A musical gift from the Ojai Music Festival: harpist and 2021 Festival artist Julie Smith Phillips performs a movement from Tree Suite for solo harp by Hannah Lash. Enjoy!
Category: Latest News
-
Music Van Arrives!
Music Van is one of our most favorite activities that encourages students to try out musical instruments. This year, Music Van will go virtual, thanks to our collaboration with the Santa Barbara Symphony.
Ojai school children will be introduced to the instrument family in a new digital way. To supplement this virtual version, our very own BRAVO Committee has put together short videos to show just how much fun it can be to play an instrument. Special thanks to several local students who helped demonstrate!
1/2
Ojai Festivalโs BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing the piccolo!Ojai Festivalโs BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing percussion!Ojai Festivalโs BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing the saxophone!Ojai Festival's BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing the guitar!Ojai Festival's BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing the flute!Ojai Festival's BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing the violin!Ojai Festivalโs BRAVO Music Van: Introducing the DoumbekOjai Festival's BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing the trumpet!Ojai Festival's BRAVO Music Van: Stravinsky Cup Challenge!Ojai Festival's BRAVOโs Music Van: Introducing the Conch Shell1/2Special thanks to our community partners for supporting our BRAVO programs!
Ojai Women’s Fund
Alice C. Tyler Perpetual Trust
John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation
City of Ojai
Montecito Bank and Trust -
Chumash Story & Song
To enlarge to full screen, click the [ ]
Chumash Story and Song
Julie Tumamait has traced her familyโs Chumash ancestry as far back as the mid-18th Century. She is currently the Tribal Chair of the Barbareรฑo/Ventureรฑo Band of Mission Indians (Chumash). Julie is well known throughout Ventura County for her Chumash cultural education programs and also performs ceremonies and songs. This Imagine performance includes a series of creation myths and Chumash songs, in the native language, using various hand-held percussion instruments for accompaniment. The red kelp bulb rattle has bear fur around the bottom. The clapper is made from elderberry wood. She holds a feathered ceremonial fan. Her skirt is decorated with many shells and her bracelet, earrings, and necklace are all made from shells. She also wears a coyote fur.
Her combination of storytelling and music focus on tales such as the Rainbow Bridge, a myth that explains how the Chumash people reached the California mainland from the Channel Islands by crossing a rainbow, and how those who looked down fell into the ocean and were turned into dolphins.
Other stories and intriguing ideas:
How did woodpecker get his bright red head?
What does the word Ojai mean?
There was a Princess ruler!
How did coyote get the colors in his fur coat?
What does the word Chumash mean?How did coyote learn to howl?
We also hear a song performed by Juana Maria, the Native American woman who lived alone for 18 years on San Nicolas Island during the 19th century before coming to the California mainland, where she died. Juana Mariaโs story inspired the novel Island of the Blue Dolphins, which is read by our 4th graders (and most 4th graders) as part of the early California curriculum in that grade.
Here are some Chumash words that we are honored to learn. Learning another peopleโs language is a way to respect them.
hello is haku
thank you is wษyษ
goodbye for now is kiwanan
These early-morning songs, performed beneath the canopy of oaks of the outdoor amphitheater at the Ojai Valley Schoolโs Upper Campus, introduce students to the history of the Chumash people. Stories and songs help us to know that we must care for our world, and every living being. Music and storytelling continue to play a role in the culture and traditions of the native people who were the first to call the Ojai Valley their home.
Learn more about Chumash history at www.ojaivalleymuseum.org
This performance is made possible by the Ojai Valley School โBarbara Barnard Smith Fund, a Designated Endowment Fund of the Ventura County Community Foundation. Thanks to Professor Smith, these funds annually open the doors to an engaging multicultural experience for students, teachers, parents and the community, truly a world view of music. Ojai Valley School is indebted to Professor Smith for her foresight and generosity.
-
I Still Play
Press Play; Click Box Above to Go Full Screen [ ]
Welcome to the Festivalโs continuing series of the virtual Ojai Talks, where we celebrate the intersection of music, ideas, and the creative process with Ojai Festival artists, innovators, and thinkers.Last year, Nonesuch Records released an album titled, I Still Play, a collection of 11 newly commissioned piano pieces written for Bob Hurwitz, the legendary recording executive who had recently retired as president of the label. The project honored Hurwitzโs championing of composers – among them John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Louis Andriessen, Randy Newman, and Timo Andres – as well as his own practice as a serious amateur pianist. This yearโs Festival will feature the first public performance of these works, played by composer/pianist Timo Andres.
Enjoy this wonderful treat – an intimate conversation between colleagues and friends: 2021 Festival artist/composer Timo Andres, artist/composer Laurie Anderson and Bob Hurwitz.
About Timo Andres
Timo Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) is a composer and pianist who grew up in rural Connecticut and lives in Brooklyn, NY. A Nonesuch Records artist, his album of orchestral works, Home Stretch, has been hailed for its โplayful intelligence and individuality,โ (The Guardian) and of his 2010 debut album for two pianos Shy and Mighty (performed by himself and duo partner David Kaplan), Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that โit achieves an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the sceneโฆ more mighty than shy, [Andres] sounds like himself.โNotable works include Everything Happens So Much for the Boston Symphony with Andris Nelsons; Strong Language, a string quartet for the Takรกcs Quartet, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Shriver Hall Concert Series; Steady Hand, a two-piano concerto commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia and premiered at the Barbican with Andres and pianist David Kaplan; and The Blind Banister, a piano concerto for Jonathan Biss, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
As a pianist, Timo Andres has appeared with the LA Phil, North Carolina Symphony, the Britten Sinfonia, the Albany Symphony, New World Symphony, and in many collaborations with Andrew Cyr and Metropolis Ensemble. He has performed solo recitals for Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, San Francisco Performances, the Phillips Collection, and (le) Poisson Rouge. Among others, Andres has collaborated with Ted Hearne, Becca Stevens, Jeffrey Kahane, Gabriel Kahane, Brad Mehldau, Nadia Sirota, the Kronos Quartet, the LA Dance Project, John Adams, and Philip Glass, with whom he has performed the complete Glass Etudes around the world, and who selected Andres as the recipient of the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protรฉgรฉ Prize in 2016.
Recent and upcoming projects include a new work for the Calder Quartet commissioned by the LA Phil, premiรจred at Noon to Midnight; a major choral-orchestral work for the Orchester Cottbus Staatstheater, Land Mass; orchestrations for Sufjan Stevens and New York City Ballet for Justin Peckโs Principia; and dates at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Neue Galerie, and the Big Ears Festival with vocalist Theo Bleckmann. In November 2019, Andres curates (and performs in) โAmerican Perspective,โ a concert with the Cincinnati Symphony, Andrรฉ de Ridder, Dance Heginbotham, and cellist Inbal Segev, playing his concerto, Upstate Obscura. In April 2020, Carnegie Hall presents him in a piano recital at Zankel Hall, playing works by himself, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Robin Holcomb, Philip Glass, Donnacha Dennehy, Louis Andriessen, and the world premiere of a commissioned work by Gabriella Smith.
Timo Andres earned both his bachelorโs and masterโs degrees from the Yale School of Music. He is a Yamaha/Bรถsendorfer Artist and in 2018 joined the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music. Visit his website here.
About Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson is one of Americaโs most reknowned โ and daring โ creative pioneers. Known primarily for her multimedia presentations, she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist.O Superman launched Andersonโs recording career in 1980, rising to number two on the British pop charts and subsequently appearing on Big Science, the first of her seven albums on the Warner Brothers label. Other record releases include Mister Heartbreak, United States Live, Strange Angels, Bright Red, and the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave. A deluxe box set of her Warner Brothers output, Talk Normal, was released in the fall of 2000 on Rhino/Warner Archives. In 2001, Anderson released her first record for Nonesuch Records, entitled Life on a String, which was followed by Live in New York, recorded at Town Hall in New York City in September 2001, and released in May 2002.
Anderson has toured the United States and internationally numerous times with shows ranging from simple spoken word performances to elaborate multimedia events. Major works include United States I-V (1983), Empty Places (1990), The Nerve Bible (1995), and Songs and Stories for Moby Dick, a multimedia stage performance based on the novel by Herman Melville. Songs and Stories for Moby Dick toured internationally throughout 1999 and 2000. In the fall of 2001, Anderson toured the United States and Europe with a band, performing music from Life on a String. She has also presented many solo works, including Happiness, which premiered in 2001 and toured internationally through Spring 2003.
Anderson has published six books. Text from Andersonโs solo performances appears in the book Extreme Exposure, edited by Jo Bonney. Anderson has also written the entry for New York for the Encyclopedia Brittanica and in 2006, Edition 7L published Andersonโs book of dream drawings entitled โNight Lifeโ.
Laurie Andersonโs visual work has been presented in major museums throughout the United States and Europe. In 2003, The Musรฉe Art Contemporain of Lyon in France produced a touring retrospective of her work, entitled The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson. This retrospective included installation, audio, instruments, video and art objects and spans Andersonโs career from the 1970โs to her most current works. It continued to tour internationally from 2003 to 2005. As a visual artist, Anderson is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York where her exhibition, The Waters Reglitterized, opened in September 2005. In 2008, the Museum of Modern Art acquired her โSelf-Playing Violinโ which was featured in the โMaking Musicโ exhibition in Fall 2008.
As a composer, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme; dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley, and a score for Robert LePageโs theater production, Far Side of the Moon. She has created pieces for National Public Radio, The BBC, and Expo โ92 in Seville. In 1997 she curated the two-week Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall in London. Her most recent orchestra work Songs for Amelia Earhart. premiered at Carnegie Hall in February 2000 performed by the American Composers Orchestra and later toured Europe with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. The piece was performed as part of the Groningen Festival honoring Laurie Anderson in Fall 2008 with the Noord Nederlands Orkest.
Recognized worldwide as a groundbreaking leader in the use of technology in the arts, Anderson collaborated with Interval Research Corporation, a research and development laboratory founded by Paul Allen and David Liddle, in the exploration of new creative tools, including the Talking Stick. She created the introduction sequence for the first segment of the PBS special Art 21, a series about Art in the 21st century. Her awards include the 2001 Tenco Prize for Songwriting in San
Remo, Italy and the 2001 Deutsche Schallplatten prize for Life On A String as well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She recently collaborated with Bran Ferren of Applied Minds, Inc to create an artwork that was displayed in โThe Third Mindโ exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in Winter 2009.
In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance โThe End of the Moonโ. Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high definition film, โHidden Inside Mountainsโ, created for World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2008 she completed a two-year worldwide tour of her performance piece, โHomelandโ, which was released as an album on Nonesuch Records in June, 2010. Andersonโs solo performance โDelusionโ debuted at the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad in February, 2010 and toured internationally throughout 2011. In 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janeiro.
