2023 Ojai Music Festival Program

RHIANNON GIDDENS MUSIC DIRECTOR

works by

alfred wallis

april 20 – june 11

canvas and paper 311 n. montgomery street

thursday – sunday noon – 5pm

canvasandpaper.org

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

| JUNE 8-11, 2023 | 1

Contents Festival Events Thursday, June 8 PAGE

PAGE

Ojai Talks

2:30pm

4

41

Free Community Event: Moon Viewing Music

6:30pm

6

42

Opening Night Concert: Liquid Borders

8:00pm

8

Message from the Artistic and Executive Director

10

Message from the Music Director

14

Music Director Bio: Rhiannon Giddens

16

A Creative Laboratory/Music Director Roster

40

Friday, June 9 PAGE

On the Cover: Look for the Light Message from the Chairman of the Board Board of Directors & Board of Governors List

46

Ojai Dawns

8:00am

50

Morning Concert: vis-à-vis

10:00am

22

54

Ghost Opera

3:30pm

30

Joan Kemper’s Way by Ara Guzelimian

Evening Concert: 8:00pm Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi

32

Enhance Your Experience

33

Ojai Valley Venue Map

38

Festival Information

81

Ojai Festival Women’s Committee

86

Ensemble/Artist Profiles

100

2022-23 Annual Giving Contributors

103

Future Forward Campaign

104

Institutional Funders

105

Lifetime Giving

106

Longtime Festival Attendees

109

Matilija Society

110

BRAVO Education & Community Program

112

Arts Management Internship Program

58

Saturday, June 10 PAGE

60

Free Community Event: Morning Meditation

8:00am

62

Morning Concert: The Willows Are New

10:00am

66

Ghost Opera

3:30pm

68

Evening Concert: Omar’s Journey

8:00pm

Sunday, June 11 PAGE

72

74 76

78 82

84

Free Community Event: Morning Meditation

8:00am

Morning Concert: Early Music

10:00am

113

Special Thanks

Free Community Event: Stones and Stars

1:00pm

114

Volunteers

115

Staff & Production

Between Worlds

2:30pm

116

Advertiser Index

Free Community Event: Build a House

4:00pm

Finale Concert: Strings Attached

5:30pm

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Building Bridges at the Crossroads

by Thomas May

Cover art: Look for the Light by Joce Aucoin

EXPLORE OUR 2023/24 SEASON! Ojai Music Festival attendees get a special 20% discount with code OJAI through August 1

LACO.ORG/SUBSCRIBE

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A Sanctuary for the Soul

Explore the beauty and tranquility of the International Garden of Peace Guided Group

Courses

Meditation

Workshops

Yoga

Special

Sound Mediation

Events

Memberships now available!

www.meditationmount.org/membership

Contact us to curate your private group experience:

connect@meditationmount.org

www.meditationmount.org

Meditation Mount is a registered 501c3 non-profit organization Non-denominational spiritual center in the East end of the Ojai Valley

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On the Cover: Look for the Light by Joce Aucoin The name Ojai is derived from the Chumash word “Awha’y,” meaning “Moon.” As it turns out, Ojai is not only a valley of moonlight, but of all kinds of light. And light is soul-lifting. When the soul despairs, we can look for the light. This piece is about that ever-present hope.

About the Artist Joce Aucoin is a mixed media artist and writer who works in a wide range of collage techniques. With a belief in art as a catalyst for positive change, her work explores themes of joy, wonder, and belonging. She lives and works in Ojai.

“Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness.” — J. Krishnamurti

oakgroveschool.org/discover

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

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A Message from the Chairman of the Board Welcome back to our long-term supporters and patrons, and a special welcome to those attending for the first time. We are very pleased to gather again in magical Ojai for our 77th Festival with the extraordinary Rhiannon Giddens as Music Director.

The entire Ojai Music Festival organization is grateful for the support of all of you — audience members, donors, artists, and volunteers. We are especially appreciative of the Ojai community, whose gracious welcome and hospitality is a celebrated trait of each Festival weekend.

The Ojai Music Festival has a rich history of attracting the most creative and talented artists from across the globe. We are proud of the Festival’s international reputation as a creative laboratory for artists and a gathering place for curious audiences who share an appetite for Ojai’s signature open-minded and open-hearted programming. Thank you for being a part of our story as a new adventure unfolds each year.

Our beloved Festival continues to flourish artistically, and with institutional and financial stability, thanks to Ara Guzelimian’s exceptional leadership alongside a devoted staff.

Ojai’s artistic ambitions are supported by a deeply committed Board of Directors who are engaged, energetic, and personally generous. Together, we are committed to securing the Festival’s ability to serve you — and to serve the music — long into the future.

To this end, I am pleased to report that the Future Forward campaign that we began during our 75th anniversary season is making excellent progress towards our goal. Please consider a gift to help ensure that we can continue to come together as a community, sharing defining musical experiences. The Ojai Music Festival is an audience-supported organization, with contributions accounting for 75% of the Festival’s budget. You are a part of our story — please join us!

Enjoy the Festival and enjoy one another’s company as we celebrate our story with a bright future ahead for our treasured Ojai Music Festival.

JERRY EBERHARDT

For more information on how you can have an impact, visit OjaiFestival.org/Support or visit our Future Forward Campaign Booth in Libbey Park.

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS

BOARD OF GOVERNORS

JERRY EBERHARDT Chair

KATE BARNHART WILLIAM J. SHANBROM Co-Chairs

BARRY SANDERS Vice Chair - Governance DON PATTISON Vice Chair - Development CATHRYN KRAUSE Secretary HOPE TSCHOPIK SCHNEIDER Treasurer MARGARET BATES, MD JAMIE BENNETT MICHELE BRUSTIN NANCYBELL COE LAUREL CRARY OFWC President RUTH ELIEL STEPHAN FARBER FRED FISHER GREG GRINNELL LUTHER LUEDTKE THOMAS MCNALLEY, MD GLENN MERCER NEIL SELMAN MAURICE SINGER BRIDGET TSAO BROCKMAN Directors Emeritus RICK GOULD, MD JOAN KEMPER STEPHEN J.M. MORRIS ARA GUZELIMIAN Artistic and Executive Director

SASHA AND BILL ANAWALT ANN BARRETT BARBARA BARRY MARJORIE BEALE AND WILLIAM MEYERHOFF SUE BIENKOWSKI AND WANG LEE MERRILL AND JUDY BLAU EVELYN AND STEPHEN BLOCK SUSAN BOWEY TOM AND LILY BROD PAMELA BURTON AND RICHARD HERTZ HYON CHOUGH JILL COHEN AND NORMAN SIDEROW BARBARA DELAUNE WARREN PENELOPE DONNELLY KATHY AND JIM DRUMMY MICHAEL DUNN MARY AND WILLIAM DUXLER CONSTANCE EATON AND WILLIAM HART LISA FIELD RUTH GILLILAND AND ARTHUR RIEMAN LENNIE AND BERNIE GREENBERG LINDA JOYCE HODGE SCOTT JOHNSON SUZY AND MOE KRABBE LESLIE LASSITER RAULEE MARCUS SHARON MCNALLEY PAMELA MELONE CLAIRE AND DAVID OXTOBY LINDA AND RON PHILLIPS CATHERINE AND BARRY SCHIFRIN PETER SCHNEIDER ABBY SHER SHELLEY AND GREG SMITH ANNE-MARIE SPATARU JANE TAYLOR AND FREDERIC OHRINGER ESTHER WACHTELL GARY WASSERMAN JANE AND RICHARD WEIRICK SUSANNE AND BLAKE* WILSON JOAN WYNN CATHY ZOI AND ROBIN ROY

*Deceased

pasadenaconservatory.org

Individual Instruuion Group Lessons & Ensembles Music History Courses*

*History courses are available to distance learners via Zoom as well as in-person students who wish to aaend classes on campus.

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Photo by Square Productions

A Message from the Artistic and Executive Director Welcome to the 77th Ojai Festival! I am so delighted to be in your company as we take part in a remarkably wide-ranging musical journey created by our Music Director this year, Rhiannon Giddens. Rhiannon has an extraordinary breadth of musical interests, all embraced with a spirit of generosity at every turn. Working with her has been so deeply rewarding.

We are all thrilled to be celebrating the recent announcement that Rhiannon and Michael Abels were awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music for the opera Omar.

I have long felt that the house of classical music is part of the larger house of music, which in turn is a vital part of the house of life. Our programming this year lives deeply in that belief. We travel readily across Liquid Borders and Between Worlds, as the title of two key Festival works make clear. We will meet at the intersection of cultures, hear music that is very old and very new, encounter people and stories that make our understanding of our world that much richer and more complete. I am immensely grateful to Rhiannon and all of this Festival’s infinitely imaginative artists for being our guides on this particular voyage of discovery. And I’m equally grateful to each listener — in person at the concerts and those watching online. We are so happy that you are here and that we are on this musical adventure together.

As you might imagine, it takes more than a village to assemble such a Festival, beginning with our devoted Board of Directors and Board of Governors whose generous stewardship of the Festival impacts every aspect of this treasured Festival. Our gratitude to the members of our beloved Ojai community is boundless — from local officials and public services to the Ojai businesses, from our intrepid Women’s Committee to the tireless volunteers and the housing hosts who so warmly welcome our artists into their homes. The Ojai Festival simply would not be possible without these key members of our family! Our larger Festival village includes each of you, our amazingly open and adventurous audience as well as every single donor who contributes to ensure the resources and well-being of this wonderfully improbable Festival — something of a musical miracle in the informal setting and natural beauty of a small-town park.

Thank you for joining us for this remarkable 2023 Festival. We invite you to consider a gift to the Festival’s anniversary campaign, Future Forward, to help the innovative spirit of this Festival continue to flourish for many years to come. It does take a village, and we are all villagers here.

I look forward with much pleasure to our voyage of musical discovery together over the next days.

A very warm welcome to each of you.

ARA GUZELIMIAN

The position of Ara Guzelimian as Artistic & Executive Director is made possible by a generous gift in memory of Olin Barrett.

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A Message from the Music Director

Photo by EbruYildiz

Well, it’s all thanks to Lois.

Two years ago, I played the Ojai Music Festival and was lucky enough to stay with one Lois Rice, steadfast Ojai supporter, razor-sharp businesswoman, and all-around wonderful human being. We had just made some biscuits and eggs in her restaurant-worthy kitchen (she made the eggs, I made the biscuits) and were talking about the upcoming, closing show of the Festival, and how there wasn’t an after party planned because…well, you know.

COVID. Lois immediately said, “Well, why don’t you just invite a few of the organizers here? I’ll order pizza, we’ll make cocktails, let’s make it happen!”

After an exhilarating last concert that Sunday night, I found myself holding a cocktail and having a deep conversation with Ara Guzelimian — and the idea for the program you hold in your hands was born. It’s a reminder of how much creativity takes place in the befores and the afters; in the warm homes of ardent supporters and in the green rooms of venues; in all the liminal spaces of the performing arts world — those spaces that were hit the hardest with the strictures of COVID. The first program is called Liquid Borders, and that is a pretty good descriptor for this entire weekend.

Every border is porous, movable, and ultimately, artificial — like a color spectrum, musical forms blend into each other, and the only definitions are the ones that we collectively decide on. It’s only purple when everybody says it’s purple. What is classical music? What is folk? Does it matter? Who gets to decide?

For this weekend, no decisions are necessary — because it’s all there. From China, to Iran, to Italy, to the United States — and everywhere in between — we have musicians who will channel all the years of practice, study, emotional living, and knowledge into music that will move the soul, satisfy the mind, and warm the heart. We have compositions straddling worlds and challenging expectations. We have collaborations that will make connections that nobody will see coming but will immediately be unable to live without.

In short, there will be the fullest spectrum of handmade music imaginable — purple and all.

RHIANNON GIDDENS

The residency of Rhiannon Giddens as Music Director is made possible by the generous support of Jill and Bill Shanbrom and the Shanbrom Family Foundation.

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Oberlin Conservatory of Music OPENING A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES

Here, you will experience supportive instruction that inspires compelling performances. You’ll collaborate with remarkable guest composers and performing artists. And you’ll be supported by resources that make imaginative projects possible.

LEARN MORE oberlin.edu/con

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SILKROAD ENSEMBLE 2023 TOUR

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens ARTISTS

Rhiannon Giddens Artistic Director, banjo, fiddle, vocals Shawn Conley, bass Pura Fé Crescioni, lap-steel guitar, voice Haruka Fujii, percussion Sandeep Das, tablas Maeve Gilchrist, celtic harp Karen Ouzounian, cello Mazz Swift violin, voice Niwel Tsumbu, guitar Francesco Turrisi, frame drums, accordion Kaoru Watanabe, percussion Wu Man, pipa Michi Wiancko, violin

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Silkroad’s newest initiative, American Railroad, illuminates the impact of African American, Chinese, Indigenous, Irish, and other immigrant communities on the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad and America’s Westward Expansion. Exploring the dissemination of cultures across the United States, the railroad was to North America what the Silk Road was to China, the Far East and Europe.

Led by artistic director Rhiannon Giddens, each stop on the American Railroad explores the cultural intersections through music, revealing a thread of commonality and reminding us of the intricately rich American story.

FOUR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DATES!

SO CAL TOUR SCHEDULE Thu, Nov 9 | Santa Barbara GRANADA THEATRE Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu

Fri, Nov 10 | San Diego THE BALBOA THEATRE Presented by La Jolla Music Society TheConrad.org

Sat, Nov 11 | Aliso Viejo SOKA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER Presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County & Soka Performing Arts Center PhilharmonicSociety.org | Soka.edu/pac

Sun, Nov 12 | Northridge THE SORAYA Presented by The Soraya at CSUN TheSoraya.org

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2023 Music Director Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.

As Pitchfork once said, “Few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration” — a journey that has led to NPR naming her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st century and to American Songwriter calling her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”

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For her highly anticipated third solo studio album, You’re the One, out August 18 on Nonesuch Records, she recruited producer Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Tank and the Bangas) to help her bring this collection of songs that she’d written over the course of her career — her first album of all originals — to life at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami last November. Together with a band composed of Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past decade alongside Miami-based musicians from Splash’s own Rolodex and topped off with a horn section making an impressive 12-person ensemble, they drew from the folk music that Giddens knows so deeply and its pop descendants.

You’re the One features electric and upright bass, conga, Cajun and piano accordions, guitars, a Western string section, and Miami horns, among other instruments. “I hope that people just hear American music,” Giddens says. “Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock — it’s all there. I like to be where it meets organically.”

The album is in line with her previous work, as she explains, because it’s yet another kind of project she’s never done before. “I just wanted to expand my sound palette,” Giddens says. “I feel like I’ve done lots in the acoustic realm, and I certainly will again. But these songs really needed a larger field.”

Her song-writing range is audible on You’re the One, from the groovy funk of “Hen In The Foxhouse” to the vintage AM-radioready ballad “Who Are You Dreaming Of” and the string-band dance music of “Way Over

Yonder” — likely the most familiar sound to Giddens’ fans. Her voice, though, is instantly recognizable throughout, even as the sounds around Giddens shift; she owns all of it with ease.

Giddens also is exploring other mediums and creative possibilities just as actively as she has American musical history. With 1858 replica minstrel banjo in hand, she wrote the opera Omar with film composer Michael Abels, which received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and, with her partner Francesco Turrisi, she wrote and performed the music for Black Lucy and the Bard, which was recorded for PBS’s Great Performances; she has appeared on the ABC hit drama Nashville and throughout Ken Burns’ Country Music series, also on PBS. Giddens has published children’s books and written and performed music for the soundtrack of Red Dead Redemption II, one of the best-selling video games of all time. She sang for the Obamas at the White House; is a three-time NPR Tiny Desk Concert alum; and hosts her own show on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, as well as the Aria Code podcast, which is produced by New York City’s NPR affiliate station WQXR. “I’ve been able to create a lot of different things around stories that are difficult to tell, and managed to get them done in a way that’s gotten noticed,” as Giddens puts it. “I know who to collaborate with, and it has gotten me into all sorts of corners that I would have never expected when I started doing this.”

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Ojai Music Festival: A Creative Laboratory For seven decades, the Ojai Music Festival has been a laboratory for the special chemistry that results from combining insatiable curiosity with unbounded creativity.

The formula is simple: Each year a Music Director is given the freedom and resources to imagine four days of musical brainstorming. Some have approached their task with caution, fearing that Ojai might be like other places. But, of course, it’s not.

More often this unique blend of enchanted setting and an audience voracious in its appetite for challenge and discovery has inspired a distinguished series of conductors, performers, and composers to push at boundaries and stretch limits.

