Adams and in 2023, collaborating with that year’s Music Director Rhiannon Giddens. The two-time GRAMMY award-winning Attacca Quartet is recognized as one of the most versatile ensembles of the moment — a true quartet for modern times. Passionate advocates of contemporary repertoire, the quartet comprises violinists Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni, violist Nathan Schram, and cellist Andrew Yee, who are dedicated to presenting and recording new works.

Programming details and additional guest artists for Ojai 2026 will be announced in the fall of 2025. 

“It gives me great joy to be working once again with Esa-Pekka Salonen, a friendship and collaboration that began in his first years at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said Guzelimian. “Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most inventive, adventurous thinkers of 21^st-century musical life. The unique format of the Ojai Music Festival gives him an unusually free creative hand as both composer and conductor. I’m thrilled at the prospect of all that he will dream up.

“Working with Esa-Pekka is the most deeply satisfying culmination of my work at the Ojai Festival and a fitting moment for me to conclude my tenure as Artistic and Executive Director,“ continued Guzelimian. “This is a very personal decision, informed entirely by the passage of time. I hugely look forward to all our work in the coming year leading to the 2026 Festival. My commitment to the Ojai Festival remains in full force and I will continue to be a devoted supporter of this wonderful musical adventure for many years to come.”

Guzelimian’s current tenure began with the virtual 74^th Festival in June 2020 with Music Director Matthias Pintscher and continued in person in September 2021 with that year’s Music Director John Adams. That was followed by Music Directors AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), Rhiannon Giddens, Mitsuko Uchida, and Claire Chase. Guzelimian also served as Ojai’s Artistic Director from 1992 to 1997, working closely with Festival Music Directors Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Kent Nagano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Emanuel Ax. Additionally, he has served as the Ojai Talks Director since 2004.  

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, 2026 MUSIC DIRECTOR
Esa-Pekka Salonen, who previously collaborated with the Ojai Music Festival as Music Director for the 1999 and 2001 Festivals, is renowned as both a composer and conductor. He is the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony and the Conductor Laureate for the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School, he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded, and until 2018 served as the Artistic Director of the annual Baltic Sea Festival.

This past season, Salonen led the San Francisco Symphony in world premieres of works by Nico Muhly, Xavier Muzik, and Gabriella Smith, among many other programs. He also returned to the Philharmonia Orchestra—both in London and on tour in Italy—and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he led wide-ranging programs including Bryce Dessner’s Violin Concerto with Pekka Kuusisto and Boulez’s Notations with Pierre-Laurent Aimard. With the Orchestre de Paris, Salonen conducted a reprise of his and Romeo Castellucci’s staged production of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” and a Boulez Centennial celebration with choreography by Benjamin Millepied, while a Salzburg Easter Festival residency with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra centered on a new Simon McBurney production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina.

Salonen’s compositions were programmed with thirteen different orchestras this season. He conducted his own Tiu, kínēma, and cello concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; he also conducted the cello concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he led his Sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra. His works, led by other conductors, also appeared on programs at the Montreal and Aarhus symphony orchestras (Sinfonia concertante), Munich Philharmonic (Insomnia), Lahti Symphony Orchestra (kínēma), Netherlands Radio and Magdeburg philharmonic orchestras (Gemini), Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra (Nyx), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra (Cello Concerto), and Ensemble intercontemporain (Meeting).

Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career. Releases with the San Francisco Symphony include recordings of Bartók’s piano concertos, spatial audio recordings of several Ligeti compositions, and the GRAMMY® Award-winning (Best Opera Recording) world premiere recording of Saariaho’s Adriana Mater. Other recent recordings include Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony and Deutsche Grammophon, among others; his Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and Cello Concerto all appear on recordings he conducted himself.

ARA GUZELIMIAN, ARTISTIC AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ara Guzelimian is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, having begun in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks and as Artistic Director from 1992–97. Guzelimian stepped down as Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City in June 2020, having served in that position since 2007. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor.

Guzelimian serves as artistic consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, the artistic committee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in London, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations. Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006 and earlier held positions at the Aspen Music Festival and School and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Guzelimian is editor of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (Pantheon Books, 2002), a collection of dialogues between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. In September 2003, he was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture. He is the dedicatee of works by John Adams and Kaija Saariaho.

OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and openhearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 79th year, the Festival remains a creative laboratory for thought-provoking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic outdoor setting. Each Festival’s narrative is guided by a different Music Director, whose distinctive perspectives shape programming — ensuring energized festivals year after year.

Throughout each year, the Ojai Music Festival contributes to Southern California’s cultural landscape with in-person and online programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned Festival, which takes place over four days in Ojai, a breathtaking valley 75 miles from Los Angeles, which is a perennial platform for the fresh and unexpected. During the immersive experience, a mingling of the most curious take part in concerts, symposia, free community events, and social gatherings. The intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international summer music season, welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches exponentially more audiences worldwide through streaming and broadcasts of concerts and discussions throughout the year.

Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented expansive programming in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing a different Music Director each year, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Mitsuko Uchida, Rhiannon Giddens, American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years; throughout its history, featured artists have included Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Robertson, Eighth Blackbird, George Benjamin, Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, Steven Schick, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Sellars.

79th OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, JUNE 5 TO 8, 2025, WITH MUSIC DIRECTOR CLAIRE CHASE
Single tickets and day passes are available and may be purchased at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. Single tickets range from $55 to $165 for reserved seating in the Libbey Bowl. General admission for the Lawn in Libbey Bowl is $25, and add-on event prices are $55. Ojai Films can be purchased directly at OjaiPlayhouse.com. Student discounts and group sales are available by inquiring with the Festival Box Office at [email protected].

Photo credit of Esa-Pekka Salonen: © Benjamin Suomela

Press contacts: Nikki Scandalios: [email protected] (704) 340-4094 | Gina Gutierrez: [email protected] (805) 646-2094

Music Director Claire Chase and Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian Announce Updates for the 79th Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025

The Ojai Music Festival celebrates collaboration and dialogue across multiple generations of composers and performers, including four World Premieres of works by Susie Ibarra, Tania León, Terry Riley, and Bahar Royaee; two U.S. Premieres by Tania León and Liza Lim; eight West Coast Premieres; residencies by Tania León, Annea Lockwood, Liza Lim, Craig Taborn, Susie Ibarra, Leilehua Lanzilotti, and Marcos Balter; and seminal works by John Coltrane, Julius Eastman, Sofia Gubaidulina, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and more 

“There’s no place in the world like Ojai, and there is no gathering of musicians and ideas like the Ojai Festival. From the time I was a kid growing up in Southern California, the Festival has taken on mythical dimensions for me.”  – Claire Chase, 2025 Music Director

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(March 19, 2025, OJAI, CA) — The 79^th Ojai Music Festival, running June 5 to 8, 2025, welcomes as Music Director one of today’s most vital artists, flutist Claire Chase. Chase, together with the Festival’s Artistic and Executive Director, Ara Guzelimian, today announces the complete programming for the June Festival, welcoming a multi-generational international community of composers, performers, composer-performers, and improvisers. 

Claire Chase is known internationally as a flutist, new music advocate, and educator. After establishing her professional career as co-founder and artistic director of the multi-award-winning International Contemporary Ensemble, Chase quickly developed a reputation as an artist with a penchant for collaboration and community-building. Her esteem within the new music community continued to grow with the 2013 launch of her signature Density 2036 project. This 24-year initiative—in which she commissions a program of new pieces for flute each year, concluding in 2036—has enriched the contemporary flute repertoire with dozens of new compositions, while the Density Fellows program, founded in 2023, mentors a new generation of flutists while ensuring the pieces remain in the repertoire. In recognition of her efforts, she has earned the Avery Fisher Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and, in the 2022–23 season, served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall. 

“Claire Chase is one of the most vibrant generators of ideas in today’s musical life,” says Guzelimian, “something she does with boundless imagination and generosity of spirit. It’s been so rewarding to imagine all of Ojai’s possibilities with her. I’m particularly excited by the musical community she’s creating with the resident performers and composers, weaving them throughout in collaborations and cross-current inspirations. And being a native of California, Claire responds deeply to the particular beauty and complexity of Ojai’s natural setting, something represented in many works that explore many distinct environments.”

Under Chase’s musical leadership, the 2025 Ojai Music Festival celebrates collaboration and dialogue across multiple generations of composers. Among them are Composers-in-Residence Tania León, Annea Lockwood, Liza Lim, and Marcos Balter; composer-performers Craig Taborn (piano), Leilehua Lanzilotti (viola), and Susie Ibarra (percussion); luminaries including Sofia Gubaidulina, Terry Riley, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir; and emerging composers including Eduardo Aguilar, Vincent Atria, and Bahar Royaee. Together, these artists will present new and recent works—including four world premieres, one U.S. premiere, and eight West Coast premieres—in dialogue with one another, as well as with era-defining artists such as J.S. Bach, John Coltrane, Julius Eastman, and Pauline Oliveros. In the spirit of Chase’s tireless advocacy for new music, each composer appears on equal footing with one another, each piece as vital to the narrative of its program as its counterparts. Household names share the stage with rising talents, and notated works coexist with improvised ones, illuminating unexpected commonalities and delighting in divergences. 