In 2011 her exhibition of all new work titled โForty-Nine Days In the Bardoโ opened at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. That same year she was awarded with the Pratt Instituteโs Honorary Legends Award. In January of 2012 Anderson was the artist-in-residence at the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, Alberta where she developed her latest solo performance titled โDirtday!โ Her exhibition โBoatโ curated by Vito Schnabel opened in May of 2012. She has recently finished residencies at both CAP in UCLA in Los Angeles and EMPAC in Troy New York. Her film Heart of a Dog was chosen as an official selection of the 2015 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. In the same year, her exhibition Habeas Corpus opened at the Park Avenue Armory to wide critical acclaim and in 2016 she was the recipient of Yoko Onoโs Courage Award for the Arts for that project. Anderson lives in New York City. Visit her website here.
Music Links
Timo Andres’ Wise Words
Philip Glass’ Evening Song No. 2
John Adams’ I still play
I Still Play
I Still Play, an album of eleven new solo piano compositions written by artists who have recorded for Nonesuch Records, is now available on Nonesuch. The pieces were written in honor of the label’s longtime President Bob Hurwitz on the occasion of his 2017 shift into the Chairman Emeritus role after running the label for thirty-two years. I Still Play features works by John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Timo Andres, Louis Andriessen, Donnacha Dennehy, Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, Brad Mehldau, Steve Reich, Pat Metheny, and Randy Newman. The pieces have been recorded by Andres and fellow Nonesuch artist Jeremy Denk, as well as by Mehldau and Newman themselves.
The pieces were first performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 2017, at a concert celebrating Hurwitz’s tenure at the label. His longtime friend and colleague, current Nonesuch President David Bither, says, “Bob’s great friend John Adams deserves credit for the idea at the core of this recording. I enlisted his help in thinking of how we might honor Bob. A few weeks later he suggested that we ask the composers who had worked so closely with Bob to each write him a new piece of music. An honorable suggestion, but with a twist.
“Bob is a pianist and since he was a child has played virtually every day of his life,” Bither continues. “He has said many times that this practice has had a profound influence on how he listens to music. John’s suggestion was that each composer write something that was not a concert piece but that an accomplished pianist like Bob might play.”
Timo Andres, who recorded the majority of the compositions for this record, says in his liner note, “Each of these eleven tributes to Bob Hurwitz was written for an audience of one, on a particular Steinway in a specific Upper West Side living room. Each distills an aspect of its author’s voice to a concentrated miniature. The prevailing tone is conversational rather than declamatory, though it’s a wide-ranging conversation. Large questions are posed but rarely answered in full.” He adds, “If the listener has the odd feeling of having stumbled into an exchange between two friends and missing an inside joke or shared reference here and thereโthat’s not far from the truth.”
Learn more on Nonesuch Records website here
-
Playing Changes
Press Play; Click Box Above to Go Full Screen [ ]
Welcome to the Festivalโs continuing series of the virtual Ojai Talks, where we celebrate the intersection of music, ideas, and the creative process with Ojai Festival artists, innovators, and thinkers.San Francisco Symphony hosted the online premiere of Playing Changes, a new collective project by violinist Helen Kim, choreographer Robert Dekkers, the movement artists of Post:Ballet, and Yak Films photographer Benjamin Tarquin. Playing Changes is an exploration of collaborative art during a time of isolation and confinement features music by Samuel Adams, Philip Glass, Daniel Bernard Roumain, LJ White, as well as newly commissioned works by Ambrose Akinmusire, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Elizabeth Ogonek.
Enjoy our conversation with Helen Kim and 2021 Ojai Festival composer Samuel Adams, as they introduce the project and Samโs recent violin work, titled Playing Changes from his Violin Diptych, as featured in the collaborative project.
Watch the complete project: Playing Changes – SFSymphony+ (sfsymphonyplus.org)
About Samuel Adams
Recently named a Guggenheim Fellow, Samuel Adams (b. 1985, San Francisco, CA) is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. His work has been hailed as โmesmerizingโ and โmusic of a composer with a personal voice and keen imaginationโ by The New York Times, โcanny and assuredโ by The Chicago Tribune and โwondrously alluringโ by The San Francisco Chronicle.
Highlights of the 2019/20 season include a new work for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which will be toured in both Australia and the United States, and the premiere performances of his Second String Quartet for Chicago-based Spektral Quartet in New York, Seattle, and Berkeley. Adams is also building an evening-length work for dance entitled Lyra, which will premiere this coming July in San Francisco.
Last season, Adams’s Movements (for us and them) was toured both in Australia and the US to critical acclaim. The Sydney Morning Herald called the work music of โsubtle emotional powerโ that โstole the show.โ Adamsโs orchestral work many words of love was toured nationally by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Riccardo Muti and received another performance by New World Symphony in Miami. In May 2018, Adams’s new Chamber Concerto was premiered by violinist Karen Gomyo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen to mark the 20th anniversary of the CSO’s contemporary series MusicNOW. The piece was hailed as “hypnotic, endlessly varied and natural” by Classical Voice America and music of “allusive subtlety and ingenuity” by the Chicago Tribune. The work will receive additional performances in 2019 and 2020 and will be recorded in 2021.
Adams served as the curator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series from 2015-2018, a period that saw the commissioning of nine new works, including Amy Beth Kirsten’s SAVIOR and a new work by Manual Cinema, as well as the development of an audiovisual collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago. He has also curated for the San Francisco Symphony as part of their experimental SoundBox series.
Adams has held residencies at Civitella Ranieri (Umbria, IT), Visby International Centre for Composers (Visby, SE), Avaloch Farm (Boscawen, NH), Ucross (Ucross, WY), and Djerassi Resident Artists Program (La Honda, CA).
A committed educator, Adams frequently engages in projects with young musicians. In 2015, he worked with the Negaunee Institute of Music to establish the Civic Orchestra New Music Workshop, a program for emerging composers. In 2014, he was in residence with The National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, for which he composed a work that was premiered under the baton of David Robertson. Adams also regularly works with the students of The Crowden Music Center (Berkeley, CA) and maintains a private teaching studio.
Adams grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where he attended Berkeley’s Crowden School. He went on to study at Stanford University, where he earned a bachelorโs degree with honors in composition and electroacoustic music while also working as a bassist in the San Francisco improvised music community. He received a master’s degree in composition from The Yale School of Music.
About Helen Kim
Violinist Helen Kim joined the San Francisco Symphony as Associate Principal Second Violin in 2016. A member of the Saint Louis Symphony from 2011 to 2016, she made solo appearances with that orchestra in both the 2013 and 2014 seasons. She has spent her summers teaching and performing at festivals including Aspen, Yellow Barn, Luzerne, and the Innsbrook Institute. Ms. Kim received a bachelorโs degree from the University of Southern California, where she was Presidential Scholar, and a masterโs degree from the Yale School of Music. -
Creative Collisions with AMOC
Audiences expect to get a glimpse of the musical future at Ojai. Not as a sci-fi fantasy of escape but through encounters with visionary artists who are actively transforming the real-world landscape: precisely the kinds of artists attracted to AMOC, a collective of 17 musical thinkers and performers. As the Festivalโs Music Director for 2022, AMOC (the acronym for American Modern Opera Company) practices a model of curation grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration.
AMOC gathers like-minded singers, dancers, instrumentalists, and composers who are each at the cutting-edge of their respective fields. Itโs the rock super-group of contemporary classical music. โWhat has been essential for us as a company is that every project is in some way interdisciplinary,โ explains composer, pianist, conductor, and writer Matthew Aucoin, who co-founded AMOC with choreographer/director and dancer Zack Winokur in 2017. โWe’re excited to bring the theatricality that is inherent in every AMOC project to Ojai.โ โCollisionโ is a favorite image to illustrate how their multifaceted, discipline-crossing approach works. โThereโs always a collision, whether that’s between music and dance or music and text and dance,โ Aucoin adds. Or, as the Festivalโs Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian puts it: โWhen you have all of these incredibly vibrant artistic atoms colliding with each other, what results is often the very surprising and very unexpected.โ
โAs a collective, there are many tentacles to AMOC. Its artists have many diverse gifts, and the whole company has been involved in the programming,โ says Aucoin. For example, Family Dinner, his own cycle of mini-concertos, will each feature a different member of the company and include spoken โtoasts.โ This is among the exciting world premieres that will grace the 2022 Festival to be held June 9 to 12. AMOC choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith will create a new, collaborative dance piece adapting and extending parts of her recent film Broken Theater and showcasing the AMOC family. Smith will choreograph music by Schubert, Bach, Connie Converse, and Pete Seeger, developing a scenario in which the rehearsal process is deconstructed.
Indeed, dance will play an especially prominent role in this edition of Ojai Festival. Smith is joined by Or Schraiber, Yiannis Logothetis, and Coleman Itzkoff in creating Waiting, a new dance-music piece about the bonds of friendship and its attendant moral quandaries that is tinged with 1960s-style French theater of the absurd.
A significant number of AMOCโs members have developed careers in opera โ an interdisciplinary pursuit by definition โ including soprano Julia Bullock, bass-baritone Davรณne Tines, tenor Paul Appleby, and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. Itโs characteristic of the company that they strive to expand our expectations of what opera can encompass. Aucoin, a 2018 MacArthur Fellow, took on operaโs foundational myth with Eurydice, his setting of a play by Sarah Ruhl that reconsiders the myth of Orpheus and his descent into the Underworld from his wifeโs point of view. Eurydice was premiered in 2020 by Los Angeles Opera, where Aucoin is artist-in-residence, and the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production earlier this season that was broadcast internationally in HD.
Among the highlights of Ojai 2022 will be the world premiere staging by Zack Winokur, with choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, of Olivier Messiaenโs 1945 song cycle Harawi. The Andean musical tradition illuminates the legend of Tristan and Isolde in this hour-long song cycle for soprano and piano. Julia Bullock has long envisioned a performance that explores the cycleโs dichotomies of โspirituality and sensuality, love and death, men and women.โ Drawing together five AMOC members (pianist Conor Hanick, along with the aforementioned artists), this version will layer theatrical and choreographic interpretations with multicultural reflection and musical performance. โWith every composer who wants to celebrate other cultures that they’ve experienced or been deeply inspired by, there’s always this danger of appropriation that I wanted to be conscious of,โ says Bullock. She has therefore invited the voices of artists of indigenous Andean traditions to share their musical or dance traditions as a counterpart.
Another song cycle on the program highlights the extraordinary music of composer, pianist, and scholar Anthony Cheung: echoing of tenses, commissioned by AMOC, sets the words of Asian-American poets who reflect on issues of family, identity, migration, and loss. Paul Appleby will be joined by Conor Hanick and violinist Miranda Cuckson to perform Cheungโs blend of live performance and pre-recorded sound design.