At its inception in 1947, under the guidance of Festival founder John Bauer and conductor Thor Johnson, the Festival featured a balance of classics and more contemporary fare. By the time Lawrence Morton took over as Artistic Director in 1954 the emphasis had shifted to new music and Ojai soon became the showcase as well as a home-away-from-home for such 20th-century giants as Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Lou Harrison, and Olivier Messiaen, not to mention two Southern California “locals” — Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. It was Morton who established the tradition of rotating Music Directors and with this innovation each year’s Festival became the reflection of a succession of larger-than-life personalities, including Robert Craft (joined in 1955 and 1956 by Stravinsky), Copland, Ingolf Dahl, Lukas Foss, Boulez, and Peter Maxwell-Davies, as well as such rising stars as Michael Tilson Thomas, Calvin Simmons, Kent Nagano, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Vijay Iyer, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

Through the years Ojai’s Music Directors have invited distinguished soloists, firstrate chamber ensembles, and world-class orchestras to join them in exploring the intersection between new music and everything from jazz and improvisation to electronics and computers; dance, theater, and experimental staging to social and political issues, not to mention repertory that might go back to the Middle Ages or reach across the globe.

Looking back, it would be difficult to identify any overarching aesthetic premise, though from year to year there has been no shortage of agendas. Rather, the thread running through these past decades has been this Festival’s consistency in promoting creativity and innovation. Here in Ojai hallowed masterpieces and in-your-face experiments can be uneasy bedfellows sharing a berth that is a pedestal of repose for one, a trampoline for the other. And that rumble you hear? It is the steady grumbling from an audience whose outspoken views on any and every subject are the entitlement of its loyalty. Its passion is the true barometer of the health of this Festival. No smugness here; no indifference, either. This is a place for enthusiasms, often excessive, and opinions, sometimes vociferous, and a hunger for shared discovery that reaffirms, year after year, why music matters in the first place.

—CHRISTOPHER HAILEY

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OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL MUSIC DIRECTORS 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

1969

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983

THOR JOHNSON THOR JOHNSON EDWARD REBNER THOR JOHNSON THOR JOHNSON WILLIAM STEINBERG THOR JOHNSON THOR JOHNSON ROBERT CRAFT ROBERT CRAFT IGOR STRAVINSKY ROBERT CRAFT IGOR STRAVINSKY AARON COPLAND, INGOLF DAHL AARON COPLAND ROBERT CRAFT HENRI TEMIANKA LUKAS FOSS LUKAS FOSS LUKAS FOSS INGOLF DAHL INGOLF DAHL INGOLF DAHL PIERRE BOULEZ ROBERT LAMARCHINA LAWRENCE FOSTER MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS MICHAEL ZEAROTT STEFAN MINDE MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS PIERRE BOULEZ GERHARD SAMUEL MICHAEL ZEAROTT MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS AARON COPLAND MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS CALVIN SIMMONS LUKAS FOSS LUKAS FOSS DANIEL LEWIS ROBERT CRAFT DANIEL LEWIS

1984 1985 1986 1987 1988

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

PIERRE BOULEZ KENT NAGANO KENT NAGANO STEPHEN MOSKO LUKAS FOSS NICHOLAS MCGEGAN SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES DIANE WITTRY PIERRE BOULEZ STEPHEN MOSKO JOHN HARBISON SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES PIERRE BOULEZ JOHN ADAMS MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS KENT NAGANO PIERRE BOULEZ EMANUEL AX, DANIEL HARDING MITSUKO UCHIDA DAVID ZINMAN ESA-PEKKA SALONEN SIR SIMON RATTLE ESA-PEKKA SALONEN EMERSON STRING QUARTET PIERRE BOULEZ KENT NAGANO OLIVER KNUSSEN ROBERT SPANO PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD DAVID ROBERTSON EIGHTH BLACKBIRD GEORGE BENJAMIN DAWN UPSHAW LEIF OVE ANDSNES MARK MORRIS JEREMY DENK STEVEN SCHICK PETER SELLARS VIJAY IYER PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA BARBARA HANNIGAN MATTHIAS PINTSCHER JOHN ADAMS AMOC* RHIANNON GIDDENS

FALL IN LOVE WITH NEW MUSIC New Sounds with John Schaefer is the best way to discover music that defies easy categorization and just might change your life. Join us for coverage of dynamic and emerging artists, gleefully oblivious of genre.

Learn more and listen at newsounds.org Text NEW SOUNDS to 70101 to sign up for our newsletter.

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

| JUNE 8-11, 2023 | 17

PRE-KINDERGARTEN TO 12TH GRADE

TWO CAMPUSES IN OJAI | DAY & BOARDING

Ojai Valley School: Small in size, big on outcomes.

Here, you’ll find a friendly, fun-loving community that embraces our differences — and our similarities, too.

We do that through: • A challenging college preparatory curriculum • Small classes taught by supportive and dedicated teachers • A robust College Counseling program that emphasizes the “college of right fit” for each individual student • A diverse student body, hailing from five continents • Equestrian and athletic facillities on-campus • A vibrant visual and performing arts program • Numerous opportunities for hands-on learning through outdoor exploration and community service

LEARN MORE AT OVS.ORG OVS is proud to serve as a venue for the 2023 Ojai Music Festival and to support music education in the Ojai community.

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Chamber On The Mountain An extraordinary musical experience in a setting of extraordinary beauty

Project:CSQ California String Quartet

Sunday Oct. 15, 2023 3:00 pm

Phillip Levy, Violin

Dominic Cheli

Sunday Jan. 21, 2024 3:00 pm

Sunday Apr. 14, 2024 3:00 pm

Tae Yeon Lim, Piano

Piano

Photo: Dario Acosta

O Ce ur le 11 br th a Se tin as g on !

The Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts Presents

Tickets $30 at ChamberOnTheMountain.com Performances take place at Logan House, at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai Meet the Artists! A reception will be held following each performance.

Chamber On The Mountain | 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Rd. (in Upper Ojai) | Ojai, CA 93023 | (805) 646-3381

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Independent Living, Assisted Living, Special Needs and Respite Care 701 N. Montgomery St., Ojai, CA | 805.646.1446 | GablesofOjai.com

WE ARE HERE FOR YOU!

vcstar.com

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RCFE# 565800551

A college preparatory school in the Catholic Augustinian Tradition since 1924 Limited spaces available for 2022-23 academic year

Apply online at villanovaprep.org/admissions

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

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Building Bridges at the Crossroads

The fact that Rhiannon Giddens made her Ojai Music Festival debut during the 75th anniversary season in 2021 could hardly be more fitting. When curating that milestone edition of the Festival, Music Director John Adams made a point not to rest on laurels from the past but instead to spotlight artists who are shaping the future of music.

Giddens and her colleagues count among the indispensable faces of that future. In the two years since her first Ojai appearance, she has become an increasingly influential presence. The list of accomplishments that Giddens, a Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, can point to since 2021 alone is as wideranging as it is staggering. It includes, among other things, her breakthrough as an opera composer and librettist (the Pultizer-winning Omar), her second Grammy Award win (Best Folk Album in 2022 for They’re Calling Me Home, in partnership with Francesco Turrisi, which was featured at the 2021 Ojai Music Festival), her collaboration with Silkroad Ensemble since being appointed Artistic Director (including their first post-pandemic tour, Phoenix Rising), a season-long residency at Carnegie Hall that reimagined the platform of the song recital (also with Turrisi), and her debut as a children’s book author (Build a House).

The 2023 Festival program, which encompasses examples related to all of the above and much more, explores Giddens’s vision as this year’s Music Director that “the future

is in celebration of how we come together as humans — despite boxes, boundaries, and borders thrown up with the intent to keep us apart.”

The connection Giddens forged with the audience in 2021 convinced her that Ojai offers an environment especially conducive to sharing that vision: “With Ojai, I am able to sit at the crossroads of all that I am artistically.” Adds Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian: “Rhiannon Giddens defies genre and categorization with incredible ease and creativity. This edition of the Festival is a reflection of that.”

Being at the crossroads has deepened Giddens’s understanding of the myriad ways in which “there is no Other,” to cite the title of her landmark 2019 album with Francesco Turrisi. That phrase might also serve as the motto for the sweeping vision of this summer’s Festival. Together with Guzelimian, Giddens has mapped out an array of programs to convey this philosophy of inclusiveness — of breaking down the barriers that establish and enforce the condition of “othering.” In the process, she uncovers long-suppressed truths about and historical insights into overlooked influences on American culture, such as the indispensable contributions from Black American artists that were absorbed without acknowledgment.

What happens when we acknowledge that the dividing lines we’ve been trained to assume as givens are in reality CONTINUED }}

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“liquid,” as the Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz depicts them in her percussion quartet Liquid Borders? For one thing, we become more sensitive to the nuances of human experience: to how it resists being categorized by labels that political forces and ideology rely on to impose their power.

The suite Between Worlds by the young American composer Carlos Simon is emblematic of this perspective.

Simon effortlessly traverses the entangled identities of familiar Western string instruments — blues, folk, classical — to reflect on the legacy of Bill Traylor, a self-taught, formerly enslaved artist who moved between Black and white culture, rural and urban lifestyles, traditional and modern contexts.

The wealth of traditions, styles, and even instruments we will encounter throughout the Festival ranges from distant antiquity (including music for the ancient pipa deciphered from Chinese scrolls nearly 1,000 years old) to a newly commissioned work by the Iranian composer Aida Shirazi that integrates the technology of electronic music with the age-old strains of the ancient bowed string instrument known as the kamancheh.

Challenging borders and categories so as to celebrate the mutually enriching collaboration between different cultures is at the heart of the mission of the Silkroad Ensemble, which Giddens recently began guiding into its third decade.

Several Silkroad musicians are participating in the 2023 Ojai Music Festival, including leading figures representing the Chinese and Persian classical traditions — two prominent threads being explored this weekend.

Kayhan Kalhor, a virtuoso of the kamancheh, draws on a repertoire of melodies codified centuries ago as part of Persian court tradition, which he brings to life in countless fresh, unrepeatable manifestations through his subtle art of improvisation. Through this category-defying musical practice, Kalhor invites us to interrogate standard Western concepts of the division of labor required to produce a composition. We will also encounter music by a courageous group of female composers from Iran representing the young generation. Collectively bonded together as the Iranian Female Composers Association, they challenge cultural strictures limiting their creativity as women and uninhibitedly combine their knowledge of Persian classical music with Western experimental trends.

Wu Man, a recipient of the 2023 National Heritage Fellowship given by the National Endowment for the Arts, will blend her virtuosity on the pipa (ancient Chinese lute) with Giddens’s roots banjo and the sonorities of a string quartet. A centerpiece of Wu Man’s involvement is a brandnew production of Ghost Opera, a pivotal work Tan Dun wrote specifically for her and the Kronos Quartet early in his career.

CONTINUED }}

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CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

BUILDING BRIDGES AT THE CROSSROADS

Tan Dun was mentored by Chou Wen-Chung, who left his mark on several generations of Chinese American students.

They in turn have gone on to expand the vocabulary and perspective of contemporary classical music in the West.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Chou Wen-Chung’s birth this year, Giddens and Guzelimian have included two outstanding examples of the music of this trailblazing composer, teacher, and scholar: one of them, Echoes from the Gorge, ranks among the most significant 20th-century compositions for percussion, according to Steven Schick, Ojai’s Music Director in 2015, who will be on hand to lead this performance.

Chou Wen-Chung’s unique position between the worlds of Chinese classical tradition and Western avant-garde music is suggested by the juxtaposition with music of Edgard Varèse, his mentor and close friend. Space is also given to a younger generation of Chinese American composers with the music of Lei Liang, another of the Festival’s featured composers. Like Chou Wen-Chung, Lei Liang combines the identities of artist and scholarly researcher; bringing things full circle, he directs the advisory board of the Chou WenChung Music Research Center in Xinghai.

The adventurous members of the Attacca Quartet, who will partner with Wu Man in Ghost Opera, continue the collaboration with Giddens that they began so enthusiastically at the 2021 Ojai Music Festival. Now in their 20th-anniversary year, they open this year’s edition with a strikingly original playlist showcasing their strengths and interests (including an excerpt from their latest Grammy Award–winning project with Caroline Shaw).

The Quartet took their name from the musical instruction meaning, literally, “attached,” which calls for musicians to keep on playing without stopping at a musical border.

According to cellist and founding member Andrew Yee, trying to posit a logical and linear transition from one time period to the next is far less involving than plotting a “spiritual journey” charting their own identity and evolution.

Yee describes the liberating feeling of playing across multiple styles and genres “without the burden of calling it crossover.”

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In other words, “you don’t have to be a specialist in just one thing and then call yourself a ‘guest’ in another.” While there was “a lot of fear of steering outside your lane in the past,” Yee observes, the focus nowadays is on “bringing honesty to the art form, because you’re not thinking of it as a tourist.”

Additional insights into the issue of music histories await us in the contributions from Francesco Turrisi and his colleagues. A longtime practitioner of jazz and early music, the multi-instrumentalist Turrisi mirrors and complements the ravenous curiosity and versatility of Giddens, his artistic and life partner. Ara Guzelimian describes him as “a perfect match” to Giddens, “one of the most incredibly genredefying, wide-ranging artists I’ve met, both scholarly and popular.”

To give a platform to Turrisi’s “uncontainability,” Guzelimian suggested a program of “early music,” playing on the double entendre with the Sunday morning slot. In keeping with the goal of breaking down barriers, Turrisi and his musical guests will bring together early music from outside the Western tradition and also interweave folk sources and improvisational practices.

The bridges that Giddens and her fellow artists will build at these various crossroads involve more than celebrating a diversity of traditions and styles. Her work makes space for stories hidden or eclipsed by mainstream narratives that are needed to expand our assumptions about American identity — whether in her children’s book Build a House, which reimagines the memorable ballad she wrote during lockdown, or in this year’s major Ojai Music Festival commission: Omar’s Journey, a new concert suite drawn from the opera Omar, which she co-composed with Michael Abels (see sidebar on p. 52).

“There’s a lot of opportunity for all of these worlds to naturally come together at Ojai,” says Giddens. “We are more similar than we are different. And these different musics, I think, all have more similarities than they have differences.”

—THOMAS MAY

Featuring Mahler Chamber Orchestra Brentano String Quartet Anthony McGill, clarinet Alexi Kenney, violin Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano

2024 Series Passes on Sale OjaiFestival.org | 805 646 2053

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The Stage Is Set Look for A&L’s bold new 2023-2024 lineup to be announced on June 13.

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Rhiannon Giddens You’re the One Tue, Apr 23 photo: Ebru Yildiz

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Joan Kemper’s Way One of my favorite spots in Ojai can be found in a corner of this very park, close to Ojai Avenue — Joan Kemper Way, a path connecting Libbey Park to the Ojai Art Center a block away. It’s a fitting tribute to one of the most remarkable citizens of our community.

Joan was a relatively recent arrival to Ojai when she stepped in to serve as Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival in the early 1990s. I had the huge pleasure of working with her for several years and marveled at her boundless gifts for making things happen. She is one of those remarkable people who has never met a problem she couldn’t solve. The Festival was floundering without leadership at the time she took it over — there was no task too large or small for Joan, who rolled up her sleeves and rallied everything and everyone necessary to accomplish the task at hand. Ask me sometime about how she managed to meet Peter Sellars’ request to get an actual pickup truck onstage at Libbey Bowl as the set for Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat . . .

Good things happen whenever Joan is around, particularly throughout the Ojai community. She has a way of bringing people to a common cause, with music and theater being especially close to her heart. She

gets you to pitch in and then she makes the whole thing such great fun that you end up thanking her. A partial list of Joan’s volunteer activities and leadership reads like everything good about Ojai — beginning with her beloved Ojai Performing Arts Theater and including the Ojai Museum, the Ojai Film Society, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Ojai Valley Community Hospital, and the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy among numerous other organizations.

Joan has slyly been saying “you know, I’m basically a hundred years old” for several years but she actually reached that milestone last December.

Not surprisingly, the guest of honor was the life of the party! Her wonderful indefatigable spirit seems to me as lively and inspiring as it was on the day I met her.

I am grateful, like so many others, to travel on Joan Kemper Way! Long may you brighten our lives, Joan.

—ARA GUZELIMIAN

Joan Kemper and family at her 100th Celebration in December.

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est. 1914 reopening 2023

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Enhance Your Experience OJAI CHATS Learn about concert works from the composers! John Schaefer will host 30-minute chats throughout the weekend at the Libbey Park Gazebo. Look for the daily schedule of featured guests on our free Mobile App or on the program pages.

GREEN ROOM IN THE PARK An important part of the Festival is enjoying the wonderful setting of Libbey Park. Visit our special surroundings in the center of the park, meet up with friends, and enjoy drinks and small bites. Learn more about the Festival, our Future Forward Campaign, Ojai Festival Women’s Committtee, and our BRAVO education program. Plus, visit Bart’s Books booth on the weekend.

FESTIVAL POP-UP BOUTIQUE Take home something to help remember your Festival experience!

Visit our pop-up market featuring 2023 Festival T-shirts, as well as essentials including hats, seat cushions, blankets, CDs, and more swag!

SUPPERS IN THE PARK One of our favorite traditions with Festival friends under the oak trees in Libbey Park! Enjoy a gourmet boxed dinner with wine provided by The Ojai Vineyard. Friday, June 9 with Ojai Rôtie and Saturday, June 10 with Lorraine Lim Catering. Limited seating.

Advance reservations only.

OJAI BEYOND The Festival’s live online community continues to grow through our live stream broadcast. Since its inception in 2012, we have expanded Ojai’s global footprint, building vastly larger audiences and deepening relationships with patrons throughout the year.