“While shaping these programs,” writes Chase, “I was inspired by the author Donna Haraway’s invitation to encounter one another in ‘unexpected combinations and collaborations,’ in what she calls ‘oddkin’—a term for our deep and unruly interdependence. What a beautiful description of the messy and miraculous experience of making music in the 21^st century! The four days of the Festival will be anchored by four generations of brilliant composers whose projects—though wonderfully divergent stylistically—explore common themes of rebirth, re-imagination, reclamation, and rewilding. Our programs will be brought to life by an exhilarating lineup of performers whose manifold musical backgrounds will meet in unpredictable and electrifying new ways. From Thursday to Sunday, we will conjure thinking forests, liberated rivers, endangered charms, ancient mythologies, holy presences, magical spells, and reimagined communities. And we will embrace multispecies collaboration in performance experiences that extend from the newly rewilded landscapes of the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy to the feathered night choruses fluttering around Libbey Bowl. My hope is that these programs will illuminate and celebrate the fragilities as well as the exuberant possibilities of music made in oddkin. I look forward to welcoming you to the adventure!” 

The spirit of collaboration and found community suffuses not only the music and its presentation, but the performers themselves. Ojai’s 2025 Festival collaborators represent artists from the Latin American, European, Australian, and American contemporary music scenes. Among them are returning artists Steven Schick, who previously served as 2015 Music Director; cellist Seth Parker Woods; the JACK Quartet comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell; cellist Katinka Kleijn; Levy Lorenzo, percussion and electronics; M.A. Tiesenga, saxophone and electronic hurdy-gurdy; percussionist Ross Karre; clarinetist Joshua Rubin; bassist (and ELISON Ensemble member) Kathryn Schulmeister; and pianist Cory Smythe. Several artists appear in their Festival debut, including Wu Wei, sheng; Michael Matsuno, flute; Ben Marks, trombone, and Tristram Williams, trumpet, of ELISION Ensemble; Alex Peh, keyboards; Leilehua Lanzilotti, composer and viola; Susie Ibarra, composer and percussion; Craig Taborn, composer and piano; Wesley Sumpter, percussion; and the USC Cello Ensemble.  

Rather than limiting each artist to set ensembles, this year’s Festival collaborators comprise a single, flexible ensemble whose various configurations can flow and evolve to best suit the unique requirements of each program. “In the spirit of collectivism and collaboration, I’m excited to invite these artists to play together in new and sometimes surprising ensemble configurations,” says Chase. “We’ll all show up as both headliners and side acts in each other’s explorations.” 

The 2025 Festival opens on Thursday, June 5 with Annea Lockwood’s Bayou-Borne, an affectionate tribute to Pauline Oliveros, and culminates with Marcos Balter’s Pan from Chase’s Density 2036 project. Balter’s already iconic Pan (2017–18) is a musical drama for solo flute, live electronics, and an ensemble of community musicians. The all-ages, all-abilities Pan ensemble—a kind of 21^st-century Greek chorus that serves as the conscience of the community in this telling of the Greek myth—is assembled newly in each city to which the work travels. 

Friday, June 6 begins with an early morning program featuring the JACK Quartet with works by Tania León, Liza Lim, and two emerging composers, Vicente Atria and Eduardo Aguilar. The Libbey Bowl concert on Friday at 10:30am celebrates the old made new in Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Impressions for harpsichord and the world premiere of Alex Peh’s trio arrangement of Terry Riley’s Pulsing Lifters and ends with a “summit meeting” between Craig Taborn and Cory Smythe, two inventive composers and pianists whose worlds encompass creative music, free jazz, new music, and beyond.  

In its West Coast premiere, Australian composer Liza Lim’s Density 2036 contribution Sex Magic for solo contrabass flute and electronics centers Friday afternoon. Inspired by Claire Chase’s towering contrabass flute (Bertha), Sex Magic evokes and celebrates women’s power across time and cultures, evoking the giant bass flutes of Papua New Guinea and the Australian didgeridoo in a work that ritually moves across three altars, creating a mystical, mesmerizing evocation of both the present and the timeless past. 

Terry Riley’s The Holy Liftoff will be featured on the Friday evening Libbey Bowl concert. Claire Chase partners with the JACK Quartet in a 45-minute rendition realized in collaboration with Samuel Clay Birmaher that was conceived as a series of musical sketches and brilliantly colored drawings. Of Riley’s Density 2036-commissioned work Chase said, “At 90 years old, Terry is on fire with ideas. He’s creating new forms and inciting collaborations with urgency and vitality. For Ojai, we are imagining the limitless variations, realizations, and possible interpretations of his ‘liftoff’ to include both performers and audiences.” Music for a “chorus of cellos” by Sofia Gubaidulina and Julius Eastman precede The Holy Liftoff. 

On Saturday, June 7, the first Libbey Bowl concert of the day centers on the West Coast premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Density 2036 commission Ubique for flute, two cellos, piano, and electronics. Thorvaldsdottir describes the work as “inspired by the notion of being everywhere at the same time, an enveloping omnipresence, while simultaneously focusing on details within the density of each particle, echoed in various forms of fragmentation and interruption and in the sustain of certain elements of a sound beyond their natural resonance. Throughout the piece, sounds are both reduced to their smallest particles and their atmospheric presence expanded towards the infinite.”  