Interpretation-as-collaboration: this is AMOCโs signature, Winokur observes. โPart of the reason we started the company is that the members are not being asked to interpret something already there but form these ideas collaboratively โ and often leading out of their own passions, experiences and desires. Weโre good at shape-shifting to support different members in the company’s projects and ideas. Ojai is a perfect place to do this because of its rich history of birthing so many important projects that still live in the world.โ
โThey are ahead of their time,โ says Guzelimian. โThe fact that they make the creation and the performance of work integral is also a critical statement about how a new generation of artists works.โ Many of AMOCโs members have friendships and working relationships that go back to their student days at Juilliard โ bonds that have intensified their collaborative process. Their extraordinary range of interests widens their expressive palette as well. New music meets early music in several of their programs, and the period instrument group/continuo band Ruckus regularly includes musicians who overlap with AMOC, such as composer and bassoonist Doug Balliett and composer and flutist Emi Ferguson. Ruckus will join in some events to expand AMOCโs ensemble. And since several of the AMOCers are avid hikers and lovers of the outdoors, audiences can expect to encounter music in unusual natural settings.
These collaborations allow AMOC to present performances in novel contexts, such as a program devoted to the works of Julius Eastman, for which special guest collaborator Seth Parker Woods shares his inspiring engagement with Eastmanโs legacy. Another discovery awaits in a rare solo performance by pianist Conor Hanick of Hans Otteโs The Book of Sounds. A polymath artist who combined music, poetry, drawings, and art videos, Otte wrote in a Minimalist style that incorporates impulses from Eastern mysticism. The result, says Guzelimian, is โrevelatory.โ
Even a composer as familiar as J.S. Bach will emerge in a new light in a Libbey Bowl event offering contemporary reflections on his instrumental music, including pieces by Cassandra Miller and Reiko Fueting.
Some of the AMOC musicians are already familiar to Ojai audiences. Davรณne Tines made his Festival debut in 2016 with Music Director Peter Sellars. Emi Ferguson was featured in the recent 2021 edition. So did the venturesome violinist and violist Miranda Cuckson. โI loved the experience of playing for the Ojai audience,โ she recalls. โTheir receptiveness to all kinds of experiences was very palpable.โ Julia Bullock made her first-ever appearance at a music festival when Dawn Upshaw invited her to appear at Ojai. For the soprano, โOjai is a place of comfort, of real communion making, of openness and generosity โ a place where community seems to be built.โ
Similarly, the Ojai experience of intensive, contemplative music-making seems to be in AMOCโs DNA. โWe try to create a festival atmosphere every summer at our residency/creative retreat in Vermont,โ Aucoin says. That is the context for which he began creating the concertos in Family Dinner, as showcases to bring the company together after months of being separated during the regular year. โWe want to bring that family spirit to Ojai,โ Aucoin says. Winokur adds: โWhen we started the company, we had the thought that festivals were the best way to experience AMOC and for us to experience each other. We hope that will be the experience for the Ojai audience as well. Performing post-COVID, this is a time where we have to get back to the basics of why we do this.โ
โThomas May
-
2021 Live Stream Archive
The Ojai Music Festival offers the world beyond Ojai’s Libbey Bowl to experience the music and conversations through its free live streaming.
Viewers can enjoy interviews with artists before each performance with Live Stream hosts Thomas Kotcheff and Sarah Gibson. Also check out the 2021 Program Book and Full Festival Schedule.
____
2021 Stream Archive
To watch in full-screen mode, click
in the bottom right of the player.Full Concerts
Ojai Mix: Prelude to a Festival
THU 9.16 @ 9:00pmAttacca Quartet with Rhiannon…
FRI 9.17 @ 11:00amJohn Adams conducts the Ojai…
FRI 9.17 @ 8:00pmI Still Play with pianist Timo Andres
SUN 9.19 @ 8:00amLA Phil New Music Group
SUN 9.19 @ 11:00amFestival Finale
SUN 9.19 @ 5:30pmInterviews
Interview with Dustin Donahue
Interview with Carlos Simon
Interview with Gabriela Ortiz
Interview with Ara Guzelimian
Interview with Miranda Cuckson
Interview with John Adams
Selected Pieces from Concerts
รlรฉgie by Igor Stravinsky
Huitzitl by Gabriela Ortiz
Between Worlds by Carlos Simon
Early to Rise by Timo Andres
Magnolia by Dylan Mattingly
Violin Diptych by S. Adams
Marรฉ by Gabriela Smith
Toot Nipple by John Adams
Alligator Escalator by John Adams
Stubble Crotchet by John Adams
Benkei’s Standing Death by Paul Wiancko
Plan and Elevation by Caroline Shaw
Strum by Jessie Montgomery
Factory Girl (traditional) by Rhiannon Giddens
Koromanti Tune # 2 / Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
At the Purchaser’s Option by
Rhiannon GiddensCarrot Revolution by Gabriella Smith
Danse sacrรฉe et danse profane by Claude Debussy
Partita No. 3 Preludio by J.S. Bach | Fog by Salonen
Flow by Ingram Marshall
Running Theme by Timo Andres
Rรญo de las Mariposas by Gabriela Ortiz
To Give You Form And Breath by inti figgis-vizueta
Hallelujah Junction by John Adams
Objets Trouvรฉs by Esa-Pekka Salonen
Sunt Lacrime Rerum by Dylan Mattingly
____
2021 Live Stream Schedule
To view the live stream, visit our homepage at concert-time. The live stream video will appear at the top of the page. If it’s concert-time and the live stream still hasn’t appeared, click
at the top left of your browser to reload the page. To watch in full-screen mode, click in the bottom right of the player.More live stream questions? Please call or text (805) 317-4184.
THU Sept 16, 2021 โ Stream begins 8:45pm
- 8:45pm โ Welcome
- 9:00pm โ Ojai Mix: Prelude to a Festival
FRI Sept 17, 2021 โ Stream begins 10:45am
- 10:45am โ Interview with Dustin Donahue
- 11:00am โ Attacca Quartet with Rhiannon Giddens
FRI Sept 17, 2021 โ Stream begins 7:45pm
- 7:45pm โ Interview with Carlos Simon
- 8:00pm โ John Adams conducts the Ojai Festival Orchestra
SAT Sept 18, 2021 โ Stream begins 10:15am
- 10:15am โ Interview with John Adams
- 10:30am โ Pianist Vรญkingur รlafsson in recital
SAT Sept 18, 2021 โ Stream begins 7:45pm
- 7:45pm โ Interview with Miranda Cuckson
- 8:00pm โ Theyโre Calling Me Home (Rhiannon Giddens and friends)
SUN Sept 19, 2021 โ Stream begins 7:45am
- Welcome
- 8:00am โ I Still Play (Timo Andres, piano)
SUN Sept 19, 2021 โ Stream begins 10:45am
- 10:45am โ Interview with Gabriela Ortiz
- 11:00am โ LA Phil New Music Group
SUN Sept 19, 2021 โ Stream begins 5:15pm
- 5:15pm โ Interview with Ara Guzelimian
- 5:30pm โ Festival Finale with John Adams, Vรญkingur รlafsson, Rhiannon Giddens, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO)
-
Francesco Turrisi: What’s On My Playlist
Grammy award winning multi-instrumentalist and 2023 Festival artist Francesco Turrisi has been defined a โmusical alchemistโ and a โmusical polyglotโ by the press. Enjoy this wide-ranging music playlist curated by Francesco especially made for the Ojai Music Festival!PLUS, watch the conversation with Francesco and Festival Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian during our Virtual Ojai Talks in December. Click here >
Preview Francesco Turrisi’s playlist here, and log into Spotify or Apple Music to hear the full songs
SPOTIFY
APPLE MUSIC
Click HERE to listen on Apple Music
1. Slide Dance
by Tamer Pinarbasi, Ismail Lumanovski, Ara Dinkjian2. Per ogni sorte di strumenti musicale, Op. 22: Passacaglio
composed by Biagio Marini, performed by Jordi Savall and Hespรจrion XXI3. Yo Vivo Enamorado
by Pedrito Martinez4. Eliasong
by Christian Wallumrรธd Ensemble5. Pucciniana
by Guinga6. Lament for Linus
by Brad Mehldau7. Sonata Da Chiesa No. 1 in D Major, Op. 5: I. Grave โ Adagio โ Grave โ Allegro โ Adagio
composed by Arcangelo Corelli, performed by Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, and Stefano Montanari8. Como al Pie del Suplicio Estuve
by Efrรฉn Lรณpez9. La Tarantella dell’Avena
by Zahr10. Sareri Hovin Mernem
by Lena ChamamyanBONUS track. Here’s an added piece of music requested by Ojai listeners! Spotify โ Passacaglia – song and lyrics by Francesco Turrisi
ENJOY Francesco’s Mom’s delicious “lean” lasagna recipe! Click here >
-
Join Our Community of Volunteers
Vision: To provide Ojai Music Festival patrons a splendid concert going experience.
Mission: By proactive, hospitable action, assure patrons satisfaction in safe, comfortable and accommodating surroundings while providing exemplary and enthusiastic customer service for all.Our Festival volunteers are the heart and soul of the Festival community. Thanks to our combined team efforts, we provide an exceptional setting for all to enjoy the immersive Ojai experience.
Volunteer opportunities include: ushering at concerts, assisting at special events and receptions, office support, working the retail and concessions booth, load-in and load-out for front of house and back of house, and housing artists and production team!
As a volunteer, there are perks for dedicating time and talent! These include Festival commemorative t-shirt, complimentary tickets based on number of shifts, invites to special receptions, and being a part of a warm and wonderful community!
To volunteer for the 77th Festival, June 8 to 11, 2023, complete the application here >
-
Sunday Afternoon with Alexi Kenney
Recently, we celebrated our longtime Ojai Music Festival attendees with a beautiful performance by violinist Alexi Kenney at a scenic Ojai home.
This event launched the first of many public Future Forward Campaign events, which intend to nurture and grow our relationships with our dedicated Festival attendees as well as new faces at the Festival. The Future Forward campaign aims to secure the long-term existence of the Ojai Music Festival by bolstering the Festival’s endowment and increasing capacity for new creative projects.
As Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian expressed, “our shared experiences together have not only shaped the Festival, but our Festival community which is the at the center of everything we do. This special event with Alexi was a moment to honor the Festival’s community and celebrate our shared legacy. You are a part of our story!”
The Future Forward Campaign is built to ensure that the Ojai Music Festival will be the best it can be for the next 75 years and counting. Click here to learn more about the campaign initiatives.
-
Photos from the Ventura River with OVLC!
In celebration of the incredible spring Ojai weather and our OjaiNEXT Festival attendees, we teamed up with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy to host our second iteration of the Hike and Hear with Theodosia Roussos, acclaimed Soprano and English Horn/Oboe player.
After an educational jaunt along the Ventura River with OVLC guides, guests settled into Theodosia’s interactive performance where audience members became the accompaniment to her dynamic outdoor performance.
To learn more about events such as these, sign up for updates for our OjaiNEXT audience members, specifically for our younger Festival enjoyers who are eligible to participate fully in all the Festival activities with special discounts, private events, and community building opportunities!
-
A magical afternoon with Shelley Burgon and Theodosia Roussos
As Ojai begins the blooms in the start of spring, Ojai Music Festival and the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy came together for an enchanted afternoon to hear Theodosia Roussos, acclaimed soprano and english horn/oboe player, and Shelley Burgon – harpist, composer, and, sound artist.