Please enjoy your favorite Festival concerts from this year and years past at OjaiFestival.org free of charge after the Festival.

STAY CONNECTED Keep in touch with the latest news and updates both during and after the Festival.

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

Facebook.com/OjaiFestival

VIEW AND SUBMIT FESTIVAL PHOTOS

ojaifestivals #ojai2023 #ojaimusicfestival

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Visit our mobile-friendly website on your device for the latest updates at OjaiFestival.org

Scan the QR code below to download our free OMF mobile app to view concert info, Festival venues, programs notes, health and safety updates, Explore Ojai, and digital content.

OJAIMAP N Libbey Bowl 210 S. Signal Street

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Greenberg Center Ojai Valley School Lower Campus 723 El Paseo Road

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Chaparral Auditorium (Legacy Hall) 414 E. Ojai Avenue

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Rhiannon Giddens 2023 Music Director

— Read her story in the Summer issue

Your indispensable guide to everything Ojai

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A MULTI-DAY SERIES OF CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY CONCERTS, COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND DYNAMIC SPECIAL EVENTS IN ORANGE COUNTY, CA

PRESENTED BY THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY OF ORANGE COUNTY & LAGUNA BEACH LIVE!

2024 FESTIVAL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | VIOLINIST

Anne Akiko Meyers

CONCERTS @ LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE IN LAGUNA BEACH, CA FEB 16, 8PM: METAMORPHOSES

Anne Akiko Meyers creates a “beautiful sonic world full of color and movement and breath” in her Opening Night program: “Metamorphoses,” featuring new premieres of arrangements for violin and harp as well as violin and electronics.

FEB 17, 8PM: DOUBLES

Joined by string orchestra, Anne Akiko Meyers shares a program titled “Doubles,” which features the fiery interplay of two violins in works such as Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, Philip Glass’ Echorus for Two Violins and Strings, Steve Reich’s Duet for Two Solo Violins and Strings, and more.

FEB 18, 3PM CARNAVAL!

Anne Akiko Meyers brings the 2024 Laguna Beach Music Festival to a delightful close with “Carnaval!” pairing new arrangements of two beloved works: Camille Saint-Saëns’ whimsical Carnival of the Animals and Arturo Márquez’s evocative and dance-inspired Danzón No. 2.

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ANTHONY MCGILL Mosher Guest Artist, Clarinet

Classically-trained musicians, from new talents to legendary icons, converge at the Music Academy to bring you a summer filled with strings, horns, and operatic arias. Over 120 performances, including symphonies led by world famous conductors, a 1979-set CABARET,

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Festival Information BOX OFFICE HOURS The Festival Box Office is located in the center of Libbey Park. Our friendly staff and interns will be glad to help you with ticket purchases and questions, as well as ordering your 2024 Festival series passes.

Assisted listening devices are available for checkout at the Box Office. Please bring a valid photo ID. If you are unable to use your tickets, you can make a taxdeductible contribution by returning them to the Box Office at least 48 hours in advance of the concert. Stop by the Box Office or call our Ticket Donation Hotline at 805.646.2192.

HOURS OF OPERATION: Thurs., June 8 12pm-9pm Fri., June 9 9am-1pm / 2:30pm-9pm Sat., June 10 9am-1pm / 2:30pm-9pm Sun., June 11 9am-1pm / 4pm-7:30pm LATE SEATING Performances start at the time designated on your ticket. In deference to the comfort and listening pleasure of the audience, late-arriving patrons will not be seated while music is being performed. Latecomers are asked to wait quietly in the designated areas until the first break in the program when ushers will assist them to their seats.

Late-seating breaks and arrangements vary by concert and are at the discretion of the Front of House Manager in consultation with the conductor and performing artists. Please note that performances without breaks may not have late seating.

PHOTOS AND RECORDINGS Photography, audio recording, and videography are prohibited during Festival performances.

We appreciate your cooperation in helping us create an environment for the artists that is not distracting.

PHONES AND ELECTRONIC DEVICES As a courtesy to others, before the start of Festival performances please turn off your phone, car alarm, and any other electronic device that makes noise or emits light. Efforts to control paper rustling will be appreciated by both audience members and artists.

ALCOHOL & DRINKS POLICY Due to City of Ojai’s policy, alcohol that is purchased in the Festival’s Green Room in the Park must be consumed in the designated restricted areas. Alcohol will be permitted only in the lawn area of the Bowl. We appreciate that patrons do not bring beverages in the reserved seating sections of the Libbey Bowl. No food or drinks will be allowed in our off-campus venues.

SMOKING POLICY Both Libbey Park and Libbey Bowl are designated no-smoking zones (including vape pens and e-cigarettes) by the City of Ojai. The Festival’s office, donor lounge, off-campus events, and backstage are also nonsmoking areas.

LAWN SEATING As a courtesy to other lawn patrons, blankets and low-rise chairs are preferred. Please bring low-rise, beach-style chairs with legs of 10 inches or less. Patrons with higher-rise chairs, such as camping or deck chairs, will be asked to move to the house right side of the lawn. Please do not leave valuable items in the lawn area. The Festival is not responsible for lost or damaged items.

Chimes will ring 10 minutes before the start of each concert and 10 minutes before the end of intermission.

LOST AND FOUND If you lose or find an item, please check in with the Festival Box Office, just outside the entrance to Libbey Bowl.

Please note: Artists and programs are subject to change without notice. In the event of a weather emergency, concerts may be canceled without ticket refunds.

RESTROOMS The Festival provides and maintains portable restrooms which are located 50 yards east of the Box Office in Libbey Park.

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PATRONS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS Seating for patrons with wheelchairs is available in a reserved section of Libbey Bowl. Please contact the Box Office as early as possible for special seating requests. A handicapped parking lot is located on Signal Street for vehicles displaying a DMV handicapped parking hang tag or license plate. Early arrival is encouraged, as these spaces fill up. For patrons requiring a short walk into Libbey Bowl, a handicapped drop-off point is located near the backstage on Signal Street. Please notify the barricade attendant and they will direct you. There is also nearby parking for the drivers of those needing assistance. For listening devices, please visit the Box Office. Public restrooms at the east end of Libbey Park are wheelchair accessible. Please contact an usher if you need assistance.

IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY Emergency exits are clearly marked. In the event of an emergency, ushers and Festival staff will provide instructions. Contact an usher or member of the Festival staff if you require medical assistance.

SERVICE ANIMALS Patrons with disabilities are welcome to bring service animals. Service animals, as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), are dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks directly related to a person’s disability. The dog must be able to rest in the seat area of the individual with a disability, excluding aisles or walkways. Please note that any animal whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support does not qualify as a service animal under ADA regulations.

We reserve the right to withhold or remove a service dog that fundamentally alters the nature of our programming by behaving in an unacceptable way during a performance, and/ or if the person with the disability does not or cannot control the animal.

AFTER THE PERFORMANCE We appreciate your cooperation in helping to clear the seating area after concerts. Please be sure to take all personal items and dispose of trash as you leave the Bowl.

GO GREEN The Festival strives to minimize its ecological footprint. We encourage you to do your share by separating your trash and using our recycle boxes provided by E.J. Harrison & Sons, and by using our complimentary water refill stations located throughout the Park and inside the Bowl. The same program book can be reused throughout the Festival.

OJAI TROLLEY SERVICE The Ojai Trolley is a convenient way to get from your Ojai lodging to the Libbey Bowl! The Trolley stops near the Blue Iguana Inn, Capri, Casa Ojai, Chantico, Hummingbird Inn, Ojai Rancho Inn, and Ojai Valley Inn. On the evenings of THU, FRI, and SAT, the Ojai Trolley will have free late service after the evening concerts, courtesy of the Ojai Music Festival. You can board the Trolley after these evening performances on Signal Street.

ATMs There are a few banks within walking distance of Libbey Bowl: Pacific Western Bank (110 S. Ventura Street), Bank of America (205 W. Ojai Avenue) and Wells Fargo Bank (202 E. Matilija Street).

COVID-SAFETY PROTOCOL The Ojai Music Festival is committed to protecting and ensuring the health and safety of its staff, artists, volunteers, and the Ojai community. Your support and participation are greatly appreciated.

During the 2023 Festival, our audiences will no longer be required to wear masks or show proof of Covid-19 vaccination. Masks are optional but recommended for individuals who are at increased risk for severe disease.

We will have hand sanitation supplies available throughout the Festival campus.

Please stay at home if you have any symptoms of illness or have been in contact with someone who is symptomatic or has tested positive for Covid-19.

These guidelines are subject to change based on the advice of public health officials and conditions at the time of the Festival.

Keep informed with any updates on our free Mobile App.

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Thursday, June 8, 2023 | 2:30pm Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School (lower campus)

OJAI TALKS PART I

Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels with Ara Guzelimian BREAK

PART II

2023 Featured Composers with John Schaefer of WNYC/New Sounds

Ojai Talks is made possible by the generous support of Rachel Sater and Tom McNalley OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 6:00pm: Gabriela Ortiz and Aida Shirazi Pop-Up Performance at Libbey Park, 6:30pm: Moon Viewing Music by Peter Garland featuring Steven Schick

GREENBERG CENTER, OJAI VALLEY SCHOOL (LOWER CAMPUS) 723 EL PASEO ROAD, OJAI

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Thursday, June 8, 2023 | 6:30pm Libbey Park

FREE COMMUNITY EVENT Steven Schick percussion Peter GARLAND (b. 1953) Moon Viewing Music (2016) Moon Viewing Music (Inscrutable Stillness Studies #1) is composed for three large, knobbed gongs and one large (flat) tam-tam. For the gongs I want a deep low sound, but at the same time the relationship between them (and the character of the pieces in which multiple gongs are featured) is essentially melodic. I am not fixing pitches or interval relationships, so as not to limit possibilities (and to accommodate what might be available on hand). But the tonal (and harmonic/vibrational) character of the three gongs is very important.

This Pop-Up Performance is made possible with the generous support of Stephan Farber, Sound Post Capital

This music is low and slow — an obvious correlation exists between tempo and pitch register. As opposed to high and fast, for instance. I might also suggest a correspondence between the round shapes of the gongs and tam-tam and that of the full moon.

I have long ago ceased indicating specific mallets or beaters for my percussionist friends, who are way ahead of me in that department. Besides, a certain amount of empirical testing is inevitable and desirable.

Each of the six pieces has a corresponding haiku or short poem, and there is meant to be a correlation between text and music. Hence the percussionist is free to

recite these poems (or not) before each movement. Ryokan, Buson, and Saigyo are well-known poets, and the texts are taken from various collections of their work. Hyakuri and Renseki (#5 and #6) are lesser-known haiku poets and their texts are taken from a favorite book of mine, Japanese Death Poems, compiled by Yoel Hoffman and published by Charles E. Tuttle Company.

For me moon viewing is a year-round activity, though I’m aware that it is associated with autumn in the Japanese literary tradition (as in the text for #4).

This cycle was composed in the winter.

There is a unique light and intensity in a winter moon, as it rises in the darkest days (nights) of the year, and shines on a landscape of trees stripped of their leaves and of white snow that amplifies and reflects the moonlight, often creating an eerie sense of daylight — further reinforced by the shadows cast on the snow.

There is also a special silence because of the extreme cold, and the absence of animal, bird, and insect sounds. If autumn is the moonlight of nostalgia, winter is the moonlight of loneliness, an inscrutable stillness.

—PETER GARLAND

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Thursday, June 8, 2023 | 8:00pm Libbey Bowl

LIQUID BORDERS Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Steven Schick percussion/director | red fish blue fish percussion Attacca Quartet: Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni violins Nathan Schram viola Andrew Yee cello Gabriela ORTIZ

Liquid Borders Liquid City Liquid Desert Liquid Jungle red fish blue fish, Steven Schick percussion INTERMISSION

Attacca Quartet Playlist Joseph HAYDN

Andante from String Quartet in F major, Op. 77 No. 2 Hob. III:82

Zakir HUSSAIN

Pallavi (arranged by Reena Esmail)

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Cathryn and Tom Krause The concert appearance of Attacca Quartet is made possible by the generous support of Hyon Chough and Maurice Singer OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 6:00pm: Gabriela Ortiz and Aida Shirazi

Philip GLASS

First Movement from String Quartet No. 3 (“Mishima”)

Colin JACOBSEN

Beloved, Do Not Let Me Be Discouraged Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Francesco Turrisi percussion

Geeshie WILEY Rhiannon GIDDENS

Rhiannon Giddens vocals David CROSBY/Nathan SCHRAM

Pop-Up Performance at Libbey Park, 6:30pm: Moon Viewing Music by Peter Garland featuring Steven Schick

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Last Kind Words Lullaby Where We Are Not (arranged by Nathan Schram)

Caroline SHAW

Stem and Root from The Evergreen

John ADAMS

Judah to Ocean and Rag the Bone from John’s Book of Alleged Dances

SQUAREPUSHER

Xetaka 1

Gabriela ORTIZ (b. 1964) Liquid Borders (2013) Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809) Andante from String Quartet in F major, Op. 77, No. 2 Hob. III:82 (1799)

Colin JACOBSEN (b. 1978) Beloved, Do Not Let Me Be Discouraged (2008)

Caroline SHAW (b. 1977) Stem and Root from The Evergreen (2022)

Geeshie WILEY (1908-1950) Last Kind Words

John ADAMS (b. 1947) Judah to Ocean and Rag the Bone from John’s Book of Alleged Dances (1994)

Zakir HUSSAIN (b. 1951) Pallavi (2017)

Rhiannon GIDDENS (b. 1977) Lullaby

Philip GLASS (b. 1937) First Movement from String Quartet No. 3 (“Mishima”) (1985)

David CROSBY (1941-2023)/ Nathan SCHRAM (b. 1987) Where We Are Not (2020)

SQUAREPUSHER (Tom Jenkinson, b. 1975) Xetaka 1 (2021)

No Boundaries Liquid Borders: Both the title and the premise of the percussion quartet by Gabriela Ortiz that opens this edition of the Ojai Music Festival could not be better suited to Rhiannon Giddens’s curatorial vision. The Mexico City–based Ortiz has created a body of boundlessly imaginative work animated by adventurous border crossings between strikingly different realms: folk and avant-garde, Latin American and European, acoustic and electronic.

Ortiz comes from an influential musical family. Her parents were among the earliest members of the still-active group Los Folkloristas, founded in 1966, which transformed the understanding of Latin American folk music. A composer who asserts that “sounds have souls,” she has developed a special connection to California ensembles, producing works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Kronos Quartet.

Explorations of folklore and folk music, pre- and post-colonial, play a prominent role in Ortiz’s music. She combines these sources with contemporary techniques to generate unprecedented yet somehow inevitable sounding and extraordinarily evocative musical spaces.

Liquid Borders originated as a commission from Steven Schick for his University of California at San Diego–based percussion ensemble red fish blue fish and was premiered at the Banff Centre in Canada in August 2014. The title refers not only to dissolving aesthetic barriers but to Ortiz’s utopian reflection on what it might be like to overcome the artificial divisions she believes are put in place for political and economic reasons.

But because those divisions are in place, they exacerbate injustices caused by changes in the economy, society, and climate, which Ortiz illustrates in the varied soundscapes corresponding to each of the work’s three movements. The metallic and glass percussion of “Liquid City” conjures an urban landscape that, according to the composer, refers to the problem of impoverished immigrants from Mexico’s countryside facing desperate conditions when they seek economic improvement in the cities. In “Liquid Desert,” the soundscape changes dramatically to ghostly, dry, dark, rattling sounds. The social context here involves the problem in the north of Mexico caused by cheap maquila factories that exploit impoverished women. The players are

instructed to whisper the word maquila to represent “these lost voices of women who have disappeared or been killed.”

“Liquid Jungle” uses the timbres of marimbas, bongos, and woodblocks to evoke the scene at Mexico’s southern border, with driving rhythms derived from Caribbean and African music. The life force itself pulses with irresistible energy and cannot be contained.

Liquefying the borders between genres and disciplines is a signature of the Attacca Quartet. The playlist they’ve put together to launch their Ojai residency presents a self-portrait of the ensemble and their voracious appetite for trying new things. But rather than a straightforward, realist style, it’s a portrait painted in wildly abstract colors, “where our past and our future are simultaneously reflected in some form,” as cellist Andrew Yee puts it. “Asking what our artistic vision adds to this already rich art form has freed us up to experiment with the framework of our programming.”

The “Haydn 68” project — a cycle of all of the composer’s quartets, which Attacca performed from 2010 to 2016 — left a lasting mark on the quartet’s sound.

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GABRIELA ORTIZ

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NO BOUNDARIES Latin Grammy– nominated Gabriela Ortiz is one of the foremost composers in Mexico today.

She has composed three operas, in all of which interdisciplinary collaboration has been a vital experience.

Notably, these operas are framed by political contexts of great complexity, such as the drug war in Only the Truth, illegal migration between Mexico and the United States in Ana and her Shadow, and the violation of university autonomy during the student movement of 1968 in Firefly.

Ortiz’s music has been commissioned and performed all over the world by prestigious ensembles, soloists, and orchestras.

Recent premieres include Yanga and Téenek, both pieces commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel; Luciérnaga (Firefly, her third opera), commissioned and produced by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; and Únicamente la Verdad (Only the Truth, her first opera), with Long Beach Opera and Opera de Bellas Artes in Mexico.