Saturday afternoon continues with the West Coast premiere of composer-pianist Craig Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms for flute, clarinet, cello, piano, and electronics. Composed for Chase’s Density 2036 project, Taborn’s critically acclaimed piece was inspired by a dream in which plants awake, blossom, grow, and change as the dreamer walks through a garden. (A second performance of Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms will be offered on Sunday afternoon, June 8.) At the Libbey Bowl that evening is a program of music by Bach, Sofia Gubaidulina (inspired by Bach), and Tania León, concluding with Liza Lim’s large-scale How Forests Think, a work inspired by the imagery of ancient forests as vibrant, symbiotic communities that, as Lim writes, “nourish the old connections and keep a song going. One might think of a forest as a choir or certainly as an ensemble. Stories, dreams, and thoughts inhabit multiple forms in a living matrix.” 

On Sunday, June 8, the JACK Quartet explores their ongoing Modern Medieval project at Libbey Bowl, with music from the 14^th to 17^th centuries renewed for contemporary performance by composers/JACK violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman. The program includes the West Coast premiere of Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands, a musical tribute to rich and fragile ecosystems inspired by the distinct rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines. The work features the interlocking rhythms and melodies of Philippine Northern style bamboo, gong, and flute music, performed on new sound sculptures of gong metals. Sky Islands is described as “a musical call to action, drawing awareness to dwindling biodiversity, changing climate, and global community practices.” 

An exuberant all-company 2025 Festival finale on Sunday afternoon includes music by Leilehua Lanzilotti, Pauline Oliveros’s The Witness and the world premiere of a new version of Tania León’s Singsong adapted for solo flute. The Festival culminates in the world premiere of Terry Riley’s Pulsefield 3, in a joyous celebration of the composer’s 90^th birthday. 

COMMUNITY OFFERINGS 
An integral part of the immersive Ojai Festival experience are the free community events in Libbey Park and throughout Ojai. The 2025 schedule will include two “Morning Meditations.” On Saturday, June 7 at the Ojai Meadows Preserve, in a collaboration with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, the free event will feature the music of Pauline Oliveros and Susie Ibarra. On Sunday, June 8 at Chapparal Auditorium, the Morning Meditation will include music of Leilehua Lanzilotti, Bahar Royaee, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir. During Festival weekend, Annea Lockwood’s Housatonic sound installation will be open to Festival patrons and the community. The annual family concert at the Libbey Gazebo will take place on Sunday following the Libbey Bowl morning concert with featured artists.  

OJAI FILMS  
The Ojai Music Festival welcomes the return of showcasing documentaries during the weekend at the recently remodeled Ojai Playhouse. The two films featured will be Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros and 32 Sounds. Deep Listening is a documentary film project by Daniel Weintraub. Produced in collaboration with executive producer lone, Oliveros’s partner in life and work, and the Ministry of Maat, Inc., the film combines rare archival footage, live performances, and unreleased music with appearances by Terry Riley, Anna Halprin, lone, Linda Montano, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Alvin Lucier, Claire Chase, Miya Masaoka, Morton Subotnick, Tony Martin, Ramon Sender, and many more ground-breaking artists. 32 Sounds is a film by Sam Green, with music by JD Samson. This immersive documentary and profound sensory experience explores the elemental phenomenon of sound. The film is a meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. 

EXPERIENCE THE 79TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, JUNE 5 TO 8, 2025
Single tickets and day passes are available and may be purchased at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. Single tickets range from $55 to $175 for reserved seating in the Libbey Bowl. General admission for the Lawn in Libbey Bowl is $25, and add-on event prices are $55. Ojai Films can be purchased directly at OjaiPlayhouse.com. Student discounts and group sales are available by inquiring with the Festival Box Office at [email protected]. 

CLAIRE CHASE, MUSIC DIRECTOR
Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022–23 season and serves as the Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival. Previously, Chase performed at the Ojai Music Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2015 with that year’s Music Director Steven Schick, in 2016 with Music Director Peter Sellars, and in 2017 with Music Director Vijay Iyer.

Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and London Philharmonia. This season, Chase toured Europe and Japan with the premiere of a new double concerto by Dai Fujikura for flute and violin (with collaborators Leila Josefowicz and Akiko Suwanai). In the 2022–23 season, Chase premiered a new double concerto by Felipe Lara with the vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding and the conductor Susanna Mälkki, which was named one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by The New York Times. 

In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036, described by The New Yorker as “a quarter-century journey with little precedent.” Now in its twelfth year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, educational initiatives, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. In 2023, Chase performed all ten Density programs to date in a weeklong series of events co-produced by Carnegie Hall and The Kitchen. Central to the Density project is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in bold new interpretive directions. The Density Fellows program, launched in 2023 in celebration of the tenth anniversary, provides an international cohort of emerging flutists with the resources to make the Density repertoire their own. Chase is the artistic director of Density Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute in the 21^st century.

