INITIAL PLANS FOR THE 79TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
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 79th 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 21st 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 14th to 17th 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 90th 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 79th 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 12th 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 10th 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 21st 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 78th 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
Bach to the Future with Emi Ferguson
THU November 7.2024 | 5-7PM | Museum of Ventura County (100 East Main St, Ventura)
It was a mesmerizing evening with flutist Emi Ferguson, a favorite of Ojai Music Festival audiences, on November 7 at the Museum of Ventura County.
After enjoying the company of others and exploring the museum’s latest exhibits, Emi led attendees through a beautiful journey of the flute through time and place. Special thanks to Emi for creating a playlist of the program and other fun resources to come back to time and time again when we need the beauty of music to give us comfort and joy.
THE PROGRAM
Improvisation (2021)
Seyfollah Shokri
Puis qu’en oubli (~1350)
Guillaume de Machaut (arr. Michael Hersch)
with the Flux Quartet
Syrinx (1913)
Claude Debussy
Fantasia in A Major (1733)
G.P. Telemann
Huitzitl (2007)
Gabriela Ortiz
Air (1995)
Londonderry Air (1977) arr. Emi Ferguson (2024)
Tōru Takemitsu
Kembang Suling, Mvt II (1996)
Gareth Farr
Allemande & Sarabande from BWV 1013 (1719)
J.S. Bach
G.P. Telemann
John Williams
Revisit the 2024 Libbey Bowl Concerts!
Relive your favorite Libbey Bowl moments from the 2024 Ojai Music Festival. Watch either whole concerts or individual pieces from each concert. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up-to-date with new video releases.
“The Ojai Music Festival has always meant a wonderful blend of tradition and modernism. I look forward to hearing new and exciting modern and contemporary artists and works always followed by a beautiful and reliable classic. Over the years I have met new people and celebrated new friendships with people I may never have met if not for the festival. I look forward to this event each year.”
“An introduction for me to hear new artists perform whom I ordinarily wouldn’t not be familiar with and to be awakened to new sounds and proficiency of the artists.”
Watch Entire Concerts
Watch Individual Pieces
Ojai Music Festival Receives Grant from Ventura County
OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL RECEIVES
AN ARTS AND CULTURE INVESTMENT FUND GRANT FROM THE COUNTY OF VENTURA AND VENTURA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
Download the PDF version
(July 30, 2024 – OJAI CA) — The Ojai Music Festival is pleased to announce it is a recipient of the Arts and Culture Investment Fund Grant from the County of Ventura and the Ventura County Community Foundation.
The $75,000 grant will support the internationally recognized annual Ojai Music Festival, which presents classical and contemporary music featuring today’s most innovative and celebrated artists; an expansion of its year-round activities, that will include public performances and partnerships in the Ojai community and the broader Ventura County; and the broadening of its BRAVO education program in public schools with SCORE, a music composition class for high school students.
“We are deeply grateful to the County and the Board of Supervisors for this very generous and meaningful support,” said Ara Guzelimian, Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival. “This marks an important milestone moment in the cultural life of Ventura County, recognizing and supporting the ever-growing range of vibrant arts activity in our communities.”
The Arts and Culture Investment Fund is Ventura County’s first dedicated arts and culture grant program, which as approved by the Board of Supervisors as part of the County’s 2023 Recovery Plan to support ongoing recovery from the pandemic. Funding supports both nonprofit arts and culture organizations and artists based in Ventura County. For more information and the Arts and Culture Investment Fund and a complete list of grant recipients, please visit www.ventura.org/arts.
About the 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. Entering 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 the breathtaking Ojai Valley in Ventura County. 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. The 79th Ojai Music Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025, will welcome flutist Claire Chase as Music Director.
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2024 Ojai Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace
Saturday & Sunday, November 16 & 17
How to purchase tickets:
- The Box Office
- Located at the Holiday Marketplace at Libbey Park (210 S. Signal Street), one is at the fountain area and another is at the building closest to the Libbey Bowl. Look for red signs reading WILL CALL
- Tickets are $50. Credit card purchases only
- Hours are 10PM-4PM on Saturday and 10AM-3PM Sunday
- Ticket Outlets
- Attitude Adjustment in Ojai
- Fox Fine Jewelry in downtown Ventura (Closed Sundays)
- For ticket outlets, cash or check only
Preview the Four Homes and Florists
Villa Valencia
Have you ever driven by a home and instantly been enamored of it, yearning to see inside and out? Here is your opportunity to indulge your curiosity, with a house both elegant and livable. Exuding French vibes, you feel transported to that wine country, although this property is
surrounded by fragrant orange groves. Inside the main house, with its massive ceilings, postcard-worthy views from every window, generous rooms, and simplicity abounding, one can only imagine how beautiful a stay in this home would be. Of course, the pool and guest house complete the picture, with areas of restful quiet and tranquility in between.
Floral Desginer: Louesa Roebuck
“The way of the flowers” has been studied for centuries. As an artist, floral designer and author, Louesa Roebuck demonstrates that one needs to understand the rules in order to bend them. In her two critically acclaimed books, Foraged Flora and Punk Ikebana, Louesa has composed stunning arrangements and installations that unite cultural influences with an exhilarating freedom from conventional floral design using regionally foraged and gleaned materials.
After moving to California from Ohio in 1998, Louesa worked at the influential Chez Panisse, which profoundly shaped the direction of her career. She continued her education of California culture and beauty working with clothing and textile designer Erica Tanov, then opened “August,” a seminal fashion, art, and community hub illustrating the intersection of luxury apparel and environmentally and socially responsible textile practices. In 2008, Louesa returned to her lifelong love of foraged floral work.
In addition to creating floral art, arrangements and installations for many illustrious clients, her work has been featured in several national and international media including Vogue, GOOP, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, C Magazine, Gardenista, Sunset, Martha Stewart Living and more.
Working with locally seasonal foraged and sourced flora to bring Ojai’s ever-evolving abundance into Casa Valencia, Louesa has revealed how floral art, sculpture and Holiday designs can be created by embracing the flora right outside your door, inspiring you to cultivate your own vision by inviting the wonders of the natural world into your home.
Louesa lives with her partner Curtis and their three dogs in the hills above Ojai, and considers all of California her home. She, and her autographed books can often be found in their local gallery showroom, Art Port. Her books are also available at your local bookstore and online booksellers.
Sespe Creek Sanctuary
When two artists, who work from home, design their dream house, you can be sure the creative space will be fabulous. Combining Spanish modern, farmhouse, and bohemian elements, it is an eclectic delight! Location is key, close to town but at the end of a cul-de-sac, built into a hillside surrounded by nature. Art and personal touches give each space dramatic personality, with several sets of stairs separating the many levels. Hand-painted Moroccan tiles are found throughout the kitchen. The living room with vaulted ceiling and prodigious windows offers the perfect place to entertain with the home theater system, showcasing the owner’s successful career as a television writer. The muse of her father inspires her in the dramatic deep green office with perfectly chosen wallpaper. The poolside wooden deck is surrounded by urban greenery and the sounds of Sespe Creek with a perfect view of the Pink Moment. A professional recording studio is an impressive bonus.
Floral Designer: Emily Denver – Fleur Ojai
The owner of two sustainable floral businesses, Emily Denver is a pioneer in the field to vase, sustainable floristry movement. Fleur Ojai offers luxury florals for small gatherings and events, set design and home staging. Fleurie Florals is a tiny, traveling floral experience contained in a custom-made teardrop trailer, perfect for parties, workshops, and get togethers of all kinds.