She has been honored with the National Prize for Arts and Literature and has been inducted into the Mexican Academy of the Arts. Born in Mexico City, her parents were musicians in the renowned folk music ensemble Los Folkloristas. She trained with the eminent composer Mario Lavista at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música and with Federico Ibarra at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She teaches composition at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and as a visiting professor at Indiana University. Her music is published by Schott, Ediciones Mexicanas de Música, Saxiana Presto, and Tre Fontane.

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They play the Andante from Haydn’s last completed work in the medium, composed in 1799 and deemed by the composer himself as his “most beautiful string quartet.” Beginning with an almost folklike duet for just violin and cello, Haydn varies the main idea in profoundly surprising ways.

Zakir Hussain composed Pallavi in 2017 as part of Kronos Quartet’s 50 for the Future project to create repertory for a new generation of music lovers; Reena Esmail prepared this arrangement. The composer has provided this commentary: “Pallavi is the ancient Carnatic word for ‘composition.’ Each raga would have at least 100 traditional compositions of this type. The piece as written follows the prescribed format of the ancient Pallavi in which there is first Pallavi, then Anu Pallavi followed by Charnam.... Unlike the traditional Pallavi based in one raga, I have used four different ragas and tried to find a way to give each instrument its own personality with a raga assigned just for it. By doing so I hoped to address the Western system, which employs

counterpoint and harmony, through the multi-tonal play of the four ragas working in tandem in certain passages. There is also interplay between different rhythm cycles (Tala) using 4, 6, 9, and 16 beats, each assigned to an instrument in the quartet.”

As with the Haydn piece, economy of means is at the fore in Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3. It derives from his score for Paul Schrader’s biographical film about the Japanese writer Mishima (1985). The Attaccas recorded the work on their 2021 album Of All Joys, which juxtaposes music of the Renaissance with the Minimalist aesthetic.

Beloved, Do Not Let Me Be Discouraged began as a collaboration between Kayhan Kalhor and the string quartet Brooklyn Rider. Working on a production with the Silkroad Ensemble, the violinist Colin Jacobsen had become fascinated by Layla and Majnun, the story of star-crossed lovers immensely popular in the Middle East (whose Western counterpart is often said to be Romeo and Juliet). Knowledge

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of the rich tradition of Persian music is no prerequisite to being swept away by Kalhor’s depiction of the state of lovemadness central to the telling of the story, with its anticipation of medieval European troubadours.

To embark on their collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival, the musicians have chosen two especially characteristic songs: Last Kind Words, which Giddens covers on her debut solo album from 2015 (Tomorrow Is My Turn), was written and recorded by Geeshie Wiley in 1930 and condenses an evocative drama into the country blues idiom. Giddens’s Lullaby, from her 2017 album Folk Songs with the Kronos Quartet, only hints at the underlying situation, endured by countless enslaved women, that makes it so heartbreaking: “such a shame now, little baby, that you are not my own.”

In memory of the late David Crosby, who died at his ranch in nearby Santa Ynez in January, the Attacca Quartet performs a

piece that violist Nathan Schram wrote with the legendary songwriter called Where We Are Not. Schram transformed the song I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here from Crosby’s debut solo album of 1970 (If I Could Only Remember My Name) into a haunting new composition on his solo record Nearsided, which he arranged for Attacca. “It’s about people we had both lost in the past but now has taken on a new meaning,” says Schram.

A decade ago, on their Fellow Traveler album devoted to the string quartet music John Adams had written up to that point, Attacca Quartet put their own stamp on his 1994 collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, John’s Book of Alleged Dances.

They play two of the 10 dances — whose “general tone is dry, droll, sardonic,” according to the composer — that call for a pre-recorded percussion track played by prepared piano.

The Attaccas also pay tribute to their close collaboration with composer Caroline Shaw, offering selections from their most recent recording, which won a Grammy Award this year. Shaw’s quartet writing is often inspired by gardens and trees — as is the case with The Evergreen, a fourmovement work she has described as “an offering” to a tree in a coniferous forest on one of the islands in the Salish Sea separating Canada and the U.S. Shaw’s vivid, gestural writing for the strings reclaims the Romantic aspiration toward “organically” inspired art for our climateanxious time.

One of the Attacca Quartet’s most experimental projects to date in crossing borders is their 2021 album Real Life, which gave them a platform to repaint the musical canvases of leading artists and producers in electronica and avant hip-hop, including Squarepusher.

Their blending of the string quartet — historically, a benchmark of acoustic intimacy — with the contemporary dance floor’s amplified reverberations can sound by turns thrillingly chaotic and serenely surreal.

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 115 minutes.

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Friday, June 9, 2023 | 8:00am Zalk Theater, Besant Hill School

OJAI DAWNS Emi Ferguson flute | Ross Karre percussion | Tara Khozein soprano | Niloufar Shiri kamancheh Aida Shirazi electronics | Steven Schick percussion | red fish blue fish percussion Golfam KHAYAM

Lost Wind Emi Ferguson flute | Ross Karre percussion

Aida SHIRAZI

Yearning, Every Dawn World Premiere Commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival Niloufar Shiri kamancheh | Aida Shirazi electronics Tara Khozein soprano (recorded)

Edgard VARÈSE

Density 21.5 Emi Ferguson flute

CHOU Wen-Chung

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Don Pattison The Ojai residency of the Iranian Female Composers Association is made possible, in part, by the gracious support of the Farhang Foundation There is no intermission during the concert

Echoes from the Gorge prelude (exploring the modes) raindrops on bamboo leaves echoes from the gorge autumn pond clear moon shadows in the ravine old tree by the cold spring droplets down the rocks drifting clouds rolling pearls peaks and cascades falling rocks and flying spray red fish blue fish, Steven Schick percussion

ZALK THEATER, BESANT HILL SCHOOL 8585 OJAI SANTA PAULA ROAD

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Golfam KHAYAM (b. 1983) Lost Wind (2018)

Edgard VARÈSE (1883-1965) Density 21.5 (1936)

Aida SHIRAZI (b. 1987) Yearning, Every Dawn (2023)

CHOU Wen-Chung (1923-2019) Echoes from the Gorge (1989)

Calligraphies of Sound For all its antiquity, the flute has taken a lead, liberating role in the transition to modernism. Pierre Boulez cited Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune as the “origin” point of modern music. Georges Barrère, who played the epochal flute solo that begins Debussy’s trailblazing score at its premiere in 1894, asked Edgard Varèse to write Density 21.5 for him 42 years later. In Lost Wind, Golfam Khayam similarly uses the flute to imagine a new sound world.

But the reference point in her case is the rich and diverse Persian classical music tradition.

Like many composers of her generation, Khayam ventured outside her native Iran to continue her studies. After immersing herself in contemporary experimental music in Cincinnati and Geneva, she returned to Iran and now teaches in Tehran. Lost Wind is a written score but breathes the spirit of improvisation that is central to Persian music and offers the flute soloist ample opportunity to make individual choices about phrasing and rhythmic articulation. Extended techniques calling for breathing in and out of the instrument, bending pitch, “aeolian sound,” and the like suggest a wordless poetry being communicated. Khayam’s accompaniment with the deeperrimmed heng gong (a favorite of sound healers) seems to extend the flute’s own

voice, often playing in its low range but ascending to the heights at the climax.

Aida Shirazi also refracts Persian traditions through a contemporary and experimental perspective, combining layers of live and processed electronics with onstage improvisation by the kamancheh virtuoso Niloufar Shiri in her new work Yearning, Every Dawn. While growing up in Iran, Shirazi was trained classically in both Persian and Western music and went on to study in Turkey and at the University of California at Davis, where she recently completed her doctorate. A co-founder of the Iranian Female Composers Association (see sidebar on p. 48), Shirazi was able to realize her desire to collaborate with two admired colleagues for her Ojai Music Festival commission (one in live performance and the other through a pre-recorded tape).

In addition to performing and improvising live, Shiri provided Shirazi with recordings of her work to be incorporated into the processed and pre-recorded electronics. The Iranian American soprano Tara Khozein contributed another layer by recording a short improvisatory song based on a text (see p. 48) by the 19th-century poet Táhirih Qurrat al-’Ayn, which was also processed. Shirazi, who spent a period training at IRCAM in Paris,

has woven these recorded materials into Yearning, Every Dawn, thus combining sources that are acoustic and electronic, live and recorded, played and sung, improvised and fixed. Rather than merely juxtapose traditions and sound worlds, she aims to create “a hybrid that will sound as natural and organic as possible — so that it’s all of them, and at the same time none of them, but with my voice.”

Edgard Varèse is often cited as a tutelary spirit to colorful figures of the Western avant-garde (Boulez, Stockhausen, Frank Zappa), but his influence extended to non-Western composers. He left an indelible mark on Chou Wen-Chung (see sidebar on p. 64), who became his student and copyist when they met in 1949 and, following the death of Varèse, his literary executor. Density 21.5 dates from the previous decade (1936) and was composed for the above-mentioned Georges Barrère, who planned to inaugurate a newly engineered platinum flute at the upcoming New York World’s Fair. The title refers to the density or specific mass of this rare metal, which is 21.5. (Cocktail party conversation point: The new flute was in fact a platinumiridium alloy with an estimated specific mass of 21.6.) Varèse crafts a novel language from alterations in timbre, use

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IRANIAN FEMALE COMPOSERS ASSOCIATION (IFCA) Aida Shirazi co-founded the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA) in 2017 to serve as a platform supporting the creative work of female-identifying composers from Iran. IFCA mentors an aesthetically diverse array of young artists across the Iranian diaspora and advocates for their increased presence through programming and commissions. Music by other composers from IFCA can be heard on the vis-à-vis concert on Friday at 10:00am as well as on The Willows Are New concert on Saturday at 10:00am.

AIDA SHIRAZI composer/electronics Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Aida Shirazi is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music.

In her works for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics, Shirazi mainly focuses on timbre for organizing structures inspired by language and literature. Shirazi’s music

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has been featured at festivals and concert series, including Manifeste, Wien Modern, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mostly Mozart, OutHear New Music Week, MATA, Marlboro Music Festival, Direct Current, Taproot, and Tehran Contemporary Music Festival. Her works are performed by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Oerknal, Quince Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, among others.

Shirazi holds a PhD in composition and music theory from the University of California, Davis. She has studied with Mika Pelo, Pablo Ortiz, Kurt Rohde, Yiğit Aydın, Tolga Yayalar, Onur Türkmen, and Hooshyar Khayam and participated in workshops and masterclasses by Kaija Saariaho, Mark Andre, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Riccardo Piacentini, and Füsun Köksal.

Shirazi is a 2022 graduate of IRCAM’s “Cursus Program in Composition and Computer Music.” She holds a BM in music composition and theory from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and a BA in classical piano from Tehran University of Art (Iran.) She has studied santoor (traditional Iranian hammered dulcimer) with Parissa Khosravi Samani.

Text by Tara Khozein based on a poem by Táhirih (Fátimih Baraghání), translated by Dr. Amin Banani Just let the wind untie my perfumed hair my net will capture every wild thing there.

“Oh Heaven, Heaven, Heaven you yearn to see me every dawn, so go on.

Pick up your looking glass, look down.

Just let me paint my flashing eyes with black and I will make this hellbent world turn back.

Oh Heaven, Heaven, Heaven If I should pass a temple by chance one day, One thousand angels would rush to my aid.

Just let me open up my blood red mouth And I will sing away these fatal vows Oh Heaven, Heaven, Heaven You see me reaching up through the light, So go on.

Take your golden scissors, Join your brothers, join your sisters And join the fight.”

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CALLIGRAPHIES OF SOUND of the extreme high and low ends of the register, and percussive effects.

investigate sound to know tones and investigate tones to know music.”

Varèse mentored the young Chou WenChung, who in turn had a profound influence on the generation of composers emigrating from China after the Cultural Revolution (including Ge Gan-Ru, Lei Liang, and Tan Dun). Chou Wen-Chung anticipated their quest to synthesize Asian and Western idioms in his own integration of classical Chinese aesthetics with a contemporary sensibility. Also a prominent scholar, Chou Wen-Chung described Varèse’s concept of sound as “living matter” as “a modern Western parallel of a pervasive Chinese concept: that each single tone is a musical entity in itself, that musical meaning lies intrinsically in the tones themselves, and that one must

This overarching idea pervades the subtly fluctuating soundscape of Echoes from the Gorge, completed in 1989 after a lengthy break from composition during which Chou Wen-Chung had worked on his edition of Varèse’s scores. Among Chou Wen-Chung’s most substantial works, Echoes is regarded as on one level a tribute to his former mentor as well.

Chou Wen-Chung organizes his quartet of percussionists to preside over a vast panoply of instruments. These are divided into various family groups based on timbre (wood, metal, skin, and various other kinds of drums), articulation, and even where and how the instruments are struck.

Chou Wen-Chung’s devotion to Chinese calligraphy and its philosophy also informs the shaping of sounds in a delicate balance between predetermination and seeming spontaneity.

In the view of Steven Schick, Echoes from the Gorge ranks with the most significant yet overlooked works for percussion written in the 20th century. Comprising an introduction and 12 sections labeled with nature imagery (“echoes from the gorge,” “falling rocks and flying spray,” etc.), the piece reflects what Chou Wen-Chung described as “the preeminent musical form in East Asia, wherein all sections of a composition are elaborations or reductions of one and the same nuclear idea.”

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 45 minutes.

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Friday, June 9, 2023 | 10:00am Libbey Bowl

VIS-À-VIS Gloria Cheng piano | Emi Ferguson flute | Mario Gotoh viola | Leonard Hayes piano | Karen Ouzounian cello Joshua Rubin clarinet | Steven Schick percussion | Michi Wiancko violin | Wu Man pipa Shawn OKPEBHOLO Tyson Gholston DAVIS Margaret BONDS Michael ABELS

mi sueño: afro-flamenco American Tableau (Tableau XI) Troubled Water (Wade in the Water from Spirituals Suite) Iconoclasm Leonard Hayes piano

Jessie MONTGOMERY

Rhapsody No. 2 Michi Wiancko violin

Nasim KHORASSANI

Growth Michi Wiancko violin | Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello

Nina BARZEGAR

Inexorable Passage Emi Ferguson flute | Joshua Rubin clarinet | Michi Wiancko violin Karen Ouzounian cello | Gloria Cheng piano

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Smith-Hobson Foundation Fund, Ventura County Community Foundation The concert appearance of Emi Ferguson is made possible by the generous support of Carolyn and Jamie Bennett The Ojai residency of the Iranian Female Composers Association is made possible, in part, by the gracious support of the Farhang Foundation OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 11:30am: Nina Barzegar and Nasim Khorassani There is no intermission during the concert

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Lei LIANG

vis-à-vis Wu Man pipa | Steven Schick percussion

Shawn OKPEBHOLO (b. 1981) mi sueño: afro-flamenco (2021)

Michael ABELS (b. 1962) Iconoclasm (2017)

Nina BARZEGAR (b. 1984) Inexorable Passage (2020)

Tyson Gholston DAVIS (b. 2000) American Tableau (Tableau XI) (2021)

Jessie MONTGOMERY (b. 1981) Rhapsody No. 2

Lei LIANG (b. 1972) vis-à-vis (2018)

Margaret BONDS (1913-72) Troubled Water (Wade in the Water) (c. 1930s-40s)

Nasim KHORASSANI (b. 1987) Growth (2017)

Face to Face The face of American concert music has been changing dramatically in our time, immeasurably enriched by the acknowledgment and celebration of voices that, not long ago, were largely excluded. Contributions by woefully undervalued Black American composers of the past are finding eager new audiences, and young artists of color are galvanizing the scene by bringing their own perspectives to classical traditions.

This morning’s program spans three generations of composers active today, with a nod to a rediscovered elder from the last century.

Commissioned as part of a project inspired by Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs, Shawn Okpebholo’s mi sueño: afro-flamenco responds to the Spanish-flavored fourth movement, “Alborada del gracioso” (“The Jester’s Morning Song”), from Ravel’s original piano suite. The title (“my dream: afro-flamenco”) combines his “prepandemic nostalgia” with “post-pandemic dreams” to travel again and revisit Spain and Africa. References to flamenco as well as rhythms and idioms inspired by his Nigerian musical heritage and African American music convey the composer’s longing to reconnect to these sources.

American Tableau (Tableau XI) is one of a larger cycle of a dozen pieces,

each for a different solo instrument,

by Tyson Gholston Davis, the youngest composer on Leonard Hayes’s opening set for solo piano. Davis interrogates the straightforward assurance of the melody known as “America the Beautiful” — and the betrayal of the values it signifies — by weaving it into a chromatically ambivalent context.

A student of Florence Price who later collaborated with her and with the poet Langston Hughes, the composer and pianist Margaret Bonds in 1933 became the first Black musician to perform with the Chicago Symphony. Troubled Water originated as the finale of a threemovement suite Bonds composed to bring her solo recitals to a rousing close. Rather than a mere “arrangement” of a famous spiritual, Bonds offers a multifaceted pianistic fantasy infused with idioms from jazz and European Romanticism. The words to “Wade in the Water,” her source, originally encoded lifesaving information for fugitives following the Underground Railroad to freedom.