To celebrate our closest friends and supporters, we shared signature OVLC palomas on the rocks with fresh squeezed grapefruit juice from the garden, and views of the snow capped Topas before settling in to hear Theodosia and Shelley perform (with a surprise new work debut from Shelley!)
Thank you to our Festival Family and to the OVLC for celebrating music in Ojai, see you in June!
-
Neutra, Kornfeld, and The Zelter String Quartet
This past Sunday The Zelter String Quartet joined us for music and conversation about the Emigrรฉ Legacy in Los Angeles at a beautiful Richard Neutra home in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.
The Zelter String Quartet performed a special musical performance celebrating the legacy of Neutraโs contemporaries among the emgirรฉ composers who settled in Los Angeles.
Thank you very much to our donors who are able to make events like this possible. The Ojai Music Festival relies on the charitable contributions of our family of patrons, and events like this are a beautiful reminder of how our community comes together to support the music we love.
Thank you very much to our hosts and the guests โ both new and familiar for spending a glorious afternoon with us. We were happy to gather before the upcoming 2023 Festival, June 8 to 11, 2023.
For more reading on the Emigrรฉ legacy in L.A., check out Alex Ross’ article, Richard Neutra’s Architectural Vanishing Act.
-
Get a Head Start: 2023 Festival Preview
Wednesday, May 31 2023
7:00-8:30PM
Bart’s BooksFREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Start your musical exploration before the 2023 Ojai Music Festival, slated for June 8-11, featuring Music Director Rhiannon Giddens!
Join us for a 2023 Festival Preview featuring Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian who will share program and artist insights for an inside look!
Special thanks to our friends at Bart’s Books for co-hosting this free community offering.
Box Ofice:
Open 10 am – 5 pm, Monday – Friday
BoxOffice@OjaiFestival.Org
805 646 2053 -
Podcast Series: OJAICAST 2023
SEASON 3
Welcome to OJAICAST, where we pull back the curtain to take a sneak-peek at the upcoming Ojai Music Festival, June 8 to 11, in beautiful Ojai Valley, California. All are welcome here, from newcomers to long-time music fans. In-depth insights and special guests will help introduce this yearโs programming and whet your musical appetites for whatโs to come with host Emily Praetorius.
Episode 1
Our first episode gives an in-depth look into the 77th Ojai Music Festival (June 8 – 11, 2023), curated by Music Director Rhiannon Giddens. Special guest Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian will give us some insights into the creation of this year’s festival programming and background on some of pieces being played.
Ojai Virtual Talks, Rhiannon Giddens
Uncovering the History of the Banjo with Rhiannon GiddensEmily Praetorius, host and producer
Louis Ng, recording engineerOJAICast theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Music Excerpts in this Episode:
Iโm on My Way – Rhiannon Giddens
Performed by Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco TurrisiLiquid Borders – Gabriela Ortiz
Performed by red fish blue fishClock Catcher – Flying Lotus
Performed by Attacca QuartetGhost Opera – Tan Dun
Performed by Kronos QuartetEpisode 2
Our second episode takes a look at the idea of composing across boundaries with 2023 Festival composers Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Carlos Simon.
Shawn Okpebholo
Ojai Virtual Talks: Lei Liang and Steve Schick
Niloufar Nourbakhsh and IFCA
Carlos Simon, Requiem for the Enslaved
Bill TraylorEmily Praetorius, host and producer
Louis Ng, recording engineerOJAICAST theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Music Excerpts in this Episode:
mi sueรฑo: afro-flamenco – Shawn Okpebholo
Performed by Clare LongendykeThe Willows are New – Chou Wen-Chung
Performed by Gloria ChengVeiled – Niloufar Nourbakhsh
Performed by Amanda GookinBetween Worlds – Carlos Simon
Performed by Julia MirzoevEpisode 3
Our final episode welcomes kamancheh player Niloufar Shiri, pipa player Wu Man, and multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi to the podcast, where they discuss the history of their instruments, how they are played in contemporary music today, and what we can look forward to in this yearโs Festival programming.
Niloufar Shiri Performs at Ojai Meadows Preserve
Niloufar Shiri
Pop Up Pipa with Wu Man
Francesco Turrisi: Playlist & Ojai Talk
Francesco Turrisi
Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi Met Museum ConcertEmily Praetorius, host and producer
Louis Ng, recording engineerOJAICAST theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Music Excerpts in this Episode:
Niloufar Shiri Improvisation
Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi Met Museum ConcertAlso available on SPOTIFY and APPLE PODCASTS
OJAICAST SEASON 2
OJAICAST SEASON 1ABOUT OUR OJAICAST HOST
Emily Praetorius, former Ojai Music Festival intern and Rothenberg Intern Fellow, is a current Composition DMA candidate at Columbia University. She previously studied composition and clarinet performance at the University of Redlands (BM) and composition at Manhattan School of Music (MM). She has studied with Kathryn Nevin (clarinet), Susan Botti, Georg Friedrich Haas, George Lewis, and Anthony Suter. Emily is from Ojai, CA and lives in New York City where she is a proud co-owner of Kuro Kirin Espresso & Coffee. -
2023 Live Stream Replays
The 77th Ojai Music Festival, June 8 to 11, 2023, welcomes as Music Director acclaimed musician and composer Rhiannon Giddens. Seven of the more than 20 music events scheduled throughout the beautiful setting of the Ojai Valley will be available at no cost via live streaming. Since 2012, the Festival has expanded its global footprint building a worldwide audience, and has deepened connections with patrons throughout the year.
For more context, listen to the Ojai Music Festival Podcast:
THU June 8, 2023
8:00PM โ Liquid Borders
Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Attacca Quartet | Steven Schick percussion/director| red fish blue fish percussion
Kaija SAARIAHO Movement V from Six Japanese Gardens
Gabriela ORTIZ Liquid Borders
Franz Joseph HAYDN String Quartet in F major, Op. 77 No. 2 Hob. III:82
Zakir HUSSAIN Pallavi (arr. Reena Esmail)
Philip GLASS First Movement from String Quartet No. 3 (โMishimaโ)
Colin JACOBSEN Beloved do not let me be discouraged
Geeshie WILEY Last Kind Words (arr. by Jacob Garchik)
Rhiannon GIDDENS Lullaby
David CROSBY/Nathan SCHRAM Where We Are Not (arr. Nathan Schram)
Caroline SHAW Stem and Root from The Evergreen
John ADAMS Judah to Ocean, Rag the Bone from Johnโs Book of Alleged Dances
SQUAREPUSHER Xetaka 1FRI June 9, 2023
10:00AM โ Vis-A-Vis
Lara Downes piano | Michi Wiancko violin | Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello |Emi Ferguson flute | Joshua Rubin clarinet | Gloria Cheng piano | Wu Man pipa | Steven Schick conductor/percussion
Due to injury, pianist Leonard Hayes has had to reduce his playing commitments and has withdrawn from this concert. We are deeply grateful to Lara Downes for agreeing to step in on short notice. Please note the revised program:
Shawn OKPEBHOLO Amazing Grace
H.T. BURLEIGH On Bended Knees
Margaret BONDS Troubled Water (Wade in the Water)
Michael ABELS Iconoclasm
Jessie MONTGOMERY Rhapsody No. 2
Nasim KHORASSANI Growth
Nina BARZEGAR Inexorable Passage
Lei LIANG vis-ร -vis8:00PM โ Evening with Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi
An intimate concert with Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi with music ranging from the Baroque to Appalachian ballads and traditional Black American songs.
SAT June 10, 2023
10:00AM โ The Willows Are New
Gloria Cheng piano | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Karen Ouzounian cello | Nathan Schram viola |
Wu Man pipa
Niloufar NOURBAKHSH Veiled
Lei LIANG Mother’s Songs
GE Gan-Ru Gong (from Gu Yue)
CHOU Wen-Chung The Willows are New
Kayhan KALHOR Solo Improvisation
8:00PM โ Omar’s JourneyWatch for highlights of Omar’s Journey in the coming weeks.
Limmie Pulliam tenor (Omar) | Rhiannon Giddens soprano (Julie) | Cheryse McLeod Lewis mezzo-soprano (Fatima) | Michael Preacely bass-baritone (Abdul/Abe) | Andy Papas bass-baritone (Owen/Johnson) | Emi Ferguson flute | Joshua Rubin clarinet | Mazz Swift, Michi Wiancko violins | Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello | Shawn Conley bass | Leonard Hayes piano | Ross Karre, Francesco Turrisi percussion | Justin Robinson fiddle | Seckou Keita kora
Omar’s Journey World Premiere
Music by Rhiannon GIDDENS and Michael ABELS and Libretto by Rhiannon Giddens
and music from Senegal and the CarolinasAn Ojai-commissioned work for voices and chamber ensemble drawn from the opera Omar, by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, framed by traditional music that traces the journey of the real-life Omar Ibn Said from Senegal to the Carolinas.
SUN June 11, 2023
10:00AM โ Early Music
Francesco Turrisi curator and keyboards | Attacca Quartet |Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Karen Ouzounian cello | Wu Man pipa |Joshua Stauffer theorbo
This concert challenges the idea of late Renaissance and early Baroque music and reinterprets it as a universal language that can connect the 17th century to today through an imagined historical and geographical journey.
5:30PM โ Strings Attached
Amy Schroeder violin | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Seckou Keita kora | Rhiannon Giddens vocals/multi-instrumentalist Wu Man pipa | Francesco Turrisi multi-instrumentalist | Mazz Swift, Michi Wiancko violins | Mario Gotoh viola |Karen Ouzounian cello | Shawn Conley bass | Joshua Stauffer theorbo
A musical summit of Festival artists and a jam session featuring solos and collaborations bringing together bowed and plucked string instruments from the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. An exuberant finale celebrating the many musical stories featured at this yearโs Festival! -
2023 Festival Schedule
View the 2023 program book here
FULL SCHEDULE
THU, June 8
2:30PM OJAI TALKS – SOLD OUT
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campus2:30-3:15pm Ara Guzelimian with Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels
3:30-4:30pm WQXR’s New Sounds John Schaefer with Festival artists and composers6:00PM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with composers Gabriela Ortiz and Aida Shirazi with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
6:30PM MOON VIEWING MUSIC – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboJoin Steven Schick in this solo performance of Peter Garland’s Moon Viewing Music (Inscrutable Stillness Studies #1) described as a quiet and introspective six-movement work for three large Thai-style gongs and large tam-tam.