Emily is known for her luxurious and natural style, beautifully blending colors and textures that honor the flowers. Mentored by a master florist from France at the age of 17, her design philosophy has become rooted much deeper than traditional floral technique. Emily has been fortunate to have traveled, worked, designed and taught around the world. Along the way, she has created everything from Shakespearean landscapes and English gardens, to becoming an expert on floriography, The Language of Flowers.
Emily has also lent her design aesthetic to her own line of jewelry, handbags, resort wear, and interior design. From shop windows on Melrose, to custom designing jewelry to match evening gowns for Award Season, her motto has continued to be: Good design is good design.
Born in Ventura County and raised all over the United States, Canada and Europe, Emily opened her floral studio and shop in Los Angeles in 2008. After a decade of running her successful floral business, she returned home to Ventura county’s jewel, Ojai, to create a home base of art and poetry, nature and music, creativity and passion, and of course, flowery goodness for herself, her family and her community. Creating Holiday designs for Sespe Creek Sanctuary for this year’s Holiday Home Tour has been a joy and a pleasure for her.
Emily’s floral design and styling has been featured in The Knot, Town & Country, Country Living, Vogue, Martha Stewart, Wedding Chicks, Style Me Pretty, Magnolia Rouge, and Green Wedding Shoes.
Signal Vista
A magnificent hilltop minimalist masterpiece, designed by the owners themselves. Beyond the stainless-steel front doors, sleek contemporary lines are accented with impressive original artwork displayed throughout. Floor to ceiling windows and glass doors maximize the stunning views of the East End and the Topa Topas. The primary bedroom has two glass walls to take in the gorgeous beauty, and the huge his and hers bathrooms and wardrobes alone are worth the visit. The large outdoor terrace is “bounded” by a sparkling pool with infinity edges on three sides and leads to gorgeous desert and South African landscaping.
Floral Designer: Lynn Malone
Floral design has always been a passion for Lynn, from picking and making Mother’s Day flowers as a child, to working for nearly three decades at local nonprofit and government organizations who needed florals for their events, always within a tight budget. A self-taught designer, Lynn spent twenty years learning to create beautiful florals affordably, primarily by incorporating seasonal and foraged flowers, foliage and other natural elements.
In 2013, Lynn semi-retired to open her own flower shop, Digs, which quickly became one of Ojai’s “go to” flower shops and later evolved into three different floral design studios after the shop was sold. After five years in retail floristry, she decided it was time to REALLY retire. Soon afterward, she realized she missed the flowers and floral interactions with friends and clients. Lynn currently designs for friends, an occasional wedding, and local organizations, including the Ojai Music Festival, the Ojai Land Conservancy and Rotary Clubs, creating unique florals for events and fundraisers on a budget. She occasionally leads floral workshops for local groups to help facilitate community gatherings around floral design.
Lynn serves as the design liaison for the Holiday Home Tour, matching designers and their unique styles with the homes on the tour and providing support for designers, homeowners and committee members. Having spent most of her floral career designing for multitudes of clients with their own unique styles and needs, Lynn has learned to be flexible in her approach to floral design in keeping with different needs and aesthetics of clients and friends. She has enjoyed working with the homeowners of two of this year’s Holiday Homes, each with very diverse styles, and each themed around different holidays.
Collector’s Cottage
A charming storybook cottage, right out of a Snow White fairy tale, houses a local mini-museum of myriad collectibles. Each themed room is full to the brim with delights from bears to Barbies to Beanie Babies, from Elvis to Alice in Wonderland, and so much more. See if you can guess the names of all the costumed Bears. Be mesmerized by the train set that fills a large room, as it chugs around the Disneyland village. You’ll feel like a child again as you revisit fantasy favorites from your youth and be impressed with many significant items of sophisticated one-of-a-kind memorabilia.
Floral Designer: Lynn Malone
Floral design has always been a passion for Lynn, from picking and making Mother’s Day flowers as a child, to working for nearly three decades at local nonprofit and government organizations who needed florals for their events, always within a tight budget. A self-taught designer, Lynn spent twenty years learning to create beautiful florals affordably, primarily by incorporating seasonal and foraged flowers, foliage and other natural elements.
In 2013, Lynn semi-retired to open her own flower shop, Digs, which quickly became one of Ojai’s “go to” flower shops and later evolved into three different floral design studios after the shop was sold. After five years in retail floristry, she decided it was time to REALLY retire. Soon afterward, she realized she missed the flowers and floral interactions with friends and clients. Lynn currently designs for friends, an occasional wedding, and local organizations, including the Ojai Music Festival, the Ojai Land Conservancy and Rotary Clubs, creating unique florals for events and fundraisers on a budget. She occasionally leads floral workshops for local groups to help facilitate community gatherings around floral design.
Lynn serves as the design liaison for the Holiday Home Tour, matching designers and their unique styles with the homes on the tour and providing support for designers, homeowners and committee members. Having spent most of her floral career designing for multitudes of clients with their own unique styles and needs, Lynn has learned to be flexible in her approach to floral design in keeping with different needs and aesthetics of clients and friends. She has enjoyed working with the homeowners of two of this year’s Holiday Homes, each with very diverse styles, and each themed around different holidays.
Information
Tour Hours
Marketplace Hours
10AM – 4PM
10AM – 4:30PM
Described as the best holiday home tour in the region, guests visit four exceptional homes during the 2024 Ojai Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace. The tour offers a diverse array of homes that reflect the unique charm of Ojai, and it celebrates the festive seasons adorned with floral inspirations by local Ojai designers.
Marking 28 years in 2024, the Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace welcomes visitors from Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties. Tours are guided by a team of volunteer docents in each home.
In addition to touring four beautiful Ojai homes, visitors to the event can do holiday shopping early at the Marketplace. On both days, 65+ vendors and artisans sell unique and handmade goods in Libbey Park from 10AM-4:30PM.
NEW! Convenient, no-hassle check-out directly at vendor booths.
The Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace is the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee‘s largest fundraiser. Proceeds benefit the Ojai Music Festival and its BRAVO Education and Community Programs.
Meet the Musicians
During the marketplace, hear performances by students of the BRAVO programs from elementary to high school grades. Throughout the home tour, enjoy live music by the following local talents.
Home Tour Musicians:
Santa Barbara Flute Ensemble
Fern Barishman
Caressa Cowan (pictured)
Kerri Climer
David and Eilam
Alex Fager (pictured)
Bonnie Griffin
George Lemire
Lyra Quartet
Madrigali
Mood Swing
Ojai Library Ukulele Club
Dori Riggs
Ray Sullivan (pictured)
Morgan Swaidan
Support the Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace
The Women’s Committee invites you to keep the Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace a part of your annual holiday tradition by becoming a sponsor or a volunteer.
As one of the largest financial supporters of the Ojai Music Festival and its BRAVO Education and Community Programs, the Women’s Committee is proud of its essential role in our community’s future through this annual staple.
Sign up as a Vendor!
The 2024 marketplace is now full, with 75 vendors. If you are a 2024 vendor and would like to check or edit your vendor information, log in to the portal below. If you would like for us to reach out to you when applications open up for the 2025 Marketplace, use the button below!