As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017 and as an ensemble member on performance and educational projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that resulted in the premieres of more than 1,000 new works and earned the group multiple Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and the Ensemble of the Year Award from Musical America Worldwide. 

A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Chase is also Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, where she mentors young artists and engages students in a range of interdisciplinary projects. With her longtime colleague Steven Schick, she co-founded Ensemble Evolution at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, a three-week intensive for the next generation of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and teachers. Chase’s Debs Creative Chair residency at Carnegie Hall encompassed programming for all ages, including a “Day of Listening” for children and families inspired by the listening philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. Chase partnered with MacArthur Fellow Josh Kun and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to expand her Pauline Oliveros project as part of the PST ART x Science Collide festival in November 2024.

Claire Chase’s extensive discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres. Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She lives in Brooklyn.

ARA GUZELIMIAN, ARTISTIC AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 
Ara Guzelimian is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, having begun in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks and as Artistic Director from 1992–97. Guzelimian stepped down as Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City in June 2020, having served in that position since 2007. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor. 

Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. Guzelimian serves as artistic consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, the artistic committee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in London, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations. He is also a member of the music visiting committee of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. 

Previously, Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, first as producer for the orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and subsequently as Artistic Administrator. Guzelimian is editor of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (Pantheon Books, 2002), a collection of dialogues between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. In September 2003, he was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.

OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and openhearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 78^th year, the Festival remains a creative laboratory for thought-provoking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic outdoor setting. Each Festival’s narrative is guided by a different Music Director, whose distinctive perspectives shape programming — ensuring energized festivals year after year. 

Throughout each year, the Ojai Music Festival contributes to Southern California’s cultural landscape with in-person and online programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned Festival, which takes place over four days in Ojai, a breathtaking valley 75 miles from Los Angeles, which is a perennial platform for the fresh and unexpected. During the immersive experience, a mingling of the most curious take part in concerts, symposia, free community events, and social gatherings. The intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international music summer season, welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches exponentially more audiences worldwide through streaming and broadcasts of concerts and discussions throughout the year. 

Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented expansive programming in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing a different Music Director each year, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Mitsuko Uchida, Rhiannon Giddens, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years; throughout its history, featured artists have included Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Robertson, Eighth Blackbird, George Benjamin, Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, Steven Schick, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Sellars.

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Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected]        (805) 646-2094
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected]  (704) 340-4094

Photo of Claire Chase: Walter Wlodarczyk

(Ojai CA – February 5, 2025) – Composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to the Ojai Music Festival to serve as Music Director for the 80th Festival, June 11 to 14, 2026. Since the late 1940s, the Festival has continued the tradition of appointing a new Music Director each year, fostering vitality and diversity in its programming throughout the years.

“Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most inventive, adventurous thinkers of 21st-century musical life. The unique format of the Ojai Music Festival gives him an unusually free creative hand as both composer and conductor. I’m thrilled at the prospect of all that he will dream up,” said Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, who previously collaborated with the Ojai Music Festival as Music Director for the 1999 and 2001 Festivals, is known as both a composer and conductor. He is the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony and the Conductor Laureate for the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School, he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded, and until 2018 served as the Artistic Director of the annual Baltic Sea Festival.

This season, Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in world premieres of works by Nico Muhly, Xavier Muzik, and Gabriella Smith, among many other programs. He also returns to the Philharmonia Orchestra—both in London and on tour in Italy—and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he leads wide-ranging programs including Bryce Dessner’s Violin Concerto with Pekka Kuusisto and Boulez’s Notations with Pierre-Laurent Aimard. With the Orchestre de Paris, Salonen conducts a reprise of his and Romeo Castellucci’s staged production of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” and a Boulez Centennial celebration with choreography by Benjamin Millepied, while a Salzburg Easter Festival residency with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra centers on a new Simon McBurney production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina.

Salonen’s compositions are programmed with thirteen different orchestras this season. He conducts his own Tiu, kínēma, and cello concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; he also conducts the cello concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he leads his Sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra. His works, led by other conductors, also appear on programs at the Montreal and Aarhus symphony orchestras (Sinfonia concertante), Munich Philharmonic (Insomnia), Lahti Symphony Orchestra (kínēma), Netherlands Radio and Magdeburg philharmonic orchestras (Gemini), Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra (Nyx), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra (Cello Concerto), and Ensemble intercontemporain (Meeting).

Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career. Releases with the San Francisco Symphony include recordings of Bartók’s piano concertos, spatial audio recordings of several Ligeti compositions, and the GRAMMY® Award-winning (Best Opera Recording) world premiere recording of Saariaho’s Adriana Mater. Other recent recordings include Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony and Deutsche Grammophon, among others; his Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and Cello Concerto all appear on recordings he conducted himself.
Initial details about Mr. Salonen’s 2026 Ojai Music Festival will be shared prior to the 79th Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025, with Music Director Claire Chase. Please visit OjaiFestival.org for information.