For her album marking the Leonard Bernstein centennial in 2018, the pianist Lara Downes asked an array of composers to write short pieces honoring his legacy.

Michael Abels explains that he sought to convey his impressions of “the personality

and not the sage” in his witty Iconoclasm.

Bouncy rhythms and restlessly shifting meters echoing Bernstein’s own style evoke how he embodied “the puckish life of the party.”

Musical America’s Composer of the Year for 2023, Jessie Montgomery grew up amid the rebelliously creative experimental scene of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s. Both her parents led active careers in the performing arts, and their home became a meeting place for boundary-crossing musicians from free jazz; their prodigy daughter meanwhile pursued training in classical violin and began composing as a child. Rhapsody No. 2 is part of set of in-progress solo violin works, each dedicated to a particular contemporary violinist. Citing Béla Bartók as one of her inspirations, Montgomery wrote No. 2 for Michi Wiancko, who included it on her Planetary Candidate album (released in 2020).

Both Nasim Khorassani and Nina Barzegar are members of the Iranian Female Composers Association (see sidebar on p. 48). Khorassani began composing at the age of 8 and spent time in Germany and the U.K. before coming to San Diego, where she is a doctoral composition student at the University of California. In her single-movement string trio Growth, CONTINUED }}

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MICHAEL ABELS

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FACE TO FACE she restricts herself to just four pitches that are closely adjacent (B, C, D, and E-flat). But changes in texture, dynamics, and rhythmic articulation produce a sense of restless pressure to metamorphose.

Both a composer and an actor, Nina Barzegar studied in Tehran before enrolling in the graduate program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and combines interests in film music, improvisation, and the Iranian classical tradition. The New York Times singled out the world premiere of her quintet Inexorable Passage at a concert last October, noting that the work was “thrilling in its fusion of experimental, extended-technique effects, as well as melodic and chordal inventions.” Barzegar introduces the piece as a depiction of “the stages of life”: “We enter this world with hope, we learn, we strive, fall in love, we fight, we fail and triumph. Despite all our wishes, we eventually surrender, accept, and get off the train of life. This is the miracle of being in this world.”

Our morning program concludes with an innovative reconsideration of the principle of musical dialogue and virtuosity. Lei Liang composed vis-à-vis for Wu Man and Steven Schick — fellow San Diego–based colleagues who, he notes, share a “magnetic stage presence and unparalleled virtuosity on their instruments.”

This substantial duo for pipa and percussion goes far beyond simple confrontations of East with West or the traditional with the experimental. Lei Liang uses the paradoxical formula “new music that is old” to depict his aesthetic, adding that he prefers writing “music that has layers of memories underneath.”

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Although he grew up in Beijing, Lei Liang has observed that he didn’t discover China until he was living in America. The process of using instrumentation outside one’s own culture, he says, resembles constructing a “mirror that makes us look at ourselves with a kind of X-ray vision. It allows us to penetrate the surface.” The part that Schick plays alone in vis-à-vis accomplishes this by inhabiting three states of mind or three very different spaces simultaneously: “looking inward, looking outward, and resting in a state of motionlessness.”

Juxtaposing the ancient pipa, an instrument with thousands of years of history, versus modern percussion, which began to come into its own in Western classical music only over the last century, is intentionally extreme. Lei Liang points out the jarring humor inherent as well in pitting the pipa’s image as a silk-string instrument of refined delicacy against the brute strength of the sonorities percussionists can produce. “I imagine the piece to be at times serious, challenging, probing, and even contentious; and at other times, relaxed, playful, and humorous,” writes the composer. “This is what a contentious friendship between kindred spirits would be like!”

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 70 minutes.

Emmy- and Grammynominated composer Michael Abels, winner with Rhiannon Giddens of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music for their opera Omar, is best known for his genre-defying scores for the Jordan Peele films Get Out, Us, and Nope. The score for Us won a World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics Choice nomination, multiple critics awards, and was named “Score of the Decade” by The Wrap. Both Us and Nope were shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Original Score. In 2022, Abels’s film music was honored by the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Middleburg Film Festival, and the Museum of the Moving Image. Other recent media projects include the films Bad Education, Nightbooks, and the docu-series Allen V. Farrow. Current releases include Chevalier (Toronto Intl Film Festival) and Landscape With Invisible Hand (Sundance), his second collaboration with director Cory Finley.

Upcoming projects include The Burial (Amazon) and a series for Disney Plus.

Abels’s creative output also includes many concert works, including the choral song cycle At War With Ourselves for the Kronos Quartet and the Grammy-nominated Isolation Variation for Hilary Hahn. Abels’s other concert works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and many others.

Some of these pieces are available on the Cedille label, including Delights & Dances and Winged Creatures. Recent commissions include Emerge for the National Symphony and Detroit Symphony and a guitar concerto (Borders) for Grammy-nominated artist Mak Grgić.

Abels is co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, gaming, and streaming media.

NINA BARZEGAR

NASIM KHORASSANI

LEI LIANG

Nina Barzegar is an Iranian composer, pianist, and actress.

She writes music in diverse styles and for various mediums, including concert music and music for film and theater. As an actress and film scorer, she has collaborated on many film projects screened at various film festivals worldwide. She has worked as a piano pedagogue for years and authored a twovolume piano training book. Since coming to the United States in 2020, Barzegar has collaborated with great performers and ensembles such as Yarn/Wire, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Del Sol Quartet. Barzegar holds a bachelor’s degree in piano and a master’s in composition from the University of Tehran and is currently a DMA student at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Nasim Khorassani is an Iranian composer, visual artist, music educator, and founder of MMCiran.

She is currently a PhD candidate in Music Composition working with Katharina Rosenberger, Marcos Balter, and Rand Steiger at the University of California San Diego. She studied her second master’s degree with Andrew Rindfleisch and Greg D’Alessio at Cleveland State University. The University of Tehran was where she gained her first master’s degree and studied composition with Mohammad Reza Tafazzoli, Kiawasch Sahebnassagh, and Sara Abazari. Mainly as a self-taught composer, Khorassani started composing at eight. However, her works did not receive any performance in Iran until 2016, when she moved to the United States. Since then, Khorassani’s works have been performed

by No Exit New Music Ensemble, Del Sol String Quartet, Patchwork Duo, Zeitgeist, OCAZEnigma, Loadbang, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Silkroad.

Born in 1972 to parents who were both pioneering musicologists, Lei Liang came of age in Beijing after the Cultural Revolution and began playing piano and composing at an early age. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests, in which he took part, Lei Liang’s parents sent him to the U.S. to study at the New England Conservatory. He earned his doctorate at Harvard and is currently on the faculty at the University of California San Diego. Lei Liang’s prolific catalogue of more than 100 compositions includes works that engage with such issues as human trafficking, undocumented immigrants, gun-related violence, and environmental destruction.

Describing his orchestral piece A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams, which was inspired by a Chinese ink-brush landscape painting and won the 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, Lei Liang remarks: “I always wanted to create music as if painting with a sonic brush.” In 2021, Lei Liang received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award.

During her life in Iran, she managed to create and organize a group of music students that became the first Iranian group to receive a DAAD Study Visit scholarship in 2009. In 2012, she met with Peter Ablinger and Klaus Lang in Tehran and performed their music.

In 2013, Khorassani became among five selected sound artists from Iran for IranUK Sonics residency in London, where she joined various workshops by Keith Rowe and Chris Watson and had her first experimental improvisation with Veryan Weston at Queen Elizabeth Hall. The trip to Germany as her introduction to modern dance expanded throughout her life, influencing the style of music composition she follows today.

Khorassani has founded a free online music academy, MMCiran, to support Persian students, which is now called and cofounded as MOAASER.

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Friday, June 9, 2023 | 3:30pm Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School (lower campus)

GHOST OPERA Wu Man pipa | Attacca Quartet: Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni violins Nathan Schram viola Andrew Yee cello | PeiJu Chien-Pott dancer/choreographer Jon Reimer director | Nicholas Houfek lighting designer TAN Dun

Ghost Opera Act I Bach, Monks, and Shakespeare Meet in Water Act II Earth Dance Act III Dialogue with “Little Cabbage” Act IV Metal and Stone

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson and with the special support from the Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics, Ventura County Community Foundation The concert appearance of Wu Man is made possible by the generous support of Ruth Eliel and Bill Cooney There is no intermission during the concert

GREENBERG CENTER, OJAI VALLEY SCHOOL (LOWER CAMPUS) 723 EL PASEO ROAD, OJAI

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Act V Song of Paper

TAN Dun (b. 1957) Ghost Opera (1994)

We Are Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made on During his youth in Hunan Province, Tan Dun became fascinated by local lore associated with shamans and sorcerers, listening eagerly to the ghost stories his grandmother told him as a boy. But he had to rediscover the folk traditions of his own culture following the upheaval of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which banned not only Western composition but Chinese music as well — unless it had the “revolutionary” seal of approval.

Since he came from a family of “intellectuals” — his mother was a doctor and his father a researcher — Tan Dun was forcibly separated from them as a teenager and sent to an agricultural commune to be “re-educated” by toiling in the rice fields. Mao’s death in 1976 put an end to these policies, and Tan Dun was allowed to gain experience playing violin with a Beijing Opera troupe and to hear Western classical music on the radio.

He was accepted to the newly reopened Central Conservatory in Beijing to study composition and eventually found his way in the mid-1980s to Columbia University — where Chou Wen-Chung numbered among his mentors. New York City has since remained home base for Tan Dun’s tirelessly peripatetic career, which keeps him internationally in demand as both a composer and a conductor.

Even when Chinese folk traditions were still forbidden during his period on the collective farm, Tan Dun found a way to experience these sources by offering to set texts of Maoist propaganda to the folk tunes he persuaded the farmers to share with him. The impulse to reconnect with aspects of Chinese culture was later intensified by his encounters with John Cage and similar figures in New York’s experimental downtown scene, which provided an enlightening counterpart to what he was learning more formally uptown. As with so many émigré composers, the stimulation of distance encouraged a fresh perspective on his native culture.

Ghost Opera is an early breakthrough work in which Tan Dun comes to terms with these formative influences by forging them into a strikingly original musical language. The result, as in this composer’s oeuvre overall, transcends reductive (and bland) formulas such as “East meets West” or “ancient juxtaposed with avant-garde.”

Indeed, Tan Dun relishes the creative tension generated by combining perspectives often assumed to stand in contradiction — whether Buddhist and Christian traditions (in his Water Passion and Buddha Passion, both modeled

on J.S. Bach) or the spontaneous music of nature and “composed” music (a fusion integral to his vocabulary, which plays a key role in the soundscape of Ghost Opera).

Originally created for Wu Man and the Kronos Quartet, Ghost Opera is also characteristic of Tan Dun’s artistic practice in its engrossing theatrical sensibility.

The scenario alludes to a tradition of shamanistic performance that is believed to reach back thousands of years, which later became integrated with Buddhist philosophy. In its traditional format, according to Tan Dun, the performer “has a dialogue with his past and future life — a dialogue between past and future, spirit and nature.”

For his version of this long tradition, Tan Dun created a sequence of five acts or movements. Among the departed who are invoked by the performers are the spirits of Shakespeare and J.S. Bach, who join the proceedings through references to their work — via quotations from The Tempest and the C-sharp minor Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II. In addition to their usual instruments, all five musicians are called on to play percussion and “natural” instruments (water, metal, stone, and paper) that allude

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WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON to the classical Chinese philosophy of the elements. In the Ojai Music Festival’s new production, a dancer mediates between the spheres of the living and those who have passed on.

Although Tan Dun’s treatment of the pipa itself, according to Wu Man, involves no avant-garde extended techniques, the idea of a dialogue between pipa and string quartet is unprecedented — and a novel kind of music theater. Tan Dun never merely evokes the past. His “ghosts” join together in a dialogue whose surprising twists are spellbinding. The “exhalations of a ghostly monk” in the first movement, for example, underline the porousness of the borders between sound and silence, the motions of breathing that mark the passage of time against eternity.

Ghost Opera is also, for Wu Man, “a very personal piece” because of her close involvement in the process while Tan Dun was composing it. When Tan Dun was searching for a folk tune, she suggested “Little Cabbage,” which is played on the

pipa in the third act and which she sings in the fifth. During this final movement, the song’s significance is revealed as the lament of “a little girl who has lost her parents,” explains Tan Dun. “Such an odd, sad song. It’s the essence of ghostliness.

You can talk to the past, the stone can talk to the violin, and the cabbage can sing of her sorrowful life.”

Tan Dun’s use of the visual aspects of the performers interacting with their instruments — and, in the final scene, with the paper installation — is further enhanced in this production, specially designed for the Ojai Music Festival, with new choreography, lighting, and stage direction.

Through the strands that he weaves together in Ghost Opera’s unique counterpoint of cultures, eras, and instruments, Tan Dun himself becomes a contemporary shaman able to communicate between realms thought to be inseparably divided.

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 60 minutes.

This production was developed in part during a residency at the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, New York and will be presented there in partnership with the Ojai Music Festival in October 2023.

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Friday, June 9, 2023 | 8:00pm Libbey Bowl

AN EVENING WITH RHIANNON GIDDENS AND FRANCESCO TURRISI Rhiannon Giddens vocals and banjo | Francesco Turrisi multi-instrumentalist

The program will be announced from the stage.

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Nancy and Barry Sanders OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 6:00pm: Lei Liang and Wu Man There is no intermission during the concert

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Hybrid Spaces Songs are the most versatile of musical artifacts. As a medium of communication, song isn’t even confined to the human species. The impulse to sing accompanies the relationships that define our lives, from the intimate and familial to the spiritual to the political: whether it’s a soothing lullaby to calm a child, a heartfelt moment of prayer, or a defiant chant of protest.

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi make this versatility itself into an art in their song programs. The notion of songs as “repertory” items to be temporarily retrieved from the shelf, dusted off, and ritually performed — as if the singer were merely ventriloquizing the past — couldn’t be more antithetical to the experience Giddens and Turrisi seek to convey in their performances.

Part of what makes this approach possible is their shared conviction that the categories we’ve been trained to assign to songs are artificial — above all, the categories that reinforce hierarchies of “high” and “low,” “classical” and “popular.” “Art songs” written by privileged composers in the Western classical tradition or folk songs that originated with enslaved African Americans and have been passed down over the generations: the distinctions cued by labels reinforce preconceived ideas about what to expect and even how we should respond to a musical experience.

Giddens refers to the “hybrid spaces” that emerge when we break down these boundaries — spaces where new contexts can be created through boldly original juxtapositions that freshly illuminate the familiar with a haunting, at times surprising, relevance.

Giddens and Turrisi show how timeless folk tunes can take on a burning relevance for today, as with the songs about final things that they interpret on their recent Grammy Award–winning They’re Calling Me Home album, produced in isolation during the pandemic.

One of Giddens’s models for this approach is Nina Simone — whose birthday she happens to share and to whom she paid tribute by making Tomorrow Is My Turn the title song of her debut solo album (2015), adding her own layer to Simone’s unforgettable version of the Charles Aznavour hit.

On the other hand, Giddens’s original song Build a House, which she premiered online with Yo-Yo Ma on Juneteenth 2020 — and recently transformed into a children’s book (see p. 83) — works back from frustration over contemporary racial injustice to condense a history of the African American experience into a song that seems to have always been part of the folk tradition.

“The idea is that a recital for piano and voice doesn’t have to be attached to any concept of a ‘classical’ recital — even when we’re also doing some classical pieces,” says Turrisi. “We’re exploring the fluidity between the classical and popular sound.” For example, surprising crosscurrents can emerge between a madrigal by Monteverdi and an Italian pop song from the 1960s. Even within the realm of what we generally consider “vernacular” music, hidden and suppressed histories are brought to light — such as the unacknowledged origins of country music from African American sources. (To explore more of this topic, Giddens’s contributions to the 2019 Ken Burns Country Music series are highly recommended.)

“It’s the song that matters, not what category it is, not where it originally appeared,” says Giddens. “If the song is compelling, what’s to keep it from being done as an art song?”

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 100 minutes.

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Saturday, June 10, 2023 | 8:00am Chaparral Auditorium

MORNING MEDITATION Niloufar Shiri kamancheh | Mario Gotoh violin

You will experience improvisation and sonic exploration through deep listening. Together with Mario Gotoh on violin, we will immerse the space in the sound of bowed string instruments to forge newfound connections through the intervallic structure and melodies of the Iranian musical tradition, the Radif.