OJAILIVE: 2024 Live Stream Replays
Since 2012, the Ojai Music Festival has expanded its global footprint building a worldwide audience and has deepened connections with patrons throughout the year with free Live Stream Broadcasts. The 78th Festival, June 6 to 9, continues this offering with acclaimed pianist Mitsuko Uchida as Music Director.
You can watch the free live streams of the Libbey Bowl concerts from the Festival’s home page which will begin Thu, June 6 at 8pm. The complete evening concerts will only be available at the time of the performance. UPDATE: Full morning concerts and highlights of the evening concerts are now available below and on our YouTube channel (7/1/24).
Stay updated on new Festival videos by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
For more context on this year’s Festival, enjoy these links:
THU June 6, 2024
Selections from the 8:00PM OPENING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Brentano String Quartet | Lucy Fitz Gibbon soprano
HAYDN String Quartet in C major, Op. 33, No. 3 (“Bird”)
SCHOENBERG Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19
SCHOENBERG String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 10
FRI June 7, 2024
10:00AM
Julie Smith Phillips harp | Jay Campbell cello | Sae Hashimoto percussion | Naomi Shaham double bass | Brentano String Quartet
KAIJA SAARIAHO Fall
HELMUT LACHENMANN Pression
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA Five Etudes
BARTÓK String Quartet No. 5
Selections from the 8:00PM concert
José Maria Blumenschein concertmaster and leader
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
STRAVINSKY Fanfare for a New Theater
WEBERN Five Movements for Strings, Op. 5
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
SAT June 8, 2024
10:00AM
Ljubinka Kulisic accordion | Rick Stotijn double bass | Musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra
JOHN ZORN Road Runner
MISSY MAZZOLI Dark with Excessive Bright
JOHN ADAMS Shaker Loops
Selections from the 8:00PM concert
José Maria Blumenschein concertmaster and leader | Aliisa Neige Barrière conductor | Vicente Alberola clarinet
DEBUSSY (arr. Benno SACHS) Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
KAIJA SAARIAHO Lichtbogen
ESA-PEKKA SALONEN Elegy (from kínēma)
SUN June 9, 2024
10:00AM
Alexi Kenney violin | Sae Hashimoto percussion | Ljubinka Kulisic accordion | Brentano String Quartet
BIBER Passacaglia for solo violin
KAIJA SAARIAHO Six Japanese Gardens
HAYDN From The Seven Last Words of Christ
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA In Croce
Selections from the 5:30PM concert
José Maria Blumenschein concertmaster and leader |
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
HAYDN Symphony No. 46 in B major, Hob. I:46
JÖRG WIDMANN Chorale Quartet (Choralquartett), version for chamber orchestra
2024 Press Coverage
Thank you for joining us at our 78th Festival, June 6-9, 2024. It was a glorious time to be in our communal festival experience, particularly in the company of our wondrous Music Director, Mitsuko Uchida. We were graced by her performances of extraordinary depth and insight along with the exhilaration of her partnership with the generous, brilliant musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the 2024 featured artists.
Take a look at excerpts from the press.
“…we’re talking about Ojai, where open-minded audiences take in music accompanied by nature and snack on freshly picked pixie tangerines. Uchida might have seemed like a headliner, but this festival is about sharing the wealth.”
New York Times
“What’s so extraordinary about the Ojai Music Festival, now in its 78th year? Many things, actually, including its brevity (this year running June 6 through 9); challenging and often sharply contrasting programming; and a rich concentration of talent…”
Wall Street Journal
“Uchida’s playing was so uncompromisingly ethereal that its purpose seemed meant to open the listener’s mind a crack.”
Los Angeles Times
“In programming cahoots with artistic director Ara Guzelimian, Uchida managed to tap many important and lesser-heard musical touchpoints over the weekend, including paying respects to Saariaho, who died just more than a year ago. Her Lichtbogen, conducted here by her daughter Aliisa Neige Barriere, has a shimmering, evanescent atmosphere, mixing acoustic and electronic elements with abiding sensitivity…”
SB Independent
“The Ojai moment came during the cadenza of the second movement, Larghetto, when the piano, in its highest register, evokes the entrancing power of Papageno’s magic bells. A silence descended over Libbey Bowl that was so complete that the only sounds were the piano, the croaking of frogs, the rustling of crickets, and the songs of night birds. It was as if Uchida’s playing had somehow entranced us all.”
San Francisco Classical Voice
“[Alexi] Kenney, 30, who has seemed on the verge of stardom for some time, certainly became one of the highlights of this festival (he made his Ojai debut in 2021). Along with Kafka Fragments, he gave a brilliant solo performance, with innocuous abstract projections by visual artist Xuan, of another hour-long work called Shifting Ground, consisting of 11 pieces by various composers, also at the Ojai Valley School.
Classical Voice North America
Your Favorite 2024 Festival Moments
Concert Photos
Photos by Timothy Teague
Audience & Staff Spotlight
Photos by Timothy Teague
Season 4 of OJAICAST: 2024 Festival Preview Podcast
SEASON 4
This season on OJAICAST, we have one very special episode where host Emily Praetorius gets to talk in-depth with Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian about what magic is in store for us at the 2024 Ojai Music Festival (June 6-9). From Mozart to Schoenberg and Haydn to Gubaidulina, we take a musical tour of the Festival programming with some extra insights into Music Director Mitsuko Uchida’s close connections with the fabulous roster of musicians joining her this year.
Episode 1
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K.453 – 3. Allegretto
Performed by Mitsuko Uchida and the English Chamber Orchestra with Jeffrey Tate
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-Flat Major, K. 482 – I. Allegro
Performed by Mitsuko Uchida and the English Chamber Orchestra with Jeffrey Tate
Sophia Gubaidulina: Five Etudes for Harp, Double Bass and Percussion
Performed by Christina Rozhkova, Alexander Suslin and Mark Pekarsky
Schoenberg: 6 Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 – 6. Sehr langsam
Performed by Mitsuko Uchida
Sophia Gubaidulina: In Croce
Performed by Maria Kliegel and Elsbeth Moser
Helmut Lachenmann: Interieur
Performed by Sae Hashimoto
Kaija Saariaho: Lichtbogen
Performed by Avanti Chamber Orchestra
György Kurtág: Kafka Fragments – No. 19
Performed by Ah Young Hong and Patricia Kopatchinskaja
John Zorn: Road Runner
Performed by Frode Haltli
Haydn: Symphony No. 46 in B Major, Hob.I:46 – 4. Finale. Presto e scherzando
Performed by the English Chamber Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K.453 – 3. Allegretto
Performed by Mitsuko Uchida and the English Chamber Orchestra with Jeffrey Tate
Emily Praetorius, host and producer
Louis Ng, recording engineer
OJAICAST theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Also available on SPOTIFY and APPLE PODCASTS
OJAICAST SEASON 3
OJAICAST SEASON 2
OJAICAST SEASON 1
ABOUT OUR OJAICAST HOST
Emily Praetorius, a former Ojai Music Festival Rothenberg Intern Fellow, is a composer from Ojai, CA. She recently received her DMA from Columbia University in 2023 where she studied composition with Georg Friedrich Haas and George Lewis. Her pieces have been performed by several New York City based ensembles such as Yarn/Wire, Mivos Quartet, TAK and Wet Ink Ensemble. Recent works include a solo viola work on violist Carrie Frey’s 2023 album Seagrass and a current collaboration with violin-viola duo andPlay. After 10 years of living in New York City where she studied, composed and co-owned Kuro Kirin Espresso & Coffee, she returned to her hometown of Ojai to live in the sunshine and go hiking every weekend.