8:00PM LIQUID BORDERS
Libbey BowlRhiannon Giddens vocals | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Attacca Quartet | red fish blue fish percussion ensemble with Steven Schick director
Gabriela ORTIZ Liquid Borders
Franz Joseph HAYDN String Quartet in F major, Op. 77 No. 2 Hob. III:82
Zakir HUSSAIN Pallavi (arr. Reena Esmail)
Philip GLASS First Movement from String Quartet No. 3 (โMishimaโ)
Colin JACOBSEN Beloved do not let me be discouraged
Geeshie WILEY Last Kind Words (arr. Jacob Garchik)
Rhiannon GIDDENS Lullaby
David CROSBY/Nathan SCHRAM Where We Are Not (arr. Nathan Schram)
Caroline SHAW Stem and Root from The Evergreen
John ADAMS Judah to Ocean, Rag the Bone from Johnโs Book of Alleged Dances
SQUAREPUSHER Xetaka 1Free live stream of this concert will be available.
FRI, June 9
8:00AM OJAI DAWNS
Zalk Theater, Besant Hill SchoolEmi Ferguson flute | Ross Karre percussion | Niloufar Shiri kamancheh | Aida Shirazi electronics |Steven Schick percussion | red fish blue fish
Golfam KHAYAM Lost Wind
Aida SHIRAZI and Niloufar SHIRI Yearning, Every Dawn New Work World Premiere
Edgard VARรSE Density 21.5
CHOU Wen-Chung Echoes From The GorgeThe Ojai Dawns is a benefit for Festival Family Donor Circles. Learn more here>
Subscribers receive priority to purchase single tickets before going on sale to the general public beginning March 31.
10:00AM VIS-ร-VIS
Libbey BowlLara Downes piano | Michi Wiancko violin | Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello |Emi Ferguson flute | Joshua Rubin clarinet | Gloria Cheng piano | Wu Man pipa | Steven Schick conductor/percussion
Due to injury, pianist Leonard Hayes has had to reduce his playing commitments and has withdrawn from this concert. We are deeply grateful to Lara Downes for agreeing to step in on short notice. Please note the revised program:
Shawn OKPEBHOLO Amazing Grace
H.T. BURLEIGH On Bended Knees
Margaret BONDS Troubled Water (Wade in the Water)
Michael ABELS Iconoclasm
Jessie MONTGOMERY Rhapsody No. 2
Nasim KHORASSANI Growth
Nina BARZEGAR Inexorable Passage
Lei LIANG vis-ร -visFree live stream of this concert will be available.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with composers Nina Barzegar and Nasim Khorassani with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds
3:30PM GHOST OPERA – SOLD OUT
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campusWu Man pipa | Attacca Quartet
PeiJu Chien-Pott dancer/choreographer | Jon Reimer director | Nicholas Houfek lighting designerTAN Dun Ghost Opera
Tan Dunโs Ghost Opera evokes the spirits of Bach and Shakespeare, standing with the ancient folk traditions of traditional shamanistic Chinese music. A new production, created especially for the Ojai Music Festival, brings dance into the work and re-imagines it for a new generation.Ghost Opera is an add-on event, not included in the Libbey Bowl Series Pass. Purchase here >
6:00PM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with Lei Liang and Wu Man with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds
8:00PM AN EVENING WITH RHIANNON GIDDENS AND FRANCESCO TURRISI – SOLD OUT
Libbey BowlAn intimate concert with Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi with music ranging from the Baroque to Appalachian ballads and traditional Black American songs.
Free live stream of this concert will be available.
SAT, June 10
8:00AM MORNING MEDITATION – FREE
Chaparral AuditoriumNiloufar Shiri kamancheh | Mario Gotoh violin
11:30AM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with composers Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Carlos Simon with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
10:00AM THE WILLOWS ARE NEW
Libbey BowlKaren Ouzounian cello | Wu Man pipa | Nathan Schram viola | Gloria Cheng piano | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh
Niloufar NOURBAKHSH Veiled
Lei LIANG Motherโs Songs
GE Gan-Ru Gong
CHOU Wen-Chung The Willows are New
Kayhan KALHOR Solo ImprovisationFree live stream of this concert will be available.
3:30PM GHOST OPERA – SOLD OUT
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campusWu Man pipa | Attacca Quartet
PeiJu Chien-Pott dancer/choreographer | Jon Reimer director | Nicholas Houfek lighting designerTAN Dun Ghost Opera
Tan Dunโs Ghost Opera evokes the spirits of Bach and Shakespeare, standing with the ancient folk traditions of traditional shamanistic Chinese music. A new production, created especially for the Ojai Music Festival, brings dance into the work and re-imagines it for a new generation.
This is a repeat performance. Ghost Opera is an add-on event, not included in the Libbey Bowl Series Pass. Purchase here >
6:00PM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with composer Michael Abels with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
8:00PM OMARโS JOURNEY – SOLD OUT
Libbey BowlLimmie Pulliam tenor (Omar) | Rhiannon Giddens soprano (Julie) | Cheryse McLeod Lewis mezzo-soprano (Fatima) | Michael Preacely bass-baritone (Abdul/Abe) | Andy Papas bass-baritone (Johnson/Owen)
Emi Ferguson flute | Joshua Rubin clarinet | Mazz Swift, Michi Wiancko violins | Mario Gotoh viola Karen Ouzounian cello | Shawn Conley bass | Leonard Hayes piano | Francesco Turrisi, Ross Karre percussion
Justin Robinson fiddle | Seckou Keita kora
Music from Senegal and the Carolinas
Music by Rhiannon GIDDENS/Michael ABELS Omarโs Journey World Premiere
Libretto by Rhiannon GiddensAn Ojai-commissioned work for voices and chamber ensemble drawn from the Pulitzer-Prize winning opera Omar, by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, framed by traditional music that traces the journey of the real-life Omar Ibn Said from Senegal to the Carolinas.
Free live stream of this concert will be available.
SUN, June 11
8:00AM MORNING MEDITATION – FREE
Chaparral AuditoriumSeckou Keita kora
10:00AM EARLY MUSIC
Libbey BowlFrancesco Turrisi curator and keyboards | Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Wu Man pipa
Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Joshua Stauffer therobo | Attacca QuartetA program imagined specifically for the magical atmosphere of Sunday morning in Libbey Bowl, playing on the two ideas of very old music and music for the first hours of the day. Francesco Turrisi curates and introduces music ranging from thousand-year-old works for solo pipa, to Renaissance consort music, from ancient Persian melodies to modal jazz improvisations.
Free live stream of this concert will be available.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with Francesco Turrisi with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
1:00PM STONES AND STARS: LISTENING TO (AND BEYOND) THE WORLD – FREE
Libbey ParkSteven Schick percussion
Make music with us! Join in on this interactive community performance led by Steven Schick.
2:30PM BETWEEN WORLDS
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campusMazz Swift violin Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello | Shawn Conley bass
Ross Karre projection designerCarlos SIMON Between Worlds
A complete performance of Carlos Simonโs cycle Between Worlds, four solo string works placed in visual context by their source of inspiration: the remarkable paintings of Bill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949), chronicling nearly a century of Black American life.
Text related to Bill Traylor and the project title “Between Worlds” are borrowed from, and organized in relation to, Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, by Leslie Umberger for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (book and exhibition), 2018.
Festival Family Donor Circle Members receive first priority seats. Learn more here>
Subscribers receive priority to purchase single tickets before going on sale to the general public beginning March 31.
4:00PM BUILD A HOUSE – FREE FAMILY EVENT
Libbey ParkA special free family event โ Rhiannon Giddens does a reading and special musical performance based on her new childrenโs book, Build A House.
5:30PM FINALE: STRINGS ATTACHED
Libbey BowlAmy Schroeder violin | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Seckou Keita kora | Rhiannon Giddens singer/instrumentalist | Wu Man pipa | Justin Robinson fiddle | Francesco Turrisi multi-instrumentalist | Members of Silkroad Ensemble
Michael ABELS Isolation Variation
Duo Improvisation with Kayhan Kalhor and Seckou Keita
Nassim KHORASSANI Lullaby
Followed by a selection of music announced from the stage — an exuberant finale celebrating the many musical stories featured at this yearโs Festival!Free live stream of this concert will be available.
THU, June 8
2:30PM OJAI TALKS – SOLD OUT
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campus2:30-3:15pm Ara Guzelimian with Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels
3:30-4:30pm WQXR’s New Sounds John Schaefer with Festival artists and composers6:00PM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with composers Gabriela Ortiz and Aida Shirazi with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
6:30PM MOON VIEWING MUSIC – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboJoin Steven Schick in this solo performance of Peter Garland’s Moon Viewing Music (Inscrutable Stillness Studies #1) described as a quiet and introspective six-movement work for three large Thai-style gongs and large tam-tam.
8:00PM LIQUID BORDERS
Libbey BowlRhiannon Giddens vocals | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Attacca Quartet | red fish blue fish percussion ensemble | Steven Schick director
Gabriela ORTIZ Liquid Borders
Franz Joseph HAYDN String Quartet in F major, Op. 77 No. 2 Hob. III:82
Zakir HUSSAIN Pallavi (arr. Reena Esmail)
Philip GLASS First Movement from String Quartet No. 3 (โMishimaโ)
Colin JACOBSEN Beloved do not let me be discouraged
Geeshie WILEY Last Kind Words (arr. Jacob Garchik)
Rhiannon GIDDENS Lullaby
David CROSBY/Nathan SCHRAM Where We Are Not (arr. Nathan Schram)
Caroline SHAW Stem and Root from The Evergreen
John ADAMS Judah to Ocean, Rag the Bone from Johnโs Book of Alleged Dances
SQUAREPUSHER Xetaka 1Free live stream of this concert will be available.
FRI, June 9
8:00AM OJAI DAWNS
Zalk Theater, Besant Hill SchoolEmi Ferguson flute
Ross Karre percussion
Niloufar Shiri kamancheh
Aida Shirazi electronics
Steven Schick percussion
red fish blue fish
Golfam KHAYAM Lost Wind
Aida SHIRAZI and Nioufar SHIRI Yearning, Every Dawn New Work World Premiere
Edgard VARรSE Density 21.5
CHOU Wen-Chung Echoes From The GorgeThe Ojai Dawns is a benefit for Festival Family Donor Circles. Learn more here>
10:00AM VIS-ร-VIS
Libbey BowlLara Downes piano | Michi Wiancko violin | Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello |Emi Ferguson flute | Joshua Rubin clarinet | Gloria Cheng piano |Wu Man pipa | Steven Schick conductor/percussion
Due to injury, pianist Leonard Hayes has had to reduce his playing commitments and has withdrawn from this concert. We are deeply grateful to Lara Downes for agreeing to step in on short notice. Please note the revised program:
Shawn OKPEBHOLO Amazing Grace
H.T. BURLEIGH On Bended Knees
Margaret BONDS Troubled Water (Wade in the Water)
Michael ABELS Iconoclasm
Jessie MONTGOMERY Rhapsody No. 2
Nasim KHORASSANI Growth
Nina BARZEGAR Inexorable Passage
Lei LIANG vis-ร -visFree live stream of this concert will be available.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS – FREE
LIBBEY PARK GAZEBOIn-depth conversation with composers Nina Barzegar and Nasim Khorassani with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
FREE. Open to the public.3:30PM GHOST OPERA – SOLD OUT
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campusWu Man pipa
Attacca Quartet
PeiJu Chien-Pott dancer/choreographer
Jon Reimer director
Nicholas Houfek lighting designerTAN Dun Ghost Opera
Tan Dunโs Ghost Opera evokes the spirits of Bach and Shakespeare, standing with the ancient folk traditions of traditional shamanistic Chinese music. A new production, created especially for the Ojai Music Festival, brings dance into the work and re-imagines it for a new generation.Ghost Opera is an add-on event, not included in the Libbey Bowl Series Pass. Purchase here >
8:00PM AN EVENING WITH RHIANNON GIDDENS AND FRANCESCO TURRISI – SOLD OUT
Libbey BowlAn intimate concert with Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi with music ranging from the Baroque to Appalachian ballads and traditional Black American songs as well as excerpts from Songs of Flight by Shawn Okpebholo.