—NILOUFAR SHIRI

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Mechas and Greg Grinnell There is no intermission during the concert

CHAPARRAL AUDITORIUM 414 EAST OJAI AVENUE, OJAI

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Announcing the 105th Concert Season ⳼ 2023/2024 Presenting the world’s finest classical artists since 1919

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Sphinx Virtuosi

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Season Subscriptions On Sale Now! For more information, visit camasb.org C O M M U N I T Y A R T S M U S I C A S S O C I AT I O N O F S A N TA B A R B A R A

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Saturday, June 10, 2023 | 10:00am Libbey Bowl

THE WILLOWS ARE NEW Gloria Cheng piano | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Karen Ouzounian cello | Nathan Schram viola | Wu Man pipa Niloufar NOURBAKHSH

Veiled for cello and electronics Karen Ouzounian cello

Lei LIANG

Mother’s Songs Wu Man pipa | Nathan Schram viola

GE Gan-Ru CHOU Wen-Chung

Gong (from Gu Yue) The Willows Are New Gloria Cheng piano

Kayhan KALHOR

Solo improvisation Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh

This concert is made possible by the generous support of Carol and Luther Luedtke The Ojai residency of the Iranian Female Composers Association is made possible, in part, by the gracious support of the Farhang Foundation The concert appearance of Kayhan Kalhor is made possible by the generous support of The Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics, Ventura County Community Foundation The concert appearance of Gloria Cheng is made possible by the generous support of Drs. Bridget Tsao and Bruce Brockman OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 11:30am: Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Carlos Simon There is no intermission during the concert

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Niloufar NOURBAKHSH (b. 1992) Veiled for cello and electronics (2019)

GE Gan-Ru (b. 1954) Gong (1985)

Lei LIANG (b. 1972) Mother’s Songs (2020)

CHOU Wen-Chung (1923-2019) The Willows Are New (1957)

Kayhan KALHOR (b. 1963) Solo improvisation

Old Wine in New Bottles Next month marks the official centennial of the birth of Chou Wen-Chung, who left us only four years ago. Along with his remarkable but woefully underrecognized oeuvre, his legacy extends to his influence on several generations of Chinese composers and performers he mentored over a long, productive career. Many of them, like Chou Wen-Chung, settled in the U.S., where they have explored innovative ways of synthesizing various aspects of Chinese culture with currents in contemporary Western music.

Framing this morning’s focus on that legacy is music representing two generations of Iranian artists. We begin with Niloufar Nourbakhsh, a young composer and pianist born in Karaj and now based in the U.S. A co-founder of the Iranian Female Composers Association (see p. 48), she wrote Veiled in response to the Iranian protests in 2017. Nourbakhsh points to the anger she carries within as a result of “growing up in a country that actively veils women’s presence through compulsory hijab or banning solo female singers from pursuing a professional career.” The cello’s eloquence, pitched high in the register, mixes with an electronically processed track of a woman singing, transforming her anger “into a collective force that is both beautiful and resilient.” She describes Veiled as a “tribute to the Iranian women who made such transformations possible.”

Lei Liang (see p. 53), a featured composer at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival who is based at the University of California San Diego, was appointed artistic director of the Chou Wen-Chung Research Center at the Xinghai Conservatory in 2018. Mother’s Songs, which he wrote for Wu Man, gives voice to a tension that accompanies the experience of being “between worlds” — the power of musical memory sharpened by distance.

Lei Liang recalls the deep impression left on him by the Mongolian scholar Wulalji, his teacher since childhood. A friend of his musicologist parents, Wulalji taught Lei Liang traditional folk music against the backdrop of 1970s Beijing, when the music officially approved by the authorities centered around “happy propaganda songs.” Wulalji instead shared his traditional “long songs” from Mongolia, which deal with themes of solitude and homesickness — a sadness that acquired a deeper resonance after Lei Liang came to America. Both Mother’s Songs and the more recent Mongolian Suite for solo cello (which was premiered this past February) tap into this source.

When Lei Liang visited China in 2019, he again met up with Wulalji, who sang for him songs that he had learned from his mother. “These songs are of a traveler’s longing for home and a daughter’s desire

to be reunited with her mother,” Lei Liang explains. “At age 83, my teacher is the only one in Inner Mongolia who still remembers these ancient melodies, and he sang them with deep emotion. I, too, am away from home. My teacher’s singing evoked a strong sense of longing even as it offered profound solace.” The result is a moving meditation on memory and on music’s role in creating a sense of home.

Ge Gan-Ru studied at the conservatory of his native Shanghai following the Cultural Revolution. Even after the reopening of exchange with the West, Ge Gan-Ru’s avant-garde inclinations made him an outsider in China. His controversial landmark Lost Style for solo cello (1983) has staked a claim as “the first avantgarde work in China.” Ge Gan-Ru left his homeland to pursue doctoral studies at Columbia University in 1983 with Chou Wen-Chung.

He also captured the attention of avantgarde pianist Margaret Leng Tan. She commissioned him to compose a work simultaneously inspired by the songs of the qin (ancient Chinese zither) and the Western piano.

Ge Gan-Ru, who refrains from using actual Chinese instruments, responded with Gu Yue (“Ancient Music”). Each movement of this four-movement suite for prepared CONTINUED }}

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CHOU WEN-CHUNG

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OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES Chou Wen-Chung (1923-2019) was born to a cultured family devoted to a wenren (literati) sensibility and raised in post-imperial China in Shandong on the northeastern coast. He spent the vast majority of his long life in the U.S., where he settled in 1946 and befriended the pioneering French American composer Edgard Varèse early on.

Yet his appreciation of traditional Chinese philosophy and aesthetics — I Ching and calligraphy, for example — informed a syncretic vision that Chou Wen-Chung passed on to an international array of students who have established themselves as leading figures in the contemporarymusic scene (Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Bright Sheng, and many others). “Composer, Teacher, and Cultural Ambassador,” as the website honoring his legacy introduces Chou Wen-Chung, is as good a summation as any for this unsung hero in the advancement of cross-cultural, border-defying musical thought in our time.

piano conjures the sonority and spirit of a different traditional Chinese instrument.

We hear the first movement, devoted to the gong (the other movements imitate the qin, pipa, and drum, respectively).

Ge Gan-Ru also has the performer actively manipulate the prepared piano’s innards, evoking not only timbres but traditions, such as the “morning ringing of bells.”

Writing about Ge Gan-Ru’s music, the scholar Yiming Zhang notes that Gu Yue “has many similarities with ancient Chinese visual arts … particularly painting and calligraphy” through the balance of shape, emotion, and abstraction. Chou Wen-Chung similarly draws a connection to ancient Chinese calligraphy with The Willows Are New, comparing his process to how, in calligraphy, “the controlled flow of the ink — through the interaction of rhythm and density, the modulation of line and texture — creates a continuum of motion and tension in spatial equilibrium.”

Chou Wen-Chung evokes ancient music and poetry from Chinese tradition, taking as his source a composition for qin attributed to the Tang Dynasty musician, poet, painter, and politician Wang Wei (689-759). His title occurs as a line in Wang’s poem associated with this ancient music, which Chou Wen-Chung translates: In this town by the river, morning rain has cleared the light dust.

Green, green around the tavern, the willows are new.

Let us empty another cup of wine — For, once west of Yang Kuai There will be no more friends.

(Sprigs of willow, he notes, were “used in farewell ceremonies and regarded as a symbol of parting.”)

“Mutations of the original material are woven over the entire range of the piano and embroidered with sonorities that are

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NILOUFAR NOURBAKHSH the magnified reflexes of brushstroke-like movements,” Chou Wen-Chung writes.

Through his calligraphy-inspired musical treatment, he amplifies “the restrained emotion of the poem and the subtle nuances of the qin technique.”

Working with sources from ancient tradition to create something new, unrepeatable, belonging to the present moment: this is an art that Kayhan Kalhor has perfected over decades. The great tradition of Persian classical music, which flourished in the court, draws on a repertoire of melodic figures and songs that have been passed on orally over many generations, from teacher to student.

These were eventually gathered into a collection known as the Radif.

Kalhor describes how these melodies, long since memorized, are metamorphosed into unexpected larger constructions through the process of improvisation — a process that lies at the heart of all classical traditions, though it became separated from composition in the Western tradition with the development of written music and increasing specialization.

The kamancheh, the main bowed instrument in Persian music, traveled both east and west, Kalhor explains, and became responsible for many different bowed instruments in Europe. When playing a solo improvisation, Kalhor says that the focus is mostly on melody.

“Before we had a way to write music, this was the only way people had to memorize a melody and interpret it according to their own ideas and playing skills.”

The challenge for an improviser is “to expand the melody beyond recognition,” so that it becomes something completely different from what he began with, illuminated by nuances and angles — much like the transformative process of working with themes and variations.

Is Kalhor able to replicate an improvisation that he has found particularly beautiful?

“I should be able to start from the same place if I want to, but it will probably go elsewhere in terms of direction and development,” he responds. “It depends on the audience, yourself, what kind of day you are having. You’re human and have emotions, and those emotions are heavily reflected in what you produce.”

A winner of 2022 Beth Morrison Projects Next Generation competition, an awardee of National Sawdust’s Second International Hildegard Commission, and a 2019 recipient of Opera America’s Discovery Grant, Niloufar Nourbakhsh is a composer whose music has been performed at numerous festivals and venues including Carnegie Hall, Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center, and Direct Current Festival at the Kennedy Center.

A founding member and co-artistic director of Iranian Female Composers Association, Nourbakhsh is a strong advocate of music education and equal opportunities. She is currently co-artistic director of Peabody Conservatory Laptop Orchestra and teaches composition at Longy School of Music of Bard College.

Nourbakhsh holds a doctorate degree from Stony Brook University and regularly performs with her Ensemble Decipher.

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 70 minutes.

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Saturday, June 10, 2023 | 3:30pm (Repeat Performance) Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School (lower campus)

GHOST OPERA Wu Man pipa | Attacca Quartet: Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni violins Nathan Schram viola Andrew Yee cello | PeiJu Chien-Pott dancer/choreographer Jon Reimer director | Nicholas Houfek lighting designer TAN Dun

Ghost Opera Act I Bach, Monks, and Shakespeare Meet in Water Act II Earth Dance Act III Dialogue with “Little Cabbage” Act IV

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson with the special support from the Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics, Ventura County Community Foundation The concert appearance of Wu Man is made possible by the generous support of Ruth Eliel and Bill Cooney There is no intermission during the concert See program notes on page 55

GREENBERG CENTER, OJAI VALLEY SCHOOL (LOWER CAMPUS) 723 EL PASEO ROAD, OJAI

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Metal and Stone Act V Song of Paper

Congratulations to the Ojai Music Festival on another spectacular season of artistic excellence.

–Stephan Farber | Founder & CEO

Investment Management | Family Office Services www.soundpostcapital.com

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Saturday, June 10, 2023 | 8:00pm Libbey Bowl

OMAR’S JOURNEY 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

Music from Senegal and the Carolinas Music by Rhiannon GIDDENS and Michael ABELS Libretto by Rhiannon GIDDENS

This concert is made possible by the generous support of Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund The concert appearance of Limmie Pulliam is made possible by the generous support of Linda Joyce Hodge OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 6:00pm: Michael Abels There will be an intermission in tonight’s program

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Omar’s Journey World Premiere Commissioned by the Ojai Music Festival

Rhiannon GIDDENS (b. 1979) Michael ABELS (b. 1962) Omar’s Journey (2023)

Necessary Stories In 2019, Spoleto Festival USA asked Rhiannon Giddens whether she would consider writing an opera based on Omar Ibn Said (see sidebar p. 70). Giddens was shocked that she had not previously known of this remarkable figure. The fact that his story had been eclipsed by the standard historical narrative of enslavement in America made Giddens all the more determined to use the resources of her art to bring Omar Ibn Said to the attention of contemporary audiences.

To transform all this material into an opera, Giddens adopted an unconventional collaborative strategy that would remain true to her own identity as a singer: She reached out to Michael Abels as her composing partner, impressed by his score for the Academy Award–winning Jordan Peele film Get Out. According to Abels, he and Giddens share a clear sense “of what a good and effective opera sounds like” as well as a passion for folk music — an ideal match to undertake what was for both the formidable task of writing their first opera.

The result, Omar, was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music (see sidebar on p. 71). Originally to have premiered in 2020, Omar finally reached the stage, to rapturous reviews, at the opening of the 2022 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina — less than a mile from the dock

where some 40% of enslaved Africans brought into the U.S. passed through, including Omar in a pivotal scene in the opera. Omar has since been presented by Los Angeles Opera and Boston Lyric Opera and will return to California in November as part of San Francisco Opera’s season.

While the scope and implications of Omar’s story called for the large-scale, multidimensional treatment for which opera is so well-suited, Ojai Music Festival Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian shared Giddens’s conviction that this story needs to be as widely told as possible. He therefore commissioned Omar’s Journey as a concert piece to capture the arc of the full-length opera — without the demands of a full-scale stage production.

When she was deciding whether to accept the original opera commission, Giddens found herself deeply moved by what she discovered in her research and realized that she could not turn away from the challenge. Omar recovers multiple historical perspectives that have been unjustly overlooked: the perspective of enslaved persons coerced to immigrate to the “New World” as well as the perspective of Muslims in the African diaspora (about 30% of Africans captured to be enslaved in the U.S. are estimated to have been Muslim).

The libretto, also by Giddens, interweaves what she learned of Omar’s real-life story with fictional threads to give fuller context to his experience as an enslaved person during a certain period of American history. She invented the character of Julie, for example: an enslaved woman whom Omar reminds of the father she was separated from long ago. (Giddens sings this role for the first time in tonight’s performance.) In an interview she gave shortly before the Spoleto premiere, Giddens explained that she aimed to allow Omar’s own words to speak as much as possible — including the Qur’anic quotations that were so central to his identity: The themes of Arabic versus English and the sacred texts corresponding to the faiths of the enslaved and their enslavers are a defining thread in the original production design.

Giddens composed whole scenes by singing her way through them, accompanying herself with banjo, piano, or guitar. She then sent recordings of the work-in-progress to the Los Angeles– based Abels via WhatsApp. Giddens found her way into the story from her perspective as an expert in American roots music and the deep history of American vernaculars. She complemented this with research into the music Omar Ibn Said would have known from his West African CONTINUED }}

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OMAR IBN SAID

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NECESSARY STORIES A Muslim scholar from West Africa (in modern-day Senegal) born around 1770, Omar Ibn Said was forcibly taken to the U.S. at the age of 37 and enslaved for the rest of his Photograph circa 1850 long life, dying in Giddens’s native state of North Carolina at the height of the Civil War in 1864. The Life of Omar Ibn Said, which he wrote in 1831, is the only known autobiography written in Arabic by an enslaved person in the U.S.; all told, more than a dozen manuscripts were authored by Ibn Said, many of them related to Qur’anic topics.

(You can see a digitized version of Ibn Said’s handwritten autobiography and other related documents on the Library of Congress’s extensive website: search for “Omar Ibn Said Collection.”)

upbringing as well as the modal music that accompanied the Muslim African diaspora — idioms that come to the fore, for example, when Omar is conversing internally with the spirit of his mother.

Instrumental selections from Senegal and the folk music of the Carolinas provide a general context for the sources that influenced Giddens.

Abels went beyond merely transcribing and orchestrating this material. He describes serving as a “sounding board” for Giddens, allowing her to focus on her melody-centered process and then “bringing that into a world that is operatic.”

This involved enhancing the music with transitions and harmonic context, as well as ensuring that the musical narrative would be effectively paced as an unfolding drama — a skill that Abels has fine-tuned through his career in film music.

Abels emphasizes that he and Giddens both intend Omar “to be written in one artistic voice” that preserves the identities of each. By eschewing a clear-cut division of labor with compartmentalized tasks assigned to each party, their collaborative process might be said to embody another sense of “liquid borders.”

A new stage has been added to their collaboration with the creation of Omar’s Journey. According to Abels, the biggest challenge has not been scaling down the orchestration but rather selecting what needs to be retained in order to preserve a sense of the journey at the opera’s core.

It’s a journey in two senses, he adds: both

Omar’s physical journey — during his prime, from his life as a flourishing scholar to a foreign land where he was subjected to unimaginable dehumanization — and his inner emotional and spiritual journey.

The second of the opera’s two acts focuses on the spirituality that sustains Omar and gives him a sense of purpose, despite the attempts of the enslavers to suppress and replace it with their own worldview.

While the chorus has a significant presence in the opera, the concert version relies on five singers to tell the story; they sometimes join forces to form an intimate chorus. Replacing an orchestra hidden in the pit with an onstage ensemble contributes to the music making “in a way that you might not be as conscious of in an operatic format,” as Abels puts it, with the instrumentalists becoming “equally as important as the singers.” (This involves not so much a reduction as a return to the small ensemble he and Giddens used while workshopping the opera.)

Omar and Omar’s Journey convey the pain and trauma carried by the African people — by people “descended from these stories,” as Giddens puts it. But essential to her retelling is Omar’s triumph in overcoming these impossible circumstances and finding the strength to remain true to his identity. That triumph resounds in the music that has in turn nourished America’s cultural identity.

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 110 minutes.

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SYNOPSIS OF THE OPERA OMAR The opening scene is set in 1806 in the Futa Toro region of West Africa, where Omar Ibn Said and his family live peacefully until they are attacked by raiders. His mother, Fatima, a spiritual matriarch for the village, is killed and Omar is taken by enslavers. He endures the atrocities of the Middle Passage and arrives at the Charleston slave market, where he is auctioned after meeting Julie, an enslaved woman planning her escape. She tries to help Omar, who is unable to understand her English, and she safeguards his cap when the auctioneer throws it into the crowd — it reminds her of her long-lost father. Omar works in the fields of an abusive enslaver named Johnson but is eventually urged to escape by the spirit of his mother.