OJAILIVE: 2024 Live Stream Schedule & Replays
Since 2012, the Ojai Music Festival has expanded its global footprint building a worldwide audience and has deepened connections with patrons throughout the year with free Live Stream Broadcasts. The 78th Festival, June 6 to 9, continues this offering with acclaimed pianist Mitsuko Uchida as Music Director.
You can watch the free live streams of the Libbey Bowl concerts from the Festival’s home page which will begin Thu, June 6 at 8pm. The complete evening concerts will only be available at the time of the performance. Full morning concerts and highlights of the evening concerts will be available on our website and on our YouTube channel following the Festival. Below is the schedule of concerts to be live streamed.
For more context on this year’s Festival, enjoy these links:
THU June 6, 2024
8:00PM OPENING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Brentano String Quartet | Mitsuko Uchida piano | Lucy Fitz Gibbon soprano
HAYDN String Quartet in C major, Op. 33, No. 3 (“Bird”)
SCHOENBERG Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19
MOZART Fantasy in D minor, K. 397
SCHOENBERG String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 10
FRI June 7, 2024
10:00AM
Julie Smith Phillips harp | Jay Campbell cello | Sae Hashimoto percussion | Naomi Shaham double bass | Brentano String Quartet
KAIJA SAARIAHO Fall
HELMUT LACHENMANN Pression
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA Five Etudes
BARTÓK String Quartet No. 5
8:00PM
Mitsuko Uchida piano and director
José Maria Blumenschein concertmaster and leader
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
STRAVINSKY Fanfare for a New Theater
WEBERN Five Movements for Strings, Op. 5
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
MOZART Piano Concerto in E flat, K. 482
SAT June 8, 2024
10:00AM
Ljubinka Kulisic accordion | Rick Stotijn double bass | Musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra
JOHN ZORN Road Runner
MISSY MAZZOLI Dark with Excessive Bright
JOHN ADAMS Shaker Loops
8:00PM
This concert will be shown in it’s entirety only the evening it will be performed.
Mitsuko Uchida piano and director | José Maria Blumenschein concertmaster and leader | Aliisa Neige Barrière conductor | Vicente Alberola clarinet
DEBUSSY (arr. Benno SACHS) Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
KAIJA SAARIAHO Lichtbogen
ESA-PEKKA SALONEN Elegy (from kínēma)
MOZART Piano Concerto in B flat, K. 595
SUN June 9, 2024
10:00AM
Alexi Kenney violin | Sae Hashimoto percussion | Ljubinka Kulisic accordion | Brentano String Quartet
BIBER Passacaglia for solo violin
KAIJA SAARIAHO Six Japanese Gardens
HAYDN From The Seven Last Words of Christ
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA In Croce
5:30PM
Mitsuko Uchida piano and director | José Maria Blumenschein concertmaster and leader |
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
HAYDN Symphony No. 46 in B major, Hob. I:46
JÖRG WIDMANN Chorale Quartet (Choralquartett), version for chamber orchestra
MOZART Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453
Live Stream FAQ
Where do I find the Live Stream?
At concert time, the Live Stream will be available at the top of our Homepage.
It’s concert time and I still don’t see the Live Stream on the Homepage.
Sometimes your browser stores an old version of the webpage. To refresh the page, click the “
” button in your browser.
I see the Live Stream. How do I watch full screen?
To watch full screen on the Homepage, click the “
“ button in the bottom right of the player.
Where can I watch the Live Stream concert after it ends?
Live Stream videos will be available the following day on the 2024 Live Stream Schedule. Following the Festival, they will remain on our website and our Festival YouTube Channel. However, the evening concerts will only be shown the night of the performance.
A European Grand Tour, Resources References
Many thanks to all who attended the Virtual Ojai Talks on the music of Gubaidulina, Lachenmann, and Saariaho led by Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. Here is the featured music and the resources that were discussed that we’d love to share with all! These are all readily accessible YouTube links.
Gubaidulina Interview
Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2
Clip from Helmut Lachenman: My Way documentary
Interview with Helmut Lachenman
Lachenmann: Mouvement
Trailer for Echoes of the Universe: The Music of Kaija Saariaho documentary
Saariaho: Terrestre
Learning to Love Schoenberg
Many thanks to all who attended the Virtual Ojai Talks on the music of Schoenberg led by Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian. Here is the featured music and the resources that were discussed that we’d love to share with all!
The Music We Heard:
These are all readily accessible YouTube links. A companion playlist in either Apple Music or Spotify appears at the bottom, for those who prefer those sources for streaming. One note – the very beautiful Matthias Pintscher/Karajan Academy live performance of the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony No. 1 is only available on YouTube, so the streaming playlists include a different but also compelling performance led by Simon Rattle.
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
Matthias Pintscher conductor with the ensemble of the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic
Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2
Barbara Hannigan and the Emerson String Quartet
Text to Litanei (third movement)
Text to Entrückung (fourth movement)
Brahms: Piano Pieces, Opus 119
Rudolf Serkin, piano
Schoenberg: Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19
Mitsuko Uchida, piano
Other Media Referenced:
Schoenberg: Mahler’s Funeral
Painting, musically represented in the Op. 19, No. 6 movement above
Salka Viertel: The Kindness of Strangers
A rich remembrance of the emigré community of artists in Los Angeles of the 1930s and 1940s
Allen Shawn: Arnold Schoenberg’s Journey
A complex but rewarding portrait of the composer and his work, if you are not daunted by extensive musical analysis
Here is the playlist:
Enjoy!
From Ojai with Love: A Musical Valentine
In celebration of the day, we take a journey in the company of Mitsuko Uchida. This is sampling of recordings from throughout her career, exploring her wide ranging interests from Mozart to Schoenberg – these are all recordings I love and would be so happy to have along with me on a desert island.
We begin with the most celebrated (and romantic!) of Mozart piano concerto slow movements and proceed on to some lesser-known Schubert miniatures, no less exquisite for their brevity. Schumann comes next in two celebrated movements, followed by a surprisingly apt tiny piece by Schoenberg as a prelude to visionary Debussy in a now-legendary recording of his Etudes. We then turn to perhaps the quirkiest of all Mozart miniatures, then conclude with the joyous but rarely played Concert Rondo in D, a fittingly spirited finale to this brief sampler. And all of it in eager anticipation of musical joys to come in Ojai this June!
Ara Guzelimian
Artistic and Executive Director
SCORE Composition Program Launches at Nordhoff High School
(January 16, 2024 – OJAI CA) — The Ojai Music Festival launches SCORE, a new initiative of the Festival’s BRAVO music education program that will provide the tools and guidance necessary for Nordhoff High School (NHS) music students to compose their own musical works. The 17-week course, which will be free to the students, will be led by NHS music teacher Bill Wagner and SCORE coordinator Emily Praetorius.
To participate in the enrichment class, NHS students will have previous course study through the NHS music department, along with a demonstrated interest in learning music composition. Registration for SCORE began in December, 2023.