Free live stream of this concert will be available.
SAT, June 10
8:00AM MORNING MEDITATION – FREE
Chaparral AuditoriumNiloufar Shiri kamancheh
Mario Gotoh violin10:00AM MORNING CONCERT
Libbey BowlKaren Ouzounian cello
Wu Man pipa
Nathan Schram viola
Gloria Cheng piano
Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh
Niloufar NOURBAKHSH Veiled
Lei LIANG Motherโs Songs
GE Gan-Ru Gong
CHOU Wen-Chung The Willows are New
Kayhan KALHOR Solo ImprovisationFree live stream of this concert will be available.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with composers Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Carlos Simon with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
3:30PM GHOST OPERA – SOLD OUT
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campusWu Man pipa
Attacca Quartet
PeiJu Chien-Pott dancer/choreographer
Jon Reimer director
Nicholas Houfek lighting designerTAN Dun Ghost Opera
Tan Dunโs Ghost Opera evokes the spirits of Bach and Shakespeare, standing with the ancient folk traditions of traditional shamanistic Chinese music. This new production, created especially for Ojai, introduces dance into the work and re-imagines this landmark piece for a new generation.Repeat performance. Ghost Opera is an add-on event, not included in the Libbey Bowl Series Pass. Purchase here >
6:00PM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with composer Michael Abels with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
8:00PM OMARโS JOURNEY – SOLD OUT
Libbey BowlSeckou Keita kora
Justin Robinson fiddle
Rhiannon Giddens soprano
Cheryse McLeod Lewis mezzo-soprano
Limmie Pulliam tenor
Michael Preacely bass-baritone
Ojai Festival EnsembleMusic from Senegal and the Carolinas
Rhiannon GIDDENS/Michael ABELS Omarโs Journey World PremiereAn Ojai-commissioned work for voices and chamber ensemble drawn from the opera Omar, by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, framed by traditional music that traces the journey of the real-life Omar Ibn Said from Senegal to the Carolinas.
Free live stream of this concert will be available.
SUN, June 11
8:00AM MORNING MEDITATION – FREE
Chaparral AuditoriumSeckou Keita kora
10:00AM EARLY MUSIC
Libbey BowlFrancesco Turrisi curator and keyboards | Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Wu Man pipa
Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Joshua Stauffer therobo | Attacca QuartetA program imagined specifically for the magical atmosphere of Sunday morning in Libbey Bowl, playing on the two ideas of very old music and music for the first hours of the day. Francesco Turrisi curates and introduces music ranging from thousand-year-old works for solo pipa, to Renaissance consort music, from ancient Persian melodies to modal jazz improvisations.
Free live stream of this concert will be available.
11:30AM OJAI CHATS – FREE
Libbey Park GazeboIn-depth conversation with Francesco Turrisi with host John Schaefer of WQXR’s New Sounds.
1:00PM STONES AND STARS: LISTENING TO (AND BEYOND) THE WORLD – FREE
Libbey ParkSteven Schick percussion
Make music with us! Join in on this interactive community performance led by Steven Schick.
2:30PM BETWEEN WORLDS
Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School lower campusMazz Swift violin
Mario Gotoh viola
Karen Ouzounian cello
Shawn Conley bass
Ross Karre projection designerCarlos SIMON Between Worlds
A complete performance of Carlos Simonโs cycle Between Worlds, four solo string works placed in visual context by their source of inspiration: the remarkable paintings of Bill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949), chronicling nearly a century of Black American life.
Text related to Bill Traylor and the project title “Between Worlds” are borrowed from, and organized in relation to, Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, by Leslie Umberger for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (book and exhibition), 2018.
Festival Family Donor Circle Members receive first priority seats. Learn more here>
4:00PM BUILD A HOUSE – FREE FAMILY EVENT
Libbey ParkRhiannon Giddens does a reading and special musical performance based on her new childrenโs book, Build A House.
5:30PM FINALE: STRINGS ATTACHED
Libbey BowlAmy Schroeder violin | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Seckou Keita kora | Rhiannon Giddens singer/instrumentalist | Wu Man pipa | Justin Robinson fiddle | Francesco Turrisi multi-instrumentalist | Members of Silkroad Ensemble
Michael ABELS Isolation Variation
Duo Improvisation with Kayhan Kalhor and Seckou Keita
Nassim KHORASSANI Lullaby
Followed by a selection of music announced from the stage — an exuberant finale celebrating the many musical stories featured at this yearโs Festival!Free live stream of this concert will be available.
-
2023 Virtual Ojai Talks
Get an inside look at the creative process with our free Virtual Ojai Talks, where we celebrate the intersection of music and ideas with the 2023 Festival artists, composers, innovators, and thinkers. Virtual Talks are free and open to the musically curious!
Free and Open to the Public
Virtual Ojai Talks with Michael Abels
May 3, 2023, 5:30-6:30pm
ZoomEnjoy a conversation between Ara Guzelimian and featured Festival composer Michael Abels as they talk about creating the world premiere of Omarโs Journey, an Ojai-commissioned work for voices and chamber ensemble drawn from the opera Omar by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, and his continuing work as both a film and concert composer.
RSVP here >
Watch Virtual Ojai Talks with Steven Schick and Lei Liang
Ara Guzelimian and percussionist/conductor Steven Schick are joined by composer Lei Liang, whose works are featured at this yearโs 77th Ojai Music Festival โ including vis-ร -vis, written specifically for Steven Schick and Wu Man. In addition. they consider the legacy of Chou Wen-chung, the composer and legendary mentor to both, whose centennial is celebrated this year.
About Steven Schick, conductor and percussionist
Percussionist, conductor, and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. Hailed by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as, โone of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion but of any instrument,โ he has championed contemporary percussion music by commissioning or premiering more than one hundred-fifty new works. The most important of these have become core repertory for solo percussion. Schick was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2014.
Steven Schick is artistic director of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. As a conductor, he has appeared with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, Ensemble Modern, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Asko/Schรถnberg Ensemble.
Schickโs publications include a book, โThe Percussionistโs Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams,โ and many articles. He has released numerous recordings including the 2010 โPercussion Works of Iannis Xenakis,โ and its companion, โThe Complete Early Percussion Works of Karlheinz Stockhausenโ in 2014 (both on Mode). He received the โDiapason dโOrโ as conductor (Xenakis Ensemble Music with ICE) and the Deutscheschallplattenkritikpreis, as percussionist (Stockhausen), each for the best new music release of 2015.
Steven Schick is Distinguished Professor of Music and holds the Reed Family Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Diego. He was music director of the 2015 Ojai Festival, and starting in 2017, will be co-artistic director, with Claire Chase, of the Summer Music Program at the Banff Centre.
About Lei Liang, composer
Chinese-born American composer Lei Liang is the winner of the Rome Prize, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission, a Creative Capital Award, and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His concerto for saxophone and orchestra, Xiaoxiang, was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2015. His orchestral work, A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, won the prestigious 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.
Lei Liang was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert for the inaugural concert of the CONTACT! new music series. His ten portrait discs are released on Naxos, New World, Mode, BMOP/sound, Encounter, Albany and Bridge Records. As a scholar and conservationist of cultural traditions, he has edited and co-edited five books and editions, and published more than forty articles.
From 2013-2016, Lei Liang served as Composer-in-Residence at the Qualcomm Institute/Calit2 where his multimedia works preserve and reimagine cultural heritage through combining scientific research and advanced technology. He returned to the Institute as its first Research Artist-in-Residence in 2018.
Lei Liangโs recent works address issues of sex trafficking across the US-Mexican border (Cuatro Corridos), Americaโs complex relationship with gun and violence (Inheritance), and environmental awareness through the sonification of coral reefs.
Lei Liang is Chancellorโs Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego where he served as chair of the composition area, acting chair of the Music Department, as well as chair of campus-wide committee on committees. His catalogue of more than a hundred works is published exclusively by Schott Music Corporation (New York).
Watch Virtual Ojai Talks with Wu Man
Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian was joined by Wu Man to talk about her career as the worldโs premier pipa virtuoso and a leading ambassador of Chinese music. She has carved out a distinguished career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her instrumentโwhich has a history of over 2,000 years in Chinaโa new role in both traditional and contemporary music.
About Wu Man, pipa player and 2023 Festival artist
Recognized as the worldโs premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrumentโwhich has a history of over 2,000 years in Chinaโa new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous concert tours she has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of Chinaโs ancient musical traditions. Her adventurous spirit and virtuosity have led to collaborations across artistic disciplines, allowing her to reach wider audiences as she works to cross cultural and musical borders. Her efforts were recognized when she was named Musical Americaโs 2013 โInstrumentalist of the Year,โ marking the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument, and in 2021 when she received an honorary Doctorate of Music from the New England Conservatory of Music.
Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Ms. Wu is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by todayโs most prominent composers such as Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and many others. She was the recipient of The Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998, and was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive The United States Artist Fellowship in 2008. She is also the first artist from China to perform at the White House. Wu Man is a Visiting Professor at her alma mater the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a Distinguished Professor at the Zhejiang and the Xiโan Conservatories. She has also served as Artistic Director of the Xiโan Silk Road Music Festival at the Xiโan Conservatory. Read Wu Man full bio here
Watch Virtual Ojai Talks with Francesco Turrisi
About Francesco Turrisi, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and 2023 Festival artistGrammy award winning multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi has been defined a โmusical alchemistโ and a โmusical polyglotโ by the press. He left his native Italy in 1997 to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he obtained a Bachelor and a Masterโs degree. Since 2004 he has been working successfully as a freelance musician.
He has released five critically acclaimed albums as a leader and two as co-leader (โTarabโ a cross boundary innovative ensemble that blends Irish and Mediterranean traditional music, and โZahrโ a project that looks at connections between southern Italian traditional music and Arabic music).His latest piano solo album โNorthern Migrationsโ was described as โdelicate, wistful and wholly engrossingโ by the Irish Times. Francesco is also a member of the celebrated early music ensemble L’Arpeggiata. With l’Arpeggiata he has performed at the most important classical music festivals in Europe and around the world (Turkey, Russia, China, Australia, New Zealand, Brasil, Colombia) and has recorded for Warner, Virgin, Naive and Alpha.