ARA GUZELIMIAN, ARTISTIC AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ara Guzelimian is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, having begun in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks and as Artistic Director from 1992–97. Guzelimian stepped down as Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City in June 2020, having served in that position since 2007. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor.

Guzelimian serves as artistic consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, the artistic committee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in London, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations. Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006 and earlier held positions at the Aspen Music Festival and School and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Guzelimian is editor of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (Pantheon Books, 2002), a collection of dialogues between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. In September 2003, he was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.

OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and openhearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 79th year, the Festival remains a creative laboratory for thought-provoking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic outdoor setting. Each Festival’s narrative is guided by a different Music Director, whose distinctive perspectives shape programming — ensuring energized festivals year after year.

Throughout each year, the Ojai Music Festival contributes to Southern California’s cultural landscape with in-person and online programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned Festival, which takes place over four days in Ojai, a breathtaking valley 75 miles from Los Angeles, which is a perennial platform for the fresh and unexpected. During the immersive experience, a mingling of the most curious take part in concerts, symposia, free community events, and social gatherings. The intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international summer music season, welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches exponentially more audiences worldwide through streaming and broadcasts of concerts and discussions throughout the year.

Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented expansive programming in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing a different Music Director each year, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Mitsuko Uchida, Rhiannon Giddens, American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years; throughout its history, featured artists have included Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Robertson, Eighth Blackbird, George Benjamin, Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, Steven Schick, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Sellars.

79th OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, JUNE 5 TO 8, 2025, WITH MUSIC DIRECTOR CLAIRE CHASE
2025 Libbey Bowl series passes are available and may be purchased online at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. Passes start at $215 for reserved seating. Lawn Area passes start at $90. Single tickets and day passes will go on sale in spring 2025. Follow Festival updates at OjaiFestival.org.

Photo credit of Esa-Pekka Salonen: © Benjamin Suomela

Press contacts: Nikki Scandalios: [email protected] (704) 340-4094 | Gina Gutierrez: [email protected] (805) 646-2181

June 5-8, 2025

Festival programming will include the West Coast Premieres of Liza Lim’s Sex Magic, Craig Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ubique, Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands, and Terry Riley’s Pulsefield

Festival celebrates multiple generations of composers, including works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Tania León, Annea Lockwood, Liza Lim, and Marcos Balter; composer-performers include Craig Taborn (piano), Leilehua Lanzilotti (viola), and Susie Ibarra (percussion)

An all-star “meta-ensemble” of Festival musicians including Seth Parker Woods, cello; Wu Wei, sheng; Steven Schick, conductor and percussion; the JACK Quartet (violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell); Katinka Kleijn, cello; Cory Smythe and Alex Peh, piano and keyboards; Ross Karre, percussion; Joshua Rubin, clarinet; M.A. Tiesenga, saxophone and electronic hurdy-gurdy; and members of Australia’s ELISION Ensemble

“There’s no place in the world like Ojai, and there is no gathering of musicians and ideas like the Ojai Festival. From the time I was a kid growing up in Southern California, the Festival has taken on mythical dimensions for me.”  – Claire Chase, 2025 Music Director

Download PDF version of announcement

(OJAI CA – October 15, 2024) — The 79^th Ojai Music Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025, welcomes as Music Director one of today’s most vital artists, flutist Claire Chase.  Reflecting on Ojai’s natural and sonic environment, the 2025 Festival programming offers responses to landscape as caretakers and participants and welcomes a multi-generational collective of composers, performers, composer-performers, and improvisers.

Described by Chase as a kind of “meta ensemble,” Ojai’s 2025 Festival collaborators include returning artists Steven Schick, who previously served as 2015 Music Director; cellist Seth Parker Woods; the JACK Quartet comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell; clarinetist Joshua Rubin; percussionist Ross Karre; and composerTania León.  Ojai welcomes several artists in their first Festival appearances including Annea Lockwood, composer; Wu Wei, sheng; Marcos Balter, composer; Susie Ibarra, composer, sound artist and percussion; Katinka Kleijn, cello; Leilehua Lanzilotti, composer and viola; Liza Lim, composer; Cory Smythe and Alex Peh, keyboards; Craig Taborn, piano, electronic musician and composer/improviser; M.A. Tiesenga, saxophone and electronic hurdy-gurdy; and members of ELISION Ensemble.

“In the spirit of collectivism and collaboration, I’m excited to invite these artists to play together in new and sometimes surprising ensemble configurations. We’ll all show up as both headliners and side acts in each other’s explorations,” commented Claire Chase.