“The Festival, through its BRAVO music education program, has been providing free school workshops, artist residencies, Music Van, and free Imagine concerts to elementary-age students for nearly 40 years in the Ojai Valley. By expanding with SCORE to the upper grades, we will be able to help high school students tap into their own musical creativity across genres with the expert guidance of the school’s own Bill Wagner and Ojai-based composer Emily Praetorius. I am so glad that we can continue to deepen our connection in our Ojai community on a year-round basis,” said Festival Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
In the class, students will learn to find their own compositional voices and processes by composing for themselves and their fellow classmates in a series of cumulative projects. Through each project, students will learn a new tool of the compositional process, from music notation and idea generation to notation software and audio recording. Listening sessions, composition lessons, and guest speakers will enhance the class’s exploration of musical composition and contemporary music in general. The course will culminate with a performance of the students’ works performed by NHS music students.
“We are very excited to be collaborating with the Ojai Music Festival to offer SCORE for Nordhoff students to begin to explore music from a composer’s viewpoint. The perspective they will gain through the process will be invaluable to their development as musicians. I’m looking forward to hearing their creative works take shape,” shares Wagner.
EMILY PRAETORIUS, SCORE COORDINATOR
Emily Praetorius, a former Ojai Music Festival Rothenberg Intern Fellow, is a composer from Ojai, CA. She recently received her DMA from Columbia University in 2023 where she studied composition with Georg Friedrich Haas and George Lewis. Her pieces have been performed by several New York City based ensembles such as Yarn/Wire, Mivos Quartet, TAK and Wet Ink Ensemble. Recent works include a solo viola work on violist Carrie Frey’s 2023 album Seagrass and a current collaboration with violin-viola duo andPlay. After 10 years of living in New York City where she studied, composed and co-owned Kuro Kirin Espresso & Coffee, she returned to her hometown of Ojai to live in the sunshine and go hiking every weekend.
BRAVO MUSIC EDUCATION PROGRAM IN THE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY
The Ojai Music Festival’s BRAVO program has been serving the Ojai Valley community for close to four decades. Over each year, BRAVO serves nearly 3,000 public school children with free music workshops, artist residencies, Music Van, and concerts. BRAVO also offers free workshops at local senior centers and includes talks and free community events during the Ojai Music Festival in June.
OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL
Since 1947, the Festival has remained 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 Festival-related programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned four-day Festival, which takes place 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. During the intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches 35 times more audiences worldwide through live and on-demand streaming of concerts and discussions throughout the year.
The 2024 Ojai Music Festival is slated for June 6 to 9 with acclaimed pianist Mitsuko Uchida as Music Director, featuring the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, violinist Alexi Kenny, cellist Jay Campbell, and the Brentano String Quartet. For information on BRAVO and the 2024 Festival, visit OjaiFestival.org.
Get to Know the 2024 Festival Artists
The 2024 Festival welcomes Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Brentano String Quartet, violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jay Campbell, harpist Julie Smith Phillips, and introduces soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, percussionist Sae Hashimoto, accordionist Ljubinka Kulisic, and bassist Rick Stotijn to Ojai audiences.
2024 Festival Schedule Highlights
- Mitsuko Uchida performs each Festival evening in works by Schoenberg and Mozart
- Works by Kaija Saariaho are woven throughout the Festival, including Dreaming Chaconne, Fall, Six Japanese Gardens, and Lichtbogen, conducted by Saariaho’s daughter, Aliisa Neige Barrière
- Concert programs include the music of John Adams, Bartók, Biber, Cage, Debussy, Sofia Gubaidulina, Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Missy Mazzoli, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Stravinsky, Jörg Widmann, and John Zorn
- In collaboration with Baryshnikov Arts, Shifting Ground features violinist Alexi Kenney and video projections by Xuan, juxtaposing Baroque works by Bach and Matteis, with recent music by Kaija Saariaho, Angélica Negrón, Paul Wiancko, and Salina Fisher
- The Festival features music from both the First and Second Viennese Schools, from Haydn and Mozart to Berg, Webern, and multiple works by Arnold Schoenberg in honor of the 150th Anniversary of his birth
From Ara: A Year Filled with Memories
Dear Ojai Festival friends,
As the New Year approaches, it is only fitting to take a moment to reflect on the year that was at the Ojai Music Festival. Rhiannon Giddens was at the exhilarating center of this year’s Festival, illuminating everything she does with passion, formidable commitment, and heart. She is one of those artists who uses her gifts to make our understanding of the world broader and more whole.
And what a Festival it was, with discovery, adventure, and delight around every corner, from new music to old and everything in between, from Senegal to North Carolina, from Mexico to Iran, from Haydn to Squarepusher . . .
Tan Dun’s pioneering Ghost Opera brought together the remarkable Wu Man, who was in on its creation, with a new generation of collaborators in the Attacca Quartet and dancer/choreographer PeiJu Chien Pott in a completely fresh re-thinking of the work. In late September, the production traveled East for performances at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in New York, another in a long tradition of Ojai-originated projects having creative ripple effects across the performing arts world.
Back home in Ojai, we celebrated the first-ever statewide California Festival of new music with a November concert – an engrossing and hugely inventive program of music by Reena Esmail, Dylan Mattingly, M.A. Tiesenga, and Samuel Adams, showcasing the creativity of a new generation of California composers. We were mesmerized by the Hindustani vocals of Saili Oak and encountered the electronic hurdy-gurdy!
Looking back on the year, I am filled with gratitude on every level at the company we keep – the artists, the staff, the many volunteers, the endlessly open and curious audiences, our gracious and generous donors. Thank you for being part of this boundless musical adventure!
And there is much more to come around the corner. We can happily anticipate the 2024 Festival with the profound artistry of Mitsuko Uchida, joined by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and a host of gifted young artists in a characteristically wide-ranging program from Mozart to Kaija Saariaho.
More details about the Festival to come in January. See you in 2024!
In the meantime, all the warmest good wishes for a healthy, happy, and most of all, peaceful New Year,
Ara Guzelimian
Artistic and Executive Director
The artwork, FESTIVAL, created by Christopher Noxon.
Christopher Noxon paints and writes in Ojai, California. Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara featured his work in the 2023 exhibit “Betty Lane & Christopher Noxon: From One Generation to the Next.” His work is in the permanent collection of the Ojai Valley Museum and he’s shown at Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, the Santa Paula Art Museum and the Beatrice Woods Center for the Arts. His writing and illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and New York Times Magazine. ChristopherNoxonArt.com
Fuel Your Musical Adventure
Celebrating Our Story
For the first time in our history, we’ve launched a comprehensive campaign to ensure that the Ojai experience you love can be sustained for future generations of musicians and audiences. The Festival is largely dependent on contributed income, which makes up 75% of our annual budget.
With this campaign, we are looking to ensure the flourishing of this musical treasure for the future by commissioning new work, originating important artistic initiatives that have an impact beyond the Festival, as well as expanding our music education programs for students from pre-kindergarten to college.
Look at what we have already accomplished with the campaign:
- Re-imagined staging of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera presented at the 2023 Ojai Festival. It was then produced at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in New York in the fall of 2023.
- Commissioned Dylan Mattingly’s Sunt Lacrimae Rerum for the 2021 Festival. It was recently performed at the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella as part of the California Festival.
- Created a new BRAVO composition program called SCORE for Ojai public high school students.
Our generous Board of Directors has taken up the challenge with 100% participation by way of additional campaign gifts and planned giving. We invite each of you to take part in this next chapter of our story. Join us by renewing your annual donation, and consider making a special campaign donation. Every gift counts towards the goals of this Future Forward campaign.