Since 2018 he collaborates with American grammy award winning singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens, on a duo project that seamlessly combines music from the Mediterranean with music from the African diaspora in the Americas. In 2019 Giddens and Turrisi released their critically acclaimed duo album โthere is no Otherโ. The album single โIโm on my wayโ was nominated for a 2020 Grammy Award. Their 2021 second duo album โTheyโre calling me homeโ was nominated for two Grammy awards and won as best folk album at the 2022 Grammy awards. Francesco currently performs on piano, accordion, harpsichord, organ, various lutes, cello banjo, frame and goblet drums.
He is equally at home playing with jazz veterans Dave Liebman and Gianluigi Trovesi as he is with Irish traditional sean-nรณs singer Roisin El Safty and with tarantella specialist Lucilla Galeazzi. Turrisi has toured with Bobby McFerrin, interpreted the music of Steve Reich with Bang on a Can All Stars, accompanied flamenco star Pepe El Habichuela and Greek singer Savina Yannatou.
Watch Virtual Ojai Talks with Rhiannon Giddens
About Rhiannon Giddens
The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur โGenius Grantโ recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. She most recently won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for Theyโre Calling Me Home, and was also nominated for Best American Roots Song for โAvalonโ from Theyโre Calling Me Home, which she made with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Giddens is now a two-time winner and eight-time Grammy nominee for her work as a soloist and collaborator.
Theyโre Calling Me Home was released by Nonesuch last April and has been widely celebrated by the NY Times, NPR Music, NPR, Rolling Stone, People, Associated Press and far beyond, with No Depression deeming it โa near perfect albumโฆher finest work to date.โ Recorded over six days in the early phase of the pandemic in a small studio outside of Dublin, Ireland โ where both Giddens and Turrisi live โ Theyโre Calling Me Home manages to effortlessly blend the music of their native and adoptive countries: America, Italy, and Ireland. The album speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical โcall homeโ of death.
Giddensโs lifelong mission is to lift people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the countryโs musical origins. Pitchfork has said of her work, โfew artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration,โ and Smithsonian Magazine calls her โan electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black.โ
Among her many diverse career highlights, Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashvilleโs National Museum of African American History in partnership with the Americana Music Association. Her critical acclaim includes in-depth profiles by CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPRโs Fresh Air, among many others.
Giddens was featured in Ken Burnsโs Country Music series, which aired on PBS, where she spoke about the African American origins of country music. She is also a member of the band Our Native Daughters with three other black female banjo players, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah, and co-produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival.
Giddens is in the midst of a tremendous 2022. She announced the publication of her first book, Build a House (October 2022), Lucy Negro Redux, the ballet Giddens wrote the music for, had its premiere at the Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019 and toured in 2022), and the libretto and music for Giddensโ original opera, Omar, in collaboration with Michael Abels, based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar ibn Said, premiered at the Spoleto USA Festival in May. Giddens is also curating a four-concert Perspectives series as part of Carnegie Hallโs 2022โ2023 season. Named Artistic Director of Silkroad Ensemble in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for that ensemble, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders.
She made her Ojai debut for the celebratory 75th Ojai Music Festival with Music Director John Adams in September 2021.
As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville.
Rhiannon Giddens photo by Ebru Yildiz
-
Relive the 2021 Live Stream Concerts
The Ojai Music Festival offers the world beyond Ojai’s Libbey Bowl to experience the music and conversations through its free live streaming.
As we wait in anticipation of the 2022 Ojai Music Festival, June 9-12, with Music Director AMOC, enjoy 2021 Libbey Bowl concerts and interviews with featured artists. Also check out the 2021 Program Book and Full Festival Schedule.
2021 Stream Archive
To watch full screen, click
in the bottom right of the player.Full Concerts
Ojai Mix: Prelude to a Festival
THU 9.16 @ 9:00pmAttacca Quartet with Rhiannon…
FRI 9.17 @ 11:00amJohn Adams conducts the Ojai…
FRI 9.17 @ 8:00pmI Still Play with pianist Timo Andres
SUN 9.19 @ 8:00amLA Phil New Music Group
SUN 9.19 @ 11:00amFestival Finale
SUN 9.19 @ 5:30pmInterviews
Interview with Dustin Donahue
Interview with Carlos Simon
Interview with Gabriela Ortiz
Interview with Ara Guzelimian
Interview with Miranda Cuckson
Interview with John Adams
Selected Pieces from Concerts
รlรฉgie by Igor Stravinsky
Huitzitl by Gabriela Ortiz
Between Worlds by Carlos Simon
Early to Rise by Timo Andres
Magnolia by Dylan Mattingly
Violin Diptych by S. Adams
Marรฉ by Gabriela Smith
Toot Nipple by John Adams
Alligator Escalator by John Adams
Stubble Crotchet by John Adams
Benkei’s Standing Death by Paul Wiancko
Plan and Elevation by Caroline Shaw
Strum by Jessie Montgomery
Factory Girl (traditional) by Rhiannon Giddens
Koromanti Tune # 2 / Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
At the Purchaser’s Option by
Rhiannon GiddensCarrot Revolution by Gabriella Smith
Danse sacrรฉe et danse profane by Claude Debussy
Partita No. 3 Preludio by J.S. Bach | Fog by Salonen
Flow by Ingram Marshall
Running Theme by Timo Andres
Rรญo de las Mariposas by Gabriela Ortiz
To Give You Form And Breath by inti figgis-vizueta
Hallelujah Junction by John Adams
Objets Trouvรฉs by Esa-Pekka Salonen
Sunt Lacrime Rerum by Dylan Mattingly
-
Podcast Series: OJAICAST 2022
SEASON 2
Welcome to OJAICAST, where we pull back the curtain to take a sneak-peek at the upcoming Ojai Music Festival, June 9 to 12, in beautiful Ojai Valley, California. All are welcome here, from newcomers to long-time music fans. In-depth insights and special guests will help introduce this yearโs programming and whet your musical appetites for whatโs to come with host Emily Praetorius.
Episode 1
Our first episode introduces us to our 2022 Music Director AMOC, the multidisciplinary collective which incorporates music, dance, poetry, theatre in all their work and their ambitious programming that begins on Thu June 9. Guests: Ara Guzelimian, Zack Winokur, and Keir Gogwilt
Emily Praetorius, producer and host
Louis Ng, sound engineer (lensonproductions.com)OJAICAST theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Music Excerpts in Episode 1:
Craigie Hill, by Keir GoGwilt and Celeste Oram
Performed by Keir GoGwiltPrelude to the Holy Presence of Joan dโArc, by Julius Eastman
Performed by Julius EastmanRebonds B, by Iannis Xenakis
Performed by Steven SchickGretchen am spinnrade, by Eric Wubbels
Performed by Eric Wubbels and Mariel RobertsEpisode 2
From early morning sunrise to evening sunset, AMOC dives into the music of icons George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell, the life and music of Julius Eastman alongside world premieres of works by Anthony Cheung and new staging of Messianโs Harawi. Guests: AMOC member and flutist Emi Ferguson and composer Anthony Cheung.
Emily Praetorius, producer and host
Louis Ng, sound engineer (lensonproductions.com)OJAICAST theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Music Excerpts in Episode 2:
Gay Guerilla, by Julius Eastman
Performed by Julius EastmanStay on It, by Julius Eastman
Performed by Julius Eastman, Doug Gaston, Amrom Chodos, Dennis Kahle, Benjamin Hudson, Joseph Ford, George Mitkoff, Jan Williams, Peter KotikHarawi, mvts. 2, 6, 10, by Olivier Messiaen
Performed by Hetna Regitze Bruun and Kristoffer HyldigEpisode 3
Let Festival weekend begin! In this episode we look at the Saturday program which is quintessential Ojai Music Festival — music of Bach and Bach re-imagined and three premieres of some of todayโs most exciting composers Matthew Aucoin, Carolyn Chen, and Andrew McIntosh. Guests: AMOC co-founder/composer Matthew Aucoin and AMOC member and violinist Miranda Cuckson.
Emily Praetorius, producer and host
Louis Ng, sound engineer (lensonproductions.com)OJAICAST theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Music Excerpts in Episode 3:
cross/collapse, by Catherine LambAbout Bach, by Cassandra Miller
Performed by Quatuor BozziniTanz Tanz, by Reiko Fรผting
Performed by Olivia de PratoPrelude in G Minor, by Bach
Performed by Emi Ferguson and RuckusLittle Jimmy, by Andrew McIntosh
Performed by Yarn/WireEpisode 4
More music, meditation, and dance plus community events end the four-day Festival starting with Meditation with the music of Julius Eastman, followed by Hans Otteโs The Book of Sounds, and two world premieres Dance in the Park and Rome is Falling. To end this jam-packed Fesrival, the Sunday Finale will display the virtuosity of all 17 AMOC members as a collective. Guests: Ara Guzelimian, Julia Eichten, and Doug Balliett.
Emily Praetorius, producer and host
Louis Ng, sound engineer (lensonproductions.com)OJAICAST theme by Thomas Kotcheff and Louis Weeks
Music Excerpts in Episode 4:
The Book of Sounds, mvts. 1, 10, by Hans Otte
Performed by Ralph van RaatAlso available on SPOTIFY and APPLE PODCASTS
OJAICAST SEASON 1ABOUT OUR OJAICAST HOST
Emily Praetorius, former Ojai Music Festival intern and Rothenberg Intern Fellow, is a current Composition DMA candidate at Columbia University. She previously studied composition and clarinet performance at the University of Redlands (BM) and composition at Manhattan School of Music (MM). She has studied with Kathryn Nevin (clarinet), Susan Botti, Georg Friedrich Haas, George Lewis, and Anthony Suter. Emily is from Ojai, CA and lives in New York City where she is a proud co-owner of Kuro Kirin Espresso & Coffee. -
Grab & Go: A Guide to Getting Something Between Concerts
With nearly 20 concerts, talks and open rehearsals planned over four days, the 76th Ojai Music Festival from June 9-12 doesnโt leave much time for leisurely dining. Thatโs where this partial list of Ojai places with order-at-the-counter and/or grab-and-go food service comes in handy: Itโs organized according to proximity to Libbey Park, so you can find a spot within walking distance between events, or make plans to park just long enough to pick something up while making your way to the next performance. (Starting Thursday, June 9 you can also visit the Ojai Music Festival Green Room in Libbey Park for sales of pre-made sandwiches and small bites by Ojai Valley Deli Cafรฉ, Ojai Rรดtie and The Vine Ojai plus beer, cider, and wine from Ojai Beverage Co.)
Marchรฉ Gourmet Delicatessen, 133 E. Ojai Ave. (half a block from Libbey Park), 805-646-1133, marchegourmetdeli.com. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays; 5:30-7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
Vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options are available from a menu that includes soups, salads, quiches and sandwiches, plus gelato and bottles of wine to go. Call ahead to order box lunches that include a sandwich, side salad and cookie.