Omar has been captured as a runaway slave and is jailed in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He writes Qur’anic verses on the walls of his cell and is eventually bought by plantation owner Owen (real-life brother of the governor of North Carolina), who wants to convert Omar to Christianity to prove the superiority of his own faith. Omar begins laboring on Owen’s plantation and is welcomed by the other enslaved workers, including Julie, who returns his cap to him.

In Owen’s study, Omar pretends to write a verse from the Bible while actually writing “I want to go home.” He later reads his new Bible and reinterprets Psalm 23 from the point of view of an enslaved Muslim. Julie encourages Omar to write a book about what he has experienced. He reminds those who have been taken to America, where they are forming new communities, not to forget their faith. Omar is joined by the company to praise Allah’s omnipresence.

Omar’s Journey is a concert work adapted from the full-evening opera Omar with libretto by Rhiannon Giddens and music

by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels.

Omar was originally co-produced by Spoleto Festival USA and Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and co-commissioned by Los Angeles Opera, Spoleto Festival USA, Carolina Performing Arts, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Detroit Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera. The true story of Omar Ibn Said is based upon an English translation of the Arabic writings of Omar Ibn Said as published in From a Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said translated with an introduction by Ala Alryyes. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2011 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved. Omar’s Journey is presented with the kind cooperation of Subito Music Corp., publisher.

Omar Wins the 2023 Pulitzer Prize In May 2023, it was announced that Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels were awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music for Omar. The selection committee described Omar as “an innovative and compelling opera about enslaved people brought to North America from Muslim countries” and “a musical work that respectfully represents African as well as African American traditions, expanding the language of the operatic form while conveying the humanity of those condemned to bondage.”

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Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 8:00am Chaparral Auditorium

MORNING MEDITATION Seckou Keita kora

Centuries ago, when the djinns (the spirits of the African bush) gave the first-ever kora to the griot Jali Mady “Wuleng” (Jali Mady “The Red”), it had 22 strings. Then, when Jali Mady died, his fellow griots took one string away in his memory. But back in its birthplace in southern Senegal and Guinea Bissau, the 22-stringed kora survives, with the extra string giving the instrument special advantages in terms of tonal reach and groove. Each string on the kora has its own unique name in spoken Mandinka.

The kora is an instrument with three souls. The first soul is that of the tree and the fruit which makes up the neck and the calabash. The second soul is that of the animal — the skin of the antelope or cow that covers the calabash. And the third soul is the living soul — the person who plays it. It’s impossible for someone listening not to be touched.

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Mechas and Greg Grinnell The concert appearance of Seckou Keita is made possible by the generous support of Claire and David Oxtoby There is no intermission during the concert

CHAPARRAL AUDITORIUM 414 EAST OJAI AVENUE, OJAI

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Seckou learnt his art at the feet of his grandfather, Jali Kemo Cissokho, in the family compound back home in Casamance, Senegal. Here he was taught about discipline, hard work, faith, and self-respect. During this morning meditation, Seckou invites you to contemplate these values and the griot tradition of music, poetry, tradition and heritage being passed on, orally, to future traditions. What does the future look like for those whose learning comes from this tradition?

—SECKOU KEITA

B E SA N T H I L L S C H O O L O F H A P P Y VA L L E Y

Besant Hill School is an independent boarding and day school in Ojai offering a rigorous college-prep curriculum including: • Expansive Arts Offerings • Global Community • 4:1 Student-Teacher Ratio • Summer Programs

• Environmental Studies • English as a Second Language (ESL) • Discussion-Based Classes • Instructional Support

8585 ojai santa paula road

just 10 minutes from downtown, in beautiful upper ojai

805-646-4343

WWW.BESANTHILL.ORG

LEARN HOW TO THINK, NOT WHAT TO THINK 77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

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Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 10:00am Libbey Bowl

EARLY MUSIC Francesco Turrisi curator and keyboards Attacca Quartet: Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni violins Nathan Schram viola Andrew Yee cello Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Karen Ouzounian cello | Wu Man pipa Joshua Stauffer theorbo

On this program, you might hear Monteverdi on the Persian kamancheh, Luca Marenzio’s madrigals performed by a modern string quartet, Dowland sung as a jazz ballad, or a Baroque theorbo playing folk-inspired original music.

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.

—FRANCESCO TURRISI

This concert is made possible by the generous support of Ida and Glenn Mercer The concert appearance of Francesco Turrisi is made possible by the generous support of Michele Brustin OJAI CHATS at Libbey Park Gazebo, 11:30am: Francesco Turrisi There is no intermission during the concert

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Early, Not Old This summer’s Festival seeks to cross borders not only in the geographical sense but across time as well. The area generally known as “early music” has in fact turned out to have remarkably liquid borders. The antiquarian preoccupations that once underscored the alienness of early music are increasingly giving way to engagement by contemporary composers and performers who sense an affinity of values.

“Early music didn’t sound ‘old’ to me,” says Francesco Turrisi, recalling his discovery of parallels between early music and jazz in their attitude toward improvisation.

His dual grounding in folk and early music further deepened this sense of the ongoing relevance of music from centuries ago.

Turrisi points to the connections between Renaissance and early Baroque music, especially from Italy, and folk sources: “There was much less of a distinction between classical and folk music, especially in the dance rhythms, the melodic quality of that music, and a

certain type of improvisation. But things changed very dramatically after those times, and early music speaks to me in a different way,” he adds. This was roughly around the time that the concept of a “standard repertoire” started taking shape in Western music — a powerful tool for reinforcing musical borders.

Turrisi is interested in exploring the idea of early music from several angles on this program — during the “very magical time” of Sunday morning on the final day of the Festival, as Ojai Music Festival Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian puts it.

There will also be new music Turrisi has written, which is inspired by early music.

The use of period instruments became a signature of the early music revival in the last century. We will hear various mixes of old and modern instruments as well as instruments that are not part of the tradition of Western music.

Wu Man, for example, presents the oldest music on the program, sharing her research into the music scrolls from the caves in Dunhuang — an important

crossroads on the ancient Silk Road, on the edge of the Gobi Desert in China — which date back some 900 years. “This will give the audience a sense of what early Chinese music sounded like,” she says. “These are very simple melodies in the low register, not pentatonic and very different from the Chinese music we think of today.”

“We both have a very similar way of looking at these things,” says Rhiannon Giddens of her collaboration with Turrisi.

“Both of us want to tear down false notions that you can only do a certain kind of music in a concert.”

The versatility of weaving in early music from different eras and cultures is the point — and that includes sharing the musical material itself among instruments from different contexts, whether cello, pipa, or kamancheh. The path from ancient Persia to modern jazz is shorter than we imagined…

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 90 minutes.

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Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 1:00pm Libbey Park

FREE COMMUNITY EVENT Steven Schick percussion

Stones and Stars: Listening to (and beyond) the World

This concert is made possible by the generous support of Kathleen and James Drummy The concert appearance of Steven Schick is made possible by the generous support of an Anonymous donor

Lei LIANG

Trans

Conversation:

How does what we hear help us tell our stories?

John CAGE

4’33”

Conversation:

How does what we hear help us know where we are?

Frederic RZEWSKI

To the Earth

Conversation:

How does what we hear help us imagine our future?

Group Performance

Stones and Stars

Wendell’s History for Steve

Gustavo Aguilar (voice and playback)

We know that Ojai looks beautiful: the nearby mountains, the pretty streets of the town, the pink moment. But what does it sound like? Let’s discover that together through a series of musical works inspired by the environment, conversations designed to bring us closer to the sounds of this beautiful place, and ultimately a group composition/ performance, which will turn the audience into a large percussion ensemble. Join us for an event designed to open our ears and our hearts.

—STEVEN SCHICK

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Save the Date!

November 11 & 12 2023 Hosted by the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee with proceeds benefiting the Ojai Festival and its BRAVO music education and community program.

TOUR distinctive homes adorned with festive holiday inspirations SHOP at the Holiday Marketplace featuring more than 45 vendors Tickets on sale in Fall 2023.

Get more information at OjaiFestival.org

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Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 2:30pm Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School (lower campus)

BETWEEN WORLDS Mazz Swift violin | Mario Gotoh viola | Karen Ouzounian cello | Shawn Conley bass Ross Karre projection designer Carlos SIMON

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Cynthia Chapman and Neil Selman There is no intermission during the concert

GREENBERG CENTER, OJAI VALLEY SCHOOL (LOWER CAMPUS) 723 EL PASEO ROAD, OJAI

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Between Worlds

Carlos SIMON (b. 1986) Between Worlds (2019)

Deceptive Simplicity An increasingly prominent presence in the new music world, Carlos Simon is a versatile composer who writes solo and chamber pieces, orchestral works, and music theater works with equal fluency.

He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of a family who encouraged his love of music as a way to participate in church services at the African American Pentecostal church founded by his father, who comes from a line of preachers stretching back several generations.

Simon was deeply moved when he attended a landmark exhibition devoted to the self-taught artist Bill Traylor (see sidebar on p. 80), which was presented from September 2018 to April 2019 by the Smithsonian’s Museum of American Art. Titled Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor, this comprehensive retrospective — the fruit of seven years of intense curation by Leslie Umberger — marked the first major exhibition devoted to an artist who had been born into slavery.

Much of Simon’s work conveys his conviction that art can serve as a powerful platform to bring attention to suppressed and marginalized voices. Elegy: A Cry from the Grave for string quartet (2015), one of his most-performed pieces, uses music to reflect on “those who have been murdered wrongfully by an oppressive power; namely Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown.” Requiem for the Enslaved is a rap opera featuring spoken word and hip-hop artist Marco Pavé and appears on Simon’s debut album for the Decca label (released last summer); it was nominated for the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category in the 2023 Grammy Awards.

In 1939, at the age of 84, Traylor suddenly began to express himself in an outpouring of paintings and drawings. By the time of his death in 1949, he had produced a remarkable series of untitled works. Many were lost, but around 1,200 survived.

They range from drawings of single human or animal figures to more complex compositions. Silhouette shapes or abstractions are characteristic of Traylor’s vocabulary and are painted using a palette often limited to brown and black, with an occasional eruption of red or deep blue.

Now based in Washington, D.C., where he teaches at Georgetown University as a member of the performing arts faculty,

The deceptively simple style cultivated by the entirely self-taught Traylor “has about it both something very old, like prehistoric cave paintings, and something spanking new,” wrote the late Peter Schjeldahl in a review of the Smithsonian exhibition.

“Songlike rhythms, evoking the time’s jazz

and blues, and a feel for scale, in how the forms relate to the space that contains them, give majestic presence to even the smallest images.”

Recognition by the white-dominated art establishment was belated, despite the efforts of fellow artist Charles Shannon, who befriended Traylor and attempted to champion his work. The reception history of Traylor is a textbook case of how curation in the visual arts, just as in music, can also be used to reinforce reductive, tone-policing labels and boundaries — or to dismantle them. Once the word about Traylor began to spread in the 1980s, when his work appeared as part of a larger show at the Corcoran Gallery, it tended to get categorized as “primitive” or “folk art.”

But we are now more attuned to the multifaceted implications of what Traylor created. His art truly exists between worlds. As the critic Alana Shilling-Janoff puts it, his images portray “nothing less than the predicament of a man caught between past enslavement he cannot forget and present liberty he struggles to accept.” In addition to his achievement as an artist, Traylor is “an eloquent annalist of a nation’s history: its brutality.”

Simon recalls that, before attending the exhibition, he had not been aware of CONTINUED }}

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BILL TRAYLOR

CARLOS SIMON

Traylor’s long life spanned close to a century, from the last decade of legalized slavery in the United States through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the Second World War. Born on a cotton plantation in central Alabama in 1853, he lived his early childhood as an enslaved person and continued working on the land until his mid-70s. No longer physically able to continue farming, Traylor moved to Montgomery, the state capital. He subsisted through a series of jobs but eventually became homeless. Most of his many children headed north in the Great Migration, and he was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. (Only recently was a headstone placed in the cemetery in tribute.)

Carlos Simon is a multi-faceted and highly sought-after composer whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-Romanticism.

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

DECEPTIVE SIMPLICITY

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Currently Composer-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center, Simon has been commissioned by leading ensembles, orchestras, and opera companies, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Washington National Opera. Next February, the Oakland Symphony will premiere Here I Stand: Paul Robeson, Simon’s opera on the legendary singer, actor, and civil rights activist to a libretto by Dan Harder.

Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers.

He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College.

He is an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Music Sinfonia Fraternity and a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Society of Composers International, and Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society. He has served as a member of the music faculty at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. Simon was also a winner of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization to recognize extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians and was named a Sundance/Time Warner Composer Fellow for his work for film and moving image.

Traylor’s life or work. But the encounter caused him to feel an immediate sense of connection to Traylor. An eyewitness to the social and political turbulence of this crucial period in American history, Traylor fascinated Simon as a creative figure who moved between the worlds of slavery and freedom, wealth and poverty, rural and urban life, white and Black culture, the traditional and the modern.

Between Worlds originated as a series commissioned for the young artists of the Irving M. Klein International String Competition. Simon created a series of solo pieces — one each for violin, viola, cello, and double bass — that can be played separately or as a kind of suite. Each lasts about four minutes and is marked “sorrowful” at the beginning.

Simon moves between worlds stylistically to evoke the kind of music he imagines Traylor would have heard. He spans such vernacular idioms as the blues with phrasings reminiscent of Bach to cast new light on the “themes of mystical folklore, race, and religion [that] pervade Traylor’s work” — he doesn’t limit himself to interacting with a particular drawing or painting. “In many ways, the simplified forms in Traylor’s artwork tell of the complexity of his world, creativity, and inspiring bid for self-definition in a dehumanizing segregated culture,” explains Simon. “I imagine these solo pieces as a musical study, hopefully showing Traylor’s life between disparate worlds.”

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 50 minutes.

The Ojai Festival Women’s Committee (OFWC) is the largest donor to the internationally acclaimed Ojai Music Festival and its BRAVO Music Education and Community Program. Through their philanthropic and volunteer activities, the OFWC has raised more than one million dollars over the past 70 years!

An active 100+ member volunteer committee, the OFWC presents unique events throughout the year, including the annual Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace, Art & Music Trips, Concerts, Lectures, and fun Socials, all fostering lasting friendships and the continued gift of music to the community.

Join us!

For more info about the OFWC visit OjaiFestival.org/Support or call Anna Wagner at the festival office 805 646 2094.

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Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 4:00pm Libbey Park Gazebo

FREE COMMUNITY EVENT: BUILD A HOUSE Rhiannon Giddens vocals and banjo | Francesco Turrisi percussion

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Hope Tschopik Schneider and with special support by the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee There is no intermission during the concert Visit Bart’s Books table to purchase your own copy of Build a House

by Rhiannon Giddens

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Build a House (song, 2020; book, 2022)

A Song and Story for Today Build a House began as a song — and as a response to the troubled times we’re living through. In the summer of 2020, while on lockdown at her current home base in Ireland, Rhiannon Giddens observed the protests over racial injustice that erupted across the United States and needed to channel the anger and outrage — and sense of helplessness — that they unleashed for her.

“This song came knocking … and I had to open the door and let it in,” Giddens says.

She wrote the words first, matching them with a melody whose haunting directness makes it sound like a folk song that has been around for a long time. It perfectly suits the story her lyrics tell of the ongoing struggle of African Americans — from the moment they were enslaved and forcibly brought to the Americas.

To introduce the song, Giddens collaborated virtually with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whose mantle as artistic director of the Silkroad Ensemble she inherited soon after. To the accompaniment of Ma’s cello, Build a House was first streamed on Juneteenth of 2020.

“There are so many stories made invisible: too-often-violent histories hidden beneath

the surfaces of our cities, our institutions, our music. It’s our job to make them visible,” Ma tweeted to announce the song’s birth.

As it happened, Giddens chanced upon a Twitter comment suggesting that she make Build a House into a children’s book. She recalls that the suggestion reawakened a long-dormant desire to venture into this art form. The circumstances of pandemic lockdown suddenly provided an opportunity.

Giddens chose as her collaborator the Atlanta-based author and illustrator Monica Mikai, whose bright, personalitysaturated images have graced numerous children’s books, including a biography of Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams (Sarah Warren’s Stacey Abrams: Lift Every Voice).

Mikai’s vivid images match the uncompromising honesty of Giddens’s poetry. Using a ballad form whose repetitions make it readily adaptable to a children’s book, the song recounts experiences of oppression and violence faced by Black people that are an undeniable part of American history — as well as the determination to keep pushing forward for a better life.

The book shows a Black family surviving all of these tribulations, starting with the long centuries of enslavement. A scene set during the Reconstruction era, for example, shows a white man on a horse torching the house the family has finally been able to build for themselves.

The family finds a way to lift their spirits with music — the father playing fiddle, the mother and daughter banjos — but “then you came and took my song and claimed it for your own,” sings the narrator. Yet the family continues to rebuild and, in a particularly memorable image near the end of the book, to draw from the well that replenishes them. And they persist in playing their instruments.

“Monica Mikai’s illustrations are incredible and exciting to engage with on their own terms,” says Giddens. “I love reading Build a House to kids because they get it immediately. And it’s exactly these kinds of stories that we need to tell.”