“While shaping these programs,” writes Chase, “I was inspired by the author Donna Haraway’s invitation to encounter one another in “unexpected combinations and collaborations,” in what she calls “oddkin”—a term for our deep and unruly interdependence. What a beautiful description of the messy and miraculous experience of making music in the 21^st century! The four days of the Festival will be anchored by four generations of brilliant composers whose projects—though wonderfully divergent stylistically—explore common themes of rebirth, re-imagination, reclamation, and re-wilding. Our programs will be brought to life by an exhilarating lineup of performers whose manifold musical backgrounds will meet in unpredictable and electrifying new ways. From Thursday to Sunday, we will conjure thinking forests, liberated rivers, endangered charms, ancient mythologies, holy presences, magical spells, and reimagined communities. And we will embrace multispecies collaboration in performance experiences that extend from the newly rewilded landscapes of the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy to the feathered night choruses fluttering around Libbey Bowl. My hope is that these programs will illuminate and celebrate the fragilities as well as the exuberant possibilities of music made in oddkin. I look forward to welcoming you to the adventure!”

Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian said, “Claire Chase is one of the most vibrant generators of ideas in today’s musical life, something she does with boundless imagination and generosity of spirit. It’s been so rewarding to imagine all of Ojai’s possibilities with her. I’m particularly excited by the musical community she’s creating with the resident performers and composers, weaving them throughout in collaborations and cross-current inspirations. And being a native Californian, Claire responds deeply to the particular beauty and complexity of Ojai’s natural setting, something represented in many works that explore many distinct environments.”

The 2025 Festival opens on Thursday, June 5 with Annea Lockwood’s bayou-borne, an affectionate tribute to Pauline Oliveros, and culminates with Marcos Balter’s Pan from Chase’s epic Density 2036 project. Balter’s already iconic Pan (2017-18) is an evening-length musical drama for solo flute, live electronics, and an ensemble of community musicians. The all-ages, all-abilities Pan ensemble—a kind of 21st-century Greek chorus that serves as the conscience of the community in this telling of the Greek myth—is assembled newly in each city to which the work travels.

Friday (June 6) begins with an early morning program featuring the JACK Quartet with works by Tania León, Leilehua Lanziliotti, and two exciting emerging composers, Vicente Atria and Eduardo Aguilar. The Libbey Bowl concert on Friday celebrates the old made new in Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Impressions for harpsichord and ends with a summit meeting between Craig Taborn and Cory Smythe, two dazzlingly inventive composers and pianists whose worlds encompass creative music, free jazz, new music, and beyond.

In its West Coast premiere, Australian composer Liza Lim’s Sex Magic for solo contrabass flute and electronics centers Friday afternoon. Inspired by Claire Chase’s towering contrabass flute (Bertha), Sex Magic celebrates the sacred erotic in women’s history, evoking the giant bass flutes of Papua New Guinea and the Australian Didjeridoo in a work that ritually moves across three altars, creating a mystical, mesmerizing evocation of both the present and the timeless past.

Terry Riley’s The Holy Liftoff will be featured on the Friday evening Libbey Bowl concert. Performed by Claire Chase and the JACK Quartet, The Holy Liftoff was conceived as a series of musical sketches and brilliantly colored drawings. Of Riley’s recent work Chase said, “At 90 years young, Terry is on fire with ideas. He’s creating new ideas and inciting collaborations and connections with urgency and vitality.  For Ojai, we are imagining the limitless variations, realizations and possible interpretations of his ‘liftoff’ to include both performers and audiences.”  Music for a “chorus of cellos” by Sofia Gubaidulina and Julius Eastman precede The Holy Liftoff.

On Saturday, June 7, following a free “morning meditation” in the Ojai Meadow Preserves, a collaboration with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, the first Libbey Bowl concert of the day centers on the West Coast premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ubique for flute, two cellos, piano and electronics. Thorvaldsdottir describes the work as “inspired by the notion of being everywhere at the same time, an enveloping omnipresence, while simultaneously focusing on details within the density of each particle, echoed in various forms of fragmentation and interruption and in the sustain of certain elements of a sound beyond their natural resonance – throughout the piece, sounds are both reduced to their smallest particles and their atmospheric presence expanded towards the infinite.” 

Saturday afternoon continues with the West Coast premiere of composer-pianist Craig Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and electronics. Taborn’s critically acclaimed Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms was inspired by a dream in which plants awake, blossom, grow and change as the dreamer walks through a garden. (A second performance of Taborn’s Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms will be offered on Sunday afternoon, June 8.) At the Libbey Bowl that evening is a program of music by Bach, Sofia Gubaidulina (inspired by Bach) and Tania León, preceding Liza Lim’s large-scale How Forests Think.  A work inspired by the imagery of ancient forests as vibrant, symbiotic communities that, as the Lim writes, “nourish the old connections and keep a song going. One might think of a forest as a choir or certainly as an ensemble. Stories, dreams, and thoughts inhabit multiple forms in a living matrix.”

Sunday morning begins with another free “morning meditation” program. The JACK Quartet then explores their ongoing “Modern/Medieval” project mid-morning at Libbey Bowl, with music from the 14^th to 17^th centuries renewed for contemporary performance by composers/JACK violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman. The program includes the west coast premiere of Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands, a musical tribute to rich and fragile ecosystems inspired by the distinct rainforest habitats of Luzon, Philippines. The work features the interlocking rhythms and melodies of Philippine Northern-style bamboo, gong, and flute music, performed on new sound sculptures of gong metals. Sky Islands is described as “a musical call to action, drawing awareness to dwindling biodiversity, changing climate and global community practices.”