Ojai Tortilla House, 104 N. Signal St. (half a block from Libbey Park), 805-797-8675, facebook.com/Ojaitortillahouse104. Daily from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. โ if supplies last that long. Donโt let the โcash onlyโ sign put you off: Thereโs room for an ATM inside this hole in the wall where house-made corn and flour tortillas are turned into tacos, burritos and quesadillas filled with your choice of veggies, steak, chicken or al pastor.
Yume Japanese Burger Cafe, 254 E. Ojai Ave. (about a block from Libbey Park). 805-272-8963, yumejapaneseburger.com. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays.
Wagyu beef is the specialty of the house, but the cafรฉโs riffs on burgers include shrimp katsu, vegetable croquette and โ swapping bread for โbunsโ of rice โ vegetable or shrimp tempura. Loaded fries, smoothies, shakes and bubble teas are also served.
Love Social Cafรฉ, 205 N. Signal St. (about two blocks from Libbey Park), 805-646-1540, lovesocialcafe.com. Daily from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Easy-to-transport dishes range from avocado toast and bagels and lox to tuna, veggie and BLT sandwiches on your choice of croissant, gluten-free bread or Ojai Rรดtie sourdough.
Rainbow Bridge Market Deli, 211 E. Matilija St. (inside Rainbow Bridge Market, about two blocks from Libbey Park), 805-646-6623, rainbowbridgeojai.com. Daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Breakfast burritos and specialty juices — like the aptly named Rainbow Wallbanger — are local favorites. Salads include a mix-and-match option and pre-packaged greens with tofu, chicken or salmon. Sandwiches both hot (Brocc on the Wild Side) and cold (Rainbow tuna salad) are available until 5 p.m. and include gluten-free and vegan selections.
Westridge Midtown Market, 131 W. Ojai Ave. (about two blocks from Libbey Park), 805-646-4082, westridgemarket.com. Daily from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. The service deli has a priced-by-the-pound breakfast bar (open from 7 to 10:30 a.m.), salad bar and hot bar in addition to packaged sushi, grab-and-go burritos and sandwiches, brick-oven pizzas and โfamousโ Westridge Burgers made with ground beef or turkey. The original Westridge Market (802 E. Ojai Ave., about half a mile from Libbey Park, 805-646-2762) also offers made-to-order burgers, plus a create-your-own taco and burrito bar and, on the weekends, barbecue off the grill in the parking lot.
Hip Vegan, 201 N. Montgomery St. (about three blocks from Libbey Park), 805-669-6363, hipvgn.com. Daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tucked behind a hedge at Montgomery and Matilija streets, Hip Vgn (as the restaurant is styled online) is dedicated to organic, vegan fare that often is also gluten free. Spring rolls are filled with tofu and fresh herbs, while the Tiger Bowl features grilled tempeh with turmeric rice. Smoothies are made with almond, hemp and cashew milks.
Pinyon Ojai, 423 E. Ojai Ave., Suite 101 (about three blocks from Libbey Park), no phone, pinyonojai.com. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. After its debut last winter, the wood-fired pizzeria, bakery and natural wines shop now also offers breakfast. House-made sourdough pastries and bagels are available from 9 a.m. (the latter are sold on their own, as breakfast sandwiches, or with shmear and Mt. Lassen trout lox). Hoagies and sourdough-crust pizza squares join in until around 4 p.m., with small plates, salads, desserts and pizzas available from noon to 9 p.m. La Fuente Mexican Food, 423 E. Ojai Ave. Suite 108 (about three blocks from Libbey Park), 805-646-7715, lafuenteojai.com. 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays, 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Saturdays and 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sundays. This homey spot located in the far corner of Fitzgerald Plaza serves tacos, tamales, sopes, burritos, and quesadillas (plus burgers and fries) in near-record time. Be sure to hit the serve-yourself salsa bar before departing.
Ojai Valley Deli Cafรฉ, 1205 Maricopa Highway, Unit A (about 1.3 miles from Libbey Park), 805-272-8139, ojaivalleydelicafe.com. 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. Since its December 2021 debut next to the Ben Franklin Store, the deli has become a localsโ favorite for its to-go-only service of salads, eggplant Parmesan, hot-off-the-grill panini and house-made desserts, including tiramisu and vegan carrot cake. Italian coffee is a specialty.Lisa McKinnon is a Ventura-based food writer who has been squeezing in bites between Ojai Music Festival concerts since the 1990s. Sheโs on Instagram as 805foodie and blogs at 805foodie.com.
-
2022 Live Stream Archive
The Ojai Music Festival offers
the world beyond Ojai’s Libbey Bowl
to experience the music and
conversations through its
free live streaming
of Libbey Bowl concerts.For additional information, view the Full 2022 Festival Schedule.
____
2022 Stream Archive
To watch full screen, click
in the bottom right of the player.Full Concerts
Opening Night
THU 6.9 @ 8:00pmEASTMAN
FRI 6.10 @ 11:00amthe echoing of tenses
FRI 6.10 @ 5:00pmRecital No. 1: MASS
FRI 6.10 @ 8:00pmAbout Bach
SAT 6.11 @ 11:00amLittle Jimmy + Family Dinner
SAT 6.11 @ 8:00pmThe Book of Sounds
SUN 6.12 @ 10:00amFestival Finale
SUN 6.12 @ 5:30pmSelected Pieces from Concerts
Rebonds B by Iannis XENAKIS
The Rose Once Blown by Kate SOPER
the power of moss by Celeste ORAMShaker Dance by Matthew AUCOIN
scars plummet to the corners XIX and XX by Michael HERSCH
Gay Guerilla by Julius EASTMAN
Siciliano from Sonata in E major, BWV 1035 by J.S. BACH
Book of Sounds (Part I) by Hans OTTE
Stay On It by Julius EASTMAN
-
Caffeine Scene
Where to get a cup of coffee (and more) in Ojai
By Lisa McKinnon
First-time visitors to downtown Ojai may be surprised when they go looking for a Starbucks: There isnโt one, thanks to a moratorium on chain businesses with five or more locations. Luckily, Ojai Music Festival audiences in need of a caffeinated pick-me-up between song cycles and dance-theater pieces have plenty of non-corporate options from which to choose.
Beacon Coffee Co., 211 W. Ojai Ave., no phone, beaconcoffee.com. Daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Beans sourced from small farms in Kenya, Costa Rica and Guatemala are roasted at the cafรฉโs sister location in Ventura, then featured in pour overs, flat whites, cappuccinos and seasonal mochas (the festival coincides with Beaconโs annual switch from Ojai Pixie to lavender, the latter from Frog Creek Farm in the Upper Ojai). Magic Hour teas blended in Ojai are available hot or cold. The cafรฉโs kitchen is home to SunOven gluten-free vegan bakery, which produces lavender-lemon doughnuts among other treats. Additional baked goods are from Frontside Cafe in Ventura.
Cafรฉ Boku, 987 W. Ojai Ave., 805-650-2658, cafeboku.com. Daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The menu of organic, plant-based food and drinks infused with ingredients from Ojai-based Boku Superfoods includes coffees and espressos made from locally roasted beans from Bonito Coffee Roaster. Enjoy an invigorating Golden Shroom Latte while juicing up your electric car at the cafรฉโs bank of chargers.
Coffee Connection, 311 E. El Roblar Drive, Meiners Oaks, 805-646-7821, coffeeconnectionojai.com. 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays.
Look for the orange patio umbrellas to locate this off-the-beaten path local favorite specializing in organic, fair-trade coffee, espresso and loose-leaf teas. Drinks are available hot or cold. Youโll also find Mexican hot chocolate and baked goods.
Farmer and the Cook, 339 W. El Roblar Drive, Meiners Oaks, 805-640-9608, farmer-and-the-cook.com. 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays.
The combination organic bakery, market and Mexican cafรฉ with vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options also operates as a community gathering place and espresso bar with drip coffee and specialty drinks. โBeneficialโ beverages like the Turmeric Toddy and adaptogenic hot chocolate (made with fungi) are available from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Java & Joe, 323 E. Matilija St., Suite 105, 805-646-3138, javajoeojai.com. Daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Nearing its 28th anniversary, the coffeehouse offers an ever-changing lineup of roasts, plus specialty drinks that can be made hot or cold. Thereโs also a wide selection of whole beans, loose-leaf teas and mugs, carafes and tea pots to take home as gifts.
Love Social Cafรฉ, 205 N. Signal St., 805-646-1540, lovesocialcafe.com. Daily from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Dune Coffee from Santa Barbara is featured, both freshly brewed and on nitro (cold). The cafรฉ also serves lattes, cappuccinos and the eye-opening Gibraltar/Cortado โ a double espresso topped with an equal amount of micro foam. Fresh-squeezed orange juice and matcha lemonade are also available.
Ojai Coffee Roasting Co., 337 E. Ojai Ave., 805-646-4478, facebook.com/OjaiCoffee. 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Owner and roaster Stacey Jones is often behind the counter at the cafรฉ she opened in 1995 (and which served as a filming location for the 2010 movie โEasy Aโ starring Emma Stone). Arabica beans are roasted on site in small batches for coffees, espressos, red eyes (espresso plus drip coffee) and more. Check the specials board for lattes ranging from lavender to honey cinnamon.
Pinyon, 423 E. Ojai Ave., no phone, pinyonojai.com. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays.
In a nod to the coffee-served-all-day tradition set by the pre-moratorium Jersey Mikeโs that previously occupied its address, Pinyon serves French-press hot and cold-brew versions of Los Angeles-based Canyon Coffee from opening till close.
Sage Cafรจ, 217 E. Matilija St., 805-646-9204, rainbowbridgeojai.com/sage. 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays; 5-7:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays.
Keeping track of your caffeine intake? A โnone-to-highโ scale for teas is spelled out on glass display case at this counter-service restaurant that also serves drip coffee, collagen lattes and herbal tonics.
The Dutchess, 457 E. Ojai Ave., 805-640-7987, thedutchessojai.com. Daily from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Named for a vintage bread oven, the Rustic Canyon Family restaurant operates as a coffeehouse from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.-ish, when the focus is on order-at-the-counter service of Bonito Coffee drinks and Magic Hour teas (including a heavy-caffeine black variety dubbed Organic Flower Dutchess) to go with grab-and-go sandwiches, cookies, seasonal-ingredient cakes and artisanal breads by pastry chef/partner Kelsey Brito and bread baker/partner Kate Pepper. The Dutchess switches to sit-down dinner mode at 4:30 p.m., when its California-Burmese menu becomes available.
Westridge Midtown Market, 131 W. Ojai Ave., 805-646-4082, westridgemarket.com. Daily from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Fans of Peetโs Coffee will find the brand served at the service deli.
Lisa McKinnon is Ventura-based food writer who drank a LOT of coffee and still managed to fall asleep during a special, four-hour performance at the 2002 Ojai Music Festival — but only because audience members were invited to bring pillows and blankets and told get comfortable on the Ojai Art Center floor for the duration. Sheโs on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok as 805foodie, and blogs at 805foodie.com.