This is a moment to celebrate our shared story, your vital part in our legacy, and most importantly, the vibrant future to come. Join us in our next chapter and help bring our Future Forward.
A Small Expense with a Great Impact
Throughout the year, the Ojai Music Festival prioritizes community, artistic curiosity, and innovative programs, culminating with our treasured Festival in June. The Festival’s year-round programs are made possible by donations from our loyal audience members, like you!
Recurring gifts allow you to give at the level and timing that works best with both your budget and schedule. They simultaneously allow the Festival to rely on a consistent, year-round revenue stream.
OJAINEXT: the next generation of audiences
Whether you’re a young professional, a budget-savvy artist or musician, an Ojai local returning home, someone raising a music-loving family*, or a student* trying to stretch your textbook fund — we want to make sure you can soak up all the music and magic the Festival has to offer! OJAINEXT is our way of welcoming the next generation of Festival-goers into the mix. Just fill out the form at the bottom of this page. Membership is free of charge with zero commitments; all you have to do is sign up to be included in this community!
jump to signup form, keep scrolling to learn more
*Scroll down for more details on student and child opportunities!
Photo by Eric Andersen
What are the perks of being an OJAINEXT Member?
- Invitations to special events throughout the year
- Discounts on select Festival concerts
- Drink voucher for the Green Room in the Park
- Other additional and unexpected deals, invitations, and opportunities (per the schedule and programming of the Festival)
- An invitation to the OJAINEXT member event during the Festival. Past events have included:
- Poco Farm – tour, education, and mixer
- We Speak – Interactive sound exhibit and talk with the artists at Carolyn Glasoe-Bailey Foundation Gallery
- Housatonic – Mixer and talk with composer Annea Lockwood about her sonic installation at Move Sanctuary
Photo by TImothy Teague
OJAINEXT Ambassador Program
Are you open to musical discovery and adventure? Have an insatiable curiosity about music that pushes boundaries? You’re not alone! The Ojai Music Festival has been the place for other music enthusiasts who enjoy having an immersive music experience, especially in the beautiful setting of Ojai, California.
This Ambassador program is a chance for fans to share their excitement and enthusiasm for the Ojai Music Festival with friends and community in person, on social media, or through other personal outreach. An OJAINEXT Ambassador promotes the Festival positively. They support our artistic values and mission and are also passionate about ensuring the future of classical, contemporary music.
What do Ambassadors do?
- Share Friend-to-Friend discounts with your network
- Create at least original posts or stories on your social media before the Festival
- Repost or share OMF posts on your stories
- Create posts daily about your experiences during the Festival
- Create at least one original Festival recap post highlighting your favorite parts of the Festival during June 6-9, tagging @ojaifestivals in both the caption and the photo
Benefits of becoming an Ambassador
- Get updates before the general public so you can help share news about the Festival
- Access to special OJAINEXT events/parties during the year and the Festival
- Invitation to an exclusive OjaiNEXT niche experience during the Festival
- Deep discounts on tickets and at retail to use for themselves
- Drink coupon at the Green Room in the Park on Saturday night, in addition to coupons that can be shared with friends
Interested? Please reach out to us at 805 646 2094 or email [email protected].
Students, Families, and Faculty
We encourage families to enjoy concerts on the Lawn at Libbey Bowl, where you and the kids can enjoy a picnic and access the playground and bathrooms more easily if needed.
Discounts and Policies for Children
Children ages 5 and under are admitted for free on the lawn with no reservation needed. Lawn tickets for ages 6 to 11 are $5. Students 12 and up are given entry to the Libbey Bowl reserved seating, and are eligible to utilize our student discounts (below). Children are welcome to attend any of the free Ojai Music Festival events!
Contact our box office at [email protected] or 805 646 2053 if you have additional questions, or to purchase $5 child tickets for the lawn.
Student Discounts
Students, from elementary school through graduate university, receive 30% off Festival tickets and opportunities for gas rebates. College faculty receive 15% off. Learn more at the Student Discounts page below!
Camping in Ojai
Ojai has incredible hiking and camping opportunities. The town is surrounded by mountains and is neighbored by Los Padres National Forest.
We suggest checking out Camp Comfort, Lake Casitas Recreation Area, Dennison Park, Rose Valley Camp Ground, and Wheeler Gorge
These campsites range from $20-76 a night with vehicle fees ranging from $2-20 a vehicle.
Things to do in Ojai
There is plenty to do in Ojai before and after a concert. Here are our top picks for the OJAINEXT community:
Food and Drink: Topa Topa Brewing Company | Ojai Pizza Company | Sakura Ojai | Papa Lennons | Ojai Beverage Company | Farmer and the Cook | Yume Japanese Burger | Tortilla House
Shopping: Bart’s Books | 2nd Helpings Thrift Store | Fig Curated Living | RAINS | Nutmeg’s Ojai House | Sespe Creek Collective | Noted | Serendipity Toys
Hikes: Ventura River Preserve | Ojai Meadows Preserve | Shelf Road | Rose Valley Falls | Cozy Dell Trail
Check out our Ojaipedia page for even more recommendations.
Sign up now!
If you are new to the Ojai Music Festival or new to classical music in general, check out our First Timers page and our FAQ.
Feel free to call our box office at 805 646 2053 for more information on deals and discounts. You can also DM us on our Facebook and Instagram!
From Ara: Music Now and What’s Ahead
I am writing this in the blissful quiet following Thanksgiving, a pause from the usually hectic days and a chance to reflect with gratitude. We are in a particularly troubled moment across the world, with much sorrow, animosity, and division seemingly everywhere. And yet, the enduring pleasures of life also assert themselves – the company of loved ones, a walk in the brisk autumn air, the smile of a child playing, and always, the boundless rewards of music.
I have been heartened by multiple musical joys these past few weeks. We’ve had the pleasure of presenting a California Festival concert at the Ojai Valley School’s Greenberg Center, our first “off-season” concert of new music in Ojai, one received with great enthusiasm and cheer. We delighted in the company of four exuberant and always inventive younger composers – Reena Esmail, M.A. Tiesenga, Dylan Mattingly, and Samuel Adams.
I then flew almost immediately to London, to spend a few days in the company of Mitsuko Uchida, our 2024 Festival Music Director. We had several rewarding visits together, putting the finishing touches together for next year. Mitsuko first came to Ojai as a guest artist at the 50th anniversary Festival in 1996. Those of us with long Festival memories will recall that as one of the hottest (literally!) festivals ever, with Mitsuko playing a hypnotically beautiful Schubert B-Flat Sonata and then capping the week with the Ravel Piano Concerto in G, with Pierre Boulez and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mitsuko’s response to the overwhelming heat was to play the Schubert with even more beauty and greater concentration, creating an intense quiet of listening that defied the weather. It was one of those unforgettable experiences, where one sensed a collective joining together of audience and artist, living fully in every moment of the piece, where nothing else mattered.
Mitsuko has always retained a special fondness for Ojai, and we are so fortunate to have her back. She is one of the most remarkable musicians of our time, someone who is constantly exploring and finding ever-deeper insights into everything she plays. Her lifelong passion for the Mozart piano concertos will be at the center of this year’s Festival, music that is constantly revealing new dimensions and humanity in her hands. She is joined by the musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, her closest collaborators in recent years – a well-honed partnership of exuberance and discovery that continues to grow.