An exuberant all-company 2025 Festival finale includes music by Leilehua Lanzilotti, Pauline Oliveros’ The Witness and the West Coast premiere of Terry Riley’s Pulsefield as the joyous ending in celebration of his 90^th birthday.

A complete 2025 Ojai Music Festival schedule will be announced in January 2025.  Programs and artists are subject to change.  For 2025 artist and composer biographies and for Festival updates, visit OjaiFestival.org.

EXPERIENCE THE 79^th OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, JUNE 5 TO 8, 2025
2025 Libbey Bowl series passes are available and may be purchased online at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. Passes start at $215 for reserved seating. Lawn Area passes start at $90. Single tickets and day passes will go on sale in spring 2025. Follow Festival updates at OjaiFestival.org.

CLAIRE CHASE, MUSIC DIRECTOR
Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season and serves as the Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival.  Previously, Chase performed at the Ojai Music Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2015 with that year’s Music Director Steven Schick, in 2016 with Music Director Peter Sellars, and in 2017 with Music Director Vijay Iyer. 

Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and London Philharmonia. Upcoming concerto projects include the world premiere of a new duo concerto by Dai Fujikura for Chase and the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, which the pair will premiere with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, with subsequent performances with Ensemble Resonanz at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and on tour in Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey, and Greece. In the 2022-23 season, Chase premiered a new duo concerto by Felipe Lara with the vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding and the conductor Susanna Mälkki, which was named one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by The New York Times. 

In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036, described by The New Yorker as “a quarter-century journey with little precedent.” Now in its 12^th year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, educational initiatives, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. In 2023, Chase performed all ten Density programs to date in a weeklong series of events co-produced by Carnegie Hall and The Kitchen. Central to the Density project is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in bold new interpretive directions. The Density Fellows program, launched in 2023 in celebration of the 10^th anniversary, provides an international cohort of emerging flutists with the resources to make the Density repertoire their own. Chase is the artistic director of Density Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute in the 21^st century.

As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017 and as an ensemble member on performance and educational projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that resulted in the premieres of over 1,000 new works and earned the group multiple Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and the Ensemble of the Year Award from Musical America Worldwide. 

A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Chase is also Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, where she mentors young artists and engages students in a range of interdisciplinary projects. With her longtime colleague Steven Schick, she cofounded Ensemble Evolution at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, a three-week intensive for the next generation of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and teachers. Chase’s Debs Creative Chair residency at Carnegie Hall encompassed programming for all ages, including a “Day of Listening” for children and families inspired by the listening philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. Chase will partner with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to expand her Pauline Oliveros project as part of the PST ART x Science Collide festival in 2024-25. 

Claire Chase’s extensive discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres. Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She lives in Brooklyn.

ARA GUZELIMIAN, ARTISTIC AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 
Ara Guzelimian is the Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, having begun in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks and as Artistic Director from 1992–97. Guzelimian stepped down as Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School in New York City in June 2020, having served in that position since 2007. He continues at Juilliard as Special Advisor.

Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was Senior Director and Artistic Advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. Guzelimian serves as artistic consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, the artistic committee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in London, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony Foundations. He is also a member of the music visiting committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

Previously, Guzelimian held the position of Artistic Administrator of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, and he was long associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, first as producer for the orchestra’s national radio broadcasts and, subsequently, as Artistic Administrator. Guzelimian is editor of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (Pantheon Books, 2002), a collection of dialogues between Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. In September 2003, he was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his contributions to French music and culture.

OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL 
The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and openhearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming of settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 78^th year, the Festival remains a creative laboratory for thought-provoking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic outdoor setting. Each Festival’s narrative is guided by a different Music Director, whose distinctive perspectives shape programming — ensuring energized festivals year after year.

Throughout each year, the Ojai Music Festival contributes to Southern California’s cultural landscape with in-person and online programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned Festival, which takes place over four days in Ojai, a breathtaking valley 75 miles from Los Angeles, which is a perennial platform for the fresh and unexpected. During the immersive experience, a mingling of the most curious take part in concerts, symposia, free community events, and social gatherings. The intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international music summer season, welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches exponentially more audiences worldwide through streaming and broadcasts of concerts and discussions throughout the year.

Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented expansive programming in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing a different Music Director each year, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Mitsuko Uchida, Rhiannon Giddens, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years; throughout its history, featured artists have included Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Robertson, Eighth Blackbird, George Benjamin, Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, Steven Schick, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Sellars.

# # #

Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected]        (805) 646-2094
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected]  (704) 340-4094

Photo of Claire Chase: Walter Wlodarczyk