Although Mitsuko is perhaps best known for her championing of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, she has had a close association with a number of today’s most vibrant composers in her role as an Artistic Director of the Marlboro Festival in Vermont. Each summer, she has personally invited a great musical thinker to be in residence at the celebrated chamber music festival, creating a fascinating intersection between tradition and innovation. We will happily benefit from these associations at Ojai next year with music by a number of these composers – Sofia Gubaidulina, Kaija Saariaho, Jörg Widmann, György Kurtág, and Helmut Lachenmann among them.
The programming that is emerging from our conversations is completely true to Mitsuko Uchida – the eternal freshness of the Mozart piano concertos, new and recent music by the composers she values most, and a focus on the composers of the Second Viennese School. Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arnold Schoenberg, a composer who is perpetually misunderstood. We will take a fresh listen to some of his most beautiful (yes, I did say beautiful!) works in the hands of musicians who believe deeply in the expressive power of this music.
As we make the first preliminary announcement of the 2024 Festival, I hope you will take pleasure in the characteristic Ojai mix of the expected and unexpected, the new and the old, and always, the sense of discovery. In the coming months, we will have a chance to meet the artists, beginning with Mitsuko Uchida herself and do a deeper exploration of the music to be programmed.
In closing, I want to linger again briefly in the spirit of the Thanksgiving just past by expressing my personal gratitude to each of you for your continued support of the Ojai Festival. We are fortunate to be in this music adventure together with you.
Ara Guzelimian
Artistic and Executive Director
2024 Festival Schedule
Join us for a curated journey, where music is the adventure, with the characteristic Ojai mix of new and old, familiar and unfamiliar, in the company of remarkable artists who bring vitality, freshness, and a sense of discovery to all that they do. Scroll down to view the 2024 Schedule.
This symbol indicates that this is a Beyond the Bowl event, not located at Libbey Bowl. Due to the intimate setting of these events, they are not automatically included in Libbey Bowl Passes and require the purchase of an additional ticket.
THU 06|06
3:00PM OJAI TALKS
Ojai Presbyterian Church
Two-part session with Music Director Mitsuko Uchida and featured artists, hosted by Ara Guzelimian and John Schaefer of WQXR New Sounds.
Automatically included in 4-Day Libbey Bowl Passes.
6:30PM MUSICAL POP-UP
Libbey Park Gazebo
To start the Festival evening, enjoy a performance by harpist Julie Smith Phillips.
8:00PM OPENING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Brentano String Quartet | Mitsuko Uchida, piano | Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano
HAYDN String Quartet in C major, Op. 33, No. 3 (“Bird”)
SCHOENBERG Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19
MOZART Fantasy in D minor, K. 397
SCHOENBERG String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 10
This will be a live stream broadcast available on the evening of the performance on our website.
FRI 06|07
8:00AM OJAI DAWNS
Zalk Theater, Besant Hill School
Jay Campbell, cello | Sae Hashimoto, percussion | Ljubinka Kulisic, accordion
GIUSEPPE COLOMBI Ciaccona
KAIJA SAARIAHO Dreaming Chaconne
HELMUT LACHENMANN Interieur I
HELMUT LACHENMANN Toccatina
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA In Croce
10:00AM MORNING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Julie Smith Phillips, harp | Jay Campbell, cello | Sae Hashimoto, percussion | Naomi Shaham, double bass | Brentano String Quartet
KAIJA SAARIAHO Fall
HELMUT LACHENMANN Pression
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA Five Etudes
BARTÓK String Quartet No. 5
This will be a live stream broadcast available on our website.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS
Libbey Park Gazebo
Jay Campbell with host John Schaefer of WNYC/New Sounds
3:30PM SHIFTING GROUND
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School
Alexi Kenney, violin
Xuan, visual artist
A unique program for solo violin and video projections juxtaposing Baroque works by Bach and Matteis with recent music by Kaija Saariaho, Angélica Negrón, Paul Wiancko, and Salina Fisher. Produced in collaboration with the Baryshnikov Arts, New York.
6:00PM OJAI CHATS
Libbey Park Gazebo
Alexi Kenney and Xuan with host John Schaefer of WNYC/New Sounds
8:00PM EVENING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Mitsuko Uchida, piano and director
José Maria Blumenschein, concertmaster and leader
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
STRAVINSKY Fanfare for a New Theater
WEBERN Five Movements for Strings, Op. 5
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
MOZART Piano Concerto in E flat, K. 482
This will be a live stream broadcast available on the evening of the performance on our website.
SAT 06|08
8:00AM MORNING MEDITATION
Chaparral Auditorium, 414 E Ojai Ave
Jay Campbell, cello
Catherine Lamb The Additive Arrow for cello and live electronics
10:00AM MORNING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Ljubinka Kulisic, accordion | Rick Stotijn, double bass | Musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra
JOHN ZORN Road Runner
MISSY MAZZOLI Dark with Excessive Bright
JOHN ADAMS Shaker Loops
This will be a live stream broadcast available on our website.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS
Libbey Park Gazebo
Rick Stotjin with host John Schaefer of WNYC/New Sounds
3:30PM SHIFTING GROUND
(repeat performance)
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School
Alexi Kenney, violin
Xuan, visual artist
A unique program for solo violin and video projections juxtaposing Baroque works by Bach and Matteis with recent music by Kaija Saariaho, Angélica Negrón, Paul Wiancko and Salina Fisher. Produced in collaboration with the Baryshnikov Arts, New York.
6:00PM OJAI CHATS
Libbey Park Gazebo
Aliisa Neige Barrière with host John Schaefer of WNYC/New Sounds
8:00PM EVENING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Mitsuko Uchida, piano and director | José Maria Blumenschein, concertmaster and leader | Aliisa Neige Barrière, conductor | Vicente Alberola, clarinet
DEBUSSY (arr. Benno SACHS) Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
KAIJA SAARIAHO Lichtbogen
ESA-PEKKA SALONEN Elegy (from kínēma)
MOZART Piano Concerto in B flat, K. 595
This will be a live stream broadcast available on the evening of the performance on our website.
SUN 06|09
8:00AM MORNING MEDITATION
Chaparral Auditorium, 414 E Ojai Ave
Ljubinka Kulisic, accordion
Music of John Cage
10:00AM MORNING CONCERT
Libbey Bowl
Alexi Kenney, violin | Sae Hashimoto, percussion | Ljubinka Kulisic, accordion | Brentano String Quartet
BIBER Passacaglia for solo violin
KAIJA SAARIAHO Six Japanese Gardens
HAYDN From The Seven Last Words of Christ
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA In Croce
This will be a live stream broadcast available on our website.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS
Libbey Park Gazebo
Ljubinka Kulisic and Sae Hashimoto with host John Schaefer of WNYC/New Sounds
2:30PM KAFKA FRAGMENTS
Greenberg Activity Center
Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano| Alexi Kenney, violin
KURTÁG Kafka Fragments
Kurtág’s eloquent setting of fragments from Kafka’s diaries weaves together singer and violinist into a deeply personal dialogue, a reflection on life’s joys, trials and the “dances of time.”
4:00PM COMMUNITY & FAMILY EVENT
Libbey Park Gazebo
First, enjoy the Instrument Petting Zoo hosted by the Ojai Music Festival’s BRAVO education program at 3pm, then join us for a free concert featuring members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra!
5:30PM FINALE
Libbey Bowl
Mitsuko Uchida, piano and director | José Maria Blumenschein, concertmaster and leader |
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
HAYDN Symphony No. 46 in B major
JÖRG WIDMANN Chorale Quartet
MOZART Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453
This will be a live stream broadcast available on the evening of the performance on our website.
Programs and artists are subject to change.
What the Festival Means to Me
The Ojai Music Festival is long known for being a place for experimentation, exploration, and interaction. We are in awe of our patrons, returning and new, who share the experience with the artists and community, and equally important, their feedback and insights every year. We thank you for making the time to share your personal “What the Festival Means to You.”
It means the joy of discovery and communication through music. It means openness to experience, willingness to engage deeply with something and give it a chance to touch your soul and change you forever…
This is a world-class musical event in a small-town atmosphere, which is a unique and delightful pairing.
The experience of live music in an outdoor setting that is more intimate than a concert hall.
“An inspirational weekend with incredible performers, devoted audience, and unpredictable concerts. We always find something weird and something wonderful throughout the events.”
Do you have questions? We’ve got answers!
Creative Lab concert launches during the California Festival
The Ojai Music Festival was delighted to participate in the California Festival, a statewide initiative organized by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony. This showcase of 100-plus California organizations, which runs from November 3 to 19, closely aligned with the Ojai Festival mission and history in celebrating new and adventurous music.
Our performance was a “maiden voyage” of presenting a non-summer concert on November 11 at the Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. With a supportive and enthusiastic audience, the program presented smaller-scale recent works by Samuel Carl Adams, Reena Esmail, Dylan Mattingly, and M.A. Tiesenga, performed by pianist Conor Hanick, clarinetist Sérgio Coelho, vibraphone player Sidney Hopson, violinist Gallia Kastner, vocalist Saili Oak, multi-instrumentalist M.A. Tiesenga, and Zelter String Quartet. These same forward-looking composers were then featured at the Green Umbrella concert, at the Walt Disney Hall, on November 14.
Take a look at some of our favorite moments from our Creative Lab concert on November 11 in Ojai. Special thanks to the Ojai Valley School.
photos by © Timothy Teague
LA Phil’s Green Umbrella: Chaparral and Interstates
photos by © Nick Rutter
That’s a Wrap!
On behalf of the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee, thank you so much for another wonderful year of this fabulous tradition! Keep your eye on your inbox for a survey from us. We’d love to hear from you. Thank you for shopping at the Holiday Marketplace! We hope this is not the last you see of the incredible vendors. Please visit the link below to connect with them on their websites and social media!
Mark your calendar for next year: November 9 and 10, 2024
The Ojai Holiday Home Tour and Marketplace is a benefit for the Ojai Music Festival and its BRAVO Music Education & Community Programs. By supporting this treasured tradition, you ensure that the Festival continues providing free music education in Ojai public elementary schools and presenting the internationally renowned 78th Festival, June 6-9, 2024. Your support for BRAVO is deeply appreciated.
From Ara: Summer Reflections
Dear friends,
I hope this finds you enjoying the pleasures of summer. I have the good fortune to be at the Marlboro Music Festival as I write this, tucked away in a particularly idyllic corner of southern Vermont – which mercifully was spared the worst of the recent torrential rains elsewhere in the state.
I have had the luxury of time to reflect on the recent Festival and find myself immensely grateful for the company we keep, including each one of you who create such a unique and open-hearted community at each Festival.
The 2023 Ojai Festival is now a happy memory to be savored and cherished. We were so fortunate to be in the company of the wondrous Rhiannon Giddens and all the extraordinary artists she brought to create a particularly joyous Festival community. It is next to impossible to single out individual highlights in a Festival full of them. I will only dare mention a few — Rhiannon singing Paul Simon’s American Tune with an eloquence and a to-the-moment timeliness that brought tears to the eyes, the absolutely essential American story of Omar Ibn Said as told in Rhiannon and Michael Abels’ Omar’s Journey, the indelible musical and visual images created by Wu Man, PeiJu Chien-Pott and the Attacca Quartet in a new production of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera, the encounter with the enormous creativity and fresh voices of the Iranian Female Composers Association, Kayhan Kalhor’s spellbinding artistry, the infectious joy of Seckou Keita, and Francesco Turrisi’s boundless musical imagination in creating the special Early Music program for a Sunday morning. OK, I’ll stop at that as my own list could go on for another 30 or more highlights. If you are so inspired, please write to me with your own list of highlights.
Here at Marlboro, I delight in the company of Mitsuko Uchida, a co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music Festival and our Music Director for the 2024 Ojai Festival. Mitsuko, one of the most eloquent and probing musicians of our time, is making a long awaited return next year, joined by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (who themselves are returning to Ojai since their 2018 visit with Patricia Kopatchinskaja). Her close collaboration with this immensely creative and spirited ensemble is central to her work in recent years, as they have embarked on a multi-year exploration of the Mozart piano concertos together. She explains the importance of their partnership in this video:
Mitsuko has long been a champion of and mentor to several generations of young musicians at the Marlboro Festival. We will have the good fortune of being joined in Ojai with some of the most gifted artists on the American musical scene — clarinetist Anthony McGill, Brentano String Quartet, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, and violinist Alexi Kenney — all of whom have rich Marlboro history. More about each of them in the months to come.
Prior to coming to Marlboro, I had the pleasure of serving on the jury of the Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany. Marina Mahler, the granddaughter of Gustav Mahler, graced the proceedings as patron of the competition. When I first met Marina some years ago, I started a painstaking description of where and what Ojai is — she interrupted me to tell me that she had attended Ojai Valley School during her most formative years! So, there you have it — a direct link between the legacy of Gustav Mahler and Ojai! We became fast friends with this knowledge of our Ojai ties. I also had the deep pleasure of serving on the jury alongside Barbara Hannigan (2019 Music Director), who continues to light up the musical world wherever she goes. While there, I discovered that Barbara had assembled a very personal playlist for Apple Music, which characteristically documents her wide-ranging imagination and generosity of spirit. She has curated a list of performances by favorite musicians who, in her words, “allow audiences into a ‘heart-to-heart’ connection with whatever music they perform.” In a lovely confluence of Ojai artists, her list includes Rhiannon Giddens!
Finally, a reflection of loss. Kaija Saariaho, who died at the age of 70 in early June, made an indelible impression with her music and her presence at the 2016 Ojai Festival with Peter Sellars. Kaija was a singular creative force in our musical world, writing with a voice that was intensely personal and affecting, a sound world unlike any other composer. She was also a cherished friend to so many of the Festival musicians over the years. We can only be grateful for having her and her music in our lives. To bid farewell, here are the final three movements of her choral work Nuits, Adieux (1991) in a recording released just this month:
We are most fortunate in the company we keep.
With thanks and warm greetings,
Ara Guzelimian
Artistic and Executive Director
BRAVO Summer Camps
Sign your child up for a week of music, art, games, and storytelling with Ms. Laura. There is no previous musical experience required. BRAVO Music and Arts Camp is a productive way to expose your child to music for the first time or to develop an existing passion for music over the Summer. Session one has come to a close with 31 students, but it’s not too late to sign up for the second session!
Special thanks to our partners Ojai Parks and Recreation Department and BRAVO volunteers.
When: August 11-15, 8am-12pm
Ages: 5-16
Fees: $125 + $25 materials fee; scholarships are available, all are welcome!
Register through the Ojai Rec Department or call 805 646 5581 ext. 390. For more questions, email Laura Walter here.