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 45 minutes.

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Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 5:30pm Libbey Bowl

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 Michael ABELS

Isolation Variation Amy Schroeder violin

Duo Improvisation Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Seckou Keita kora INTERMISSION Nassim KHORASSANI

Lullaby Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Karen Ouzounian cello Francesco Turrisi piano

Selections to be announced from the stage The Company This concert is made possible with the generous support of Kathleen Kane and Jerry Eberhardt There will be an intermission during the concert

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Connection Variations Throughout this edition of the Ojai Music Festival, Rhiannon Giddens and her colleagues have been celebrating the extraordinary creative boost that happens when artists — and audiences — venture into the hybrid spaces between worlds.

Music is by its nature uncontainable and resists the boundaries and borders into which we are pressured to compartmentalize our experiences.

One of the side effects of the recent years of pandemic closure was to underscore how diminished we become when compelled to adapt to artificial constraints — and how essential it is to break free from whatever isolates us. The impossibility of live performance fueled a desire to reestablish connections through our technological Silk Road, the internet, and thus share musical discoveries with a global audience.

Michael Abels, whose collaboration with Giddens on the concert piece Omar’s Journey has been a centerpiece of the Festival, captures this phenomenon in the Isolation Variation he wrote in 2020 for violinist Hilary Hahn. Conceived as a solo encore piece, it “commemorates and validates the experience of being a musician in a time of constant change and uncertainty,” Hahn observes, “the hypnotic, repetitive, yet unpredictable nature of working indefinitely on something you love, a metamorphosis in progress.”

Defying racism, classism, political rivalries, and similarly divisive influences, music around the world has always thrived on exchange between cultures or between people across the hierarchies of a particular society.

Instruments cross borders, too. We have the actual Silk Road to thank for the diffusion of instruments across borders that helped shape Europe’s string culture, for example, which in turn became a hallmark of Western classical music.

“It may well have been along the Silk Road that some of the first ‘world music’ jam sessions took place,” says the ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin.

“Innovative musicians and luthiers adapted unfamiliar instruments to perform local music while simultaneously introducing non-native rhythmic patterns, scales, and performance techniques.”

Our closing musical celebration replicates that process by staging encounters among the diverse kinds of string instruments from the cultures represented throughout the Festival: whether it’s Kayhan Kalhor and Seckou Keita improvising as a kamancheh-kora duo or Rhiannon Giddens and Wu Man bringing the banjo and pipa into dialogue. The stories of each of these instruments, as Giddens has so eloquently shown in her work, embody complex histories of social and political as well as artistic interaction.

“Humans came out of Africa and spread all over the world and changed along the way. That’s what instruments do as well,” observes Giddens. “The massive migration of instruments is connected to the migration of people. The banjo and the pipa have a common ancestor, just like we do.” Her hope is that the 2023 Ojai Music Festival encourages us to ignore artificial boundaries and see that “we’re really not that far apart.”

The spontaneity of the program is also grounded in Giddens’s philosophy.

“Everybody brings something from what has been created over the course of the weekend, as we’ve been interacting through the concerts. These opportunities that we have to get to be together and play together are blessings. We need more collaboration in these worlds of music and more open-endedness, not less.”

—THOMAS MAY

This concert is approximately 90 minutes.

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Ensemble Profiles ATTACCA QUARTET

In 2021, the quartet announced their exclusive signing to Sony Classical, releasing two albums, Real Life and Of All Joys, that embody their redefinition of what a string quartet can be.

Passionate advocates of contemporary repertoire, the quartet are dedicated to presenting and recording new works, with their two releases Orange and Evergreen, in collaboration with Caroline Shaw, winning the 2020 and 2023 Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

The quartet continue to perform in the world’s top venues and festivals, with highlights including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Sala São Paolo, San Francisco Performances, Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville, Palau de la Musica, Concertgebow Brugges, De Doelen, Kings Place, and Amsterdam’s String Quartet Biennale. They last appeared at the 75th Ojai Music Festival in 2021 with Music Director John Adams.

Having originally met whilst studying at the Juilliard School in the early 2000s, Attacca Quartet have received numerous accolades, and engage in extensive educational and community outreach projects.

ATTACCA QUARTET AMY SCHROEDER violin DOMENIC SALERNI violin NATHAN SCHRAM viola ANDREW YEE cello

Photo by David Goddard

Two-time Grammy Award-winning Attacca Quartet are acclaimed as one of the most versatile and outstanding ensembles of the moment — a true quartet for modern times. Gliding through traditional classical repertoire through to electronic, video game music, and contemporary collaborations, they are one of the world’s most innovative and respected ensembles.

Amy Schroeder has been hailed by the Washington Post as “an impressive artist whose playing combines imagination and virtuosity.” She has soloed with orchestras including the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Amherst Symphony, the Clarence Symphony, the Hilton Head Symphony, and the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra. Schroeder has soloed with the Spanish National Orchestra with John Adams and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra with Marin Alsop. Schroeder serves as music faculty member at Vassar College. She also recently formed the Schroeder Umansky Duo with her husband, Felix Umansky, internationally celebrated cellist and member of the Harlem Quartet. In 2002 she was the recipient of the Henrietta and Albert J. Ziegle Jr. Scholarship, which provided the tuition for her studies at Juilliard. There she was a student of Sally Thomas and the Juilliard String Quartet. She currently plays on two different violins: a Fernando Gagliano made in 1771, on loan to her from the Five Partners Foundation; and a violin made by Nathan Slobodkin in 2012. Schroeder teaches violin and piano to students of all ages, and in her spare time

she enjoys composing, traveling with her husband, and scuba diving.

Domenic Salerni is a frequent guest of the Chiarina Chamber Players and is active as a chamber musician, clinician, composer, and arranger. As a member of the Chiarina Chamber Players, Salerni was a recipient of a 2020 Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant and performed a new work by Carlos Simon with Peabody Conservatory bass faculty Carl DuPont in April 2022. In 2021 his one-movement string quartet, Trilobites, after a short story

by Breece D’J Pancake, was premiered at the first inaugural Appalachian Chamber Music Festival in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Salerni looks forward to the premiere this season of a suite of protest songs from the first Civil Rights Era by the Palaver Strings and tenor Nicholas Phan. In 2020, as part of his response to the Covid-19 outbreak, he helped set up the Philadelphia Musicians Relief Fund as part of AFM Local 77’s efforts to provide for its community of musicians in times of need. In 2019, he performed his original film accompaniment to Giuseppe CONTINUED }}

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Ensemble Profiles de Liguoro’s Dante’s Inferno as part of a consortium between the film studies, French, and Italian departments and the Center for Creativity and the Arts at Emory University.

Salerni was the recipient of the Atlanta Symphony Talent Development Program’s Aspire Award in 2019. He holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Yale University School of Music.

Nathan Schram is a Grammy Award–winning composer. He has collaborated, in the studio and on stage, with many of the great artists of today including Björk, James Blake, Sting, David Crosby, Becca Stevens, David Byrne, Just Blaze, Itzhak Perlman, and others.

Schram is a PhD student in composition at Princeton University and an Honorary Ambassador to the city of Chuncheon, South Korea. He has released two solo records of his own compositions, Nearsided and Oak & the Ghost, on Better Company Records and New Amsterdam Records, respectively.

His arrangement of Radiohead’s 2 + 2 = 5 written for Becca Stevens and Attacca Quartet was also nominated at the 2023 Grammy Awards. Apart from performing, he is the founder and executive director of Musicambia. Founded in 2013, Musicambia develops music education programs and performances inside prisons and jails throughout the United States.

Andrew Yee (she/they), cellist and composer, was trained at The Juilliard School. The Attacca Quartet, which has released several albums to critical acclaim, included Yee’s arrangement of Haydn’s Seven Last Words, which thewholenote.com praised as “. . . easily the most satisfying string version of the work that I’ve heard.” She co-composed a score to Wu Tsang’s film adaptation of Moby Dick; or, The Whale with Caroline Shaw that premiered with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and then in New York at the Shed by the New York Philharmonic.

She is writing works for Leilehua Lanzilotti, the Thalea Quartet and the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra this season. Her solo project Halfie draws on her experience as a bi-racial and trans person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. The works commissioned, and on the concerts, will feature a wide range of composers all for solo cello. She has been touring a duo show with Caroline Shaw since 2021. In 2019 she won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for her pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing. She likes to draw apples, cook like an Italian grandma, and has developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City. Her son Otis is the love of her life. She plays on an 1884 Eugenio Degani cello on loan from the Five Partners Foundation.

RED FISH BLUE FISH, PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE The New York Times has called red fish blue fish a “dynamic percussion ensemble from the University of California.” Founded more than 25 years ago by Steven Schick, the San Diego–based ensemble performs, records, and premieres works from the last 85 years of western percussion’s rich history. The group works regularly with living composers from every continent. Recent projects include the world premiere of Roger Reynolds’s Sanctuary and the American premiere of James Dillon’s epic Nine Rivers cycle with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). In the summer of 2011, red fish blue fish collaborated with George Crumb, Dawn Upshaw, and Peter Sellars at the Ojai Music Festival to premiere the staged version of The Winds of Destiny. Eighth Blackbird invited red fish blue fish to join

them in performances of works by American icons John Cage and Steve Reich at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The New York Times called their “riveting” John Cage performance the “highlight” of the program. In 2012 red fish blue fish presented four concerts of percussion music alongside Percussion Group Cincinnati at the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington, DC, where they performed highlights from Cage’s collection of percussion works.

Recordings of the percussion chamber music of Iannis Xenakis and Roger Reynolds on Mode Records have been praised by critics around the world. Their recording of the early percussion works of Karlheinz Stockhausen received Germany’s award for the best recording of contemporary music in 2015. red fish blue fish has had impact on new music percussion both by virtue of their many performances and acclaimed recordings, and also through their commitment to research and pedagogy as a resident ensemble at UCSD. The group’s numerous alumni hold major teaching and artistic positions throughout the world.

RED FISH BLUE FISH, PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE MITCHELL CARLSTROM MICHAEL JONES KOSUKE MATSUDA CAMILO ZAMUDIO STEVEN SCHICK director

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Artist Profiles Gloria Cheng piano “An invaluable newmusic advocate and a preferred collaborator of composers like Pierre Boulez and EsaPekka Salonen” (New York Times), Grammyand Emmy-winning pianist Gloria Cheng has long been devoted to creative collaborations with composers of our time. She has been a concerto soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and Pierre Boulez, and on its acclaimed Green Umbrella series under Esa-Pekka Salonen and Oliver Knussen. She has been a recitalist at the Ojai Music Festival (where she began her association with Boulez in 1984), Chicago Humanities Festival, William Kapell Festival, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Mendocino, and Chautauqua Music Festivals, and annually on Los Angeles’s Piano Spheres series. She has premiered and been the dedicatee of countless works that include John Williams’s Prelude and Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Dichotomie, and John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction for two pianos. In duo-recitals with the composers, she premiered Thomas Adès’s two-piano Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face and Terry Riley’s Cheng Tiger Growl Roar. Winner of the Best Instrumental Solo Performance (without orchestra) Grammy for her 2008 recording Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky, and Lutosławski, she received a second nomination for her 2013 disc The Edge of Light: Messiaen/Saariaho. Her film project, MONTAGE: Great Film Composers and the Piano, featuring Bruce Broughton, Don Davis, Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, Randy Newman, and John Williams, aired multiple times on PBS SoCal and won the 2018 Los Angeles Area Emmy.

Garlands for Steven Stucky was her 2018 star-studded CD tribute to the late composer by 32 of his friends and former students. Her education includes a BA in economics from Stanford University, a Woolley Scholarship for study in Paris, and graduate degrees in performance from UCLA and the University of Southern California, where her teachers included Aube Tzerko and John Perry. She teaches graduate seminars and chamber music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

PeiJu Chien-Pott choreographer and dancer PeiJu Chien-Pott is an internationally acclaimed award-winning contemporary dance artist and choreographer from Taiwan, celebrated particularly for her work as a principal dancer for the Martha Graham Dance Company.

Described as “one of the greatest living modern dancers” and “the most dramatically daring and physically chameleon-esque Graham dancer of her generation,” ChienPott has interpreted the iconic lead roles of Martha Graham’s repertoire. She holds a BFA in Dance from Taipei National University of the Arts, where she has been honored with “Outstanding Alumni Award.” Chien-Pott has received many prestigious international recognitions, including a Bessie from the NY Dance and Performance Awards; Positano Premia La Danza Leonide Massine for Best Female Contemporary Dancer; an honoree of the Women’s History Month by Hudson County; named by Dance Magazine one of its Best Performers in 2014 and 2017; and received the Capri International Dance Award 2018. Chien-Pott was selected as a

young influencer in performing arts by The Generation T List of Asia Tatler in 2018 and 2019; and one of 10 Outstanding Young Persons of Taiwan by Junior Chamber International. She was named one of the Best Dancers of 2021 in Richard Move’s Herstory of the Universe by the New York Times.

Her recent choreography includes Rebirth in collaboration with sculptor Kang MuXiang for Taipei 101; Island, created during the pandemic on commission from the Iron Rose Festival of Taiwan; Unity, completed for the late choreographer Nai-Ni Chen and premiered at the New York Live Arts; Split, commissioned by Periapsis Music and Dance; and she was one of the collaborating choreographers for the evening-length work The Threads Project #1 Universal Dialogues of Buglisi Dance Theater, premiered at the Chelsea Factory. She has recently premiered her work Lion in the City, a hip-hop Chinese Lion Dance for Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s Lunar New Year program celebrating the Year of the Water Rabbit. Chien-Pott’s appearance in a short film Nala, directed by British filmmaker and choreographer Darshan Singh Bhuller, has received 10 international film awards.

Chien-Pott was awarded a 2023 choreography fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is a faculty member at The Ailey School and Martha Graham School.

Shawn Conley bass Hawaiian-born bassist and composer Shawn Conley grew up loving all types of music. This love developed into a career that straddles many genres. He has been playing with the Silkroad Ensemble for six years and is a CONTINUED }}

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Artist Profiles member of the Brooklyn-based chamber orchestra The Knights. Recent projects include Silkroad’s Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home, an upcoming release of the Brahms and Beethoven violin concertos with Gil Shaham and The Knights, the world premiere tour of Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time (commissioned by Silkroad), as well as an international tour of the new performance-art piece The Head & the Load created by South African visual artist William Kentridge.

Conley can also be heard on The Knights’s album Azul, featuring Silkroad founder Yo-Yo Ma. As a studio musician, he has performed on multiple soundtracks including True Grit, Moonrise Kingdom, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and the Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Conley studied at Rice University with Paul Ellison and in Paris, France, with Francois Rabbath.

Emi Ferguson flute Emi Ferguson is excited to be back at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. A 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ferguson can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including 2022 Ojai Festival Music Director AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), the Handel and Haydn Society, the New York New Music Ensemble, and the Manhattan Chamber Players. Her recordings celebrate her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present. Her debut album, Amour Cruel, an indie-pop song cycle inspired by the music of the 17thcentury French court, was released by Arezzo

Music in September 2017, spending four weeks on the classical, classical crossover, and world music Billboard charts. Her 2019 album Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes, a collaboration with continuo band Ruckus, debuted at #1 on the iTunes classical charts and #2 on the Billboard classical charts, and was called “blindingly impressive ... a fizzing, daring display of personality and imagination” by the New York Times.

A passionate chamber musician of works new and old, Ferguson has been a featured performer at the Marlboro, Lucerne, Ojai, Lake Champlain, Bach Virtuosi, and June in Buffalo festivals, often premiering new works by composers of our time. Ferguson has spoken and performed at several TEDx events and has been featured on media outlets including the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, WQXR, and Vox talking about how music relates to our world today. As part of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, she created the series “This Composer is SICK!” with Max Fine that explored the impact of syphilis on composers Franz Schubert, Bedrich Smetana, and Scott Joplin, in addition to guest hosting WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase. This summer, her book co-written with David and Nicholas Csicsko, Iconic Composers, will be released by Trope Publishing, introducing kids and adults to 50 incredible composers. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York City.

Mario Gotoh violin and viola Born in Japan, Mario Gotoh (五藤 舞央) is recognized as a Grammy Award winner, sought for distinguished roles as an innovative and creative violinist, violist, passionate educator,

and composer with a remarkably unique style of expression in all genres, performing worldwide. An avid interdisciplinary collaborator, Dr. Gotoh performs worldwide as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble (founded by Yo-Yo Ma), and is also a member of The Knights, a collective based in NYC. Dr. Gotoh has performed at the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, Tate Modern, and Ruhr Festival as an original featured actor in William Kentridge’s large-scale production, The Head & The Load, about Africans in the First World War. Dr. Gotoh frequently performs as soloist, concertmaster, and principal of numerous ensembles. She regularly premieres and records new works; and also records and performs with numerous renowned artists and on soundtracks, including: Succession, Moonlight, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, Roger Waters, Sting, Doja Cat, Ed Sheeran - performing live on The Grammys, SNL, MTV VMAs, Colbert, Letterman, The White House, Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, Elbphilharmonie, Musikverein Vienna, Newport Folk Festival, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Aspen, Banff, to name a few. She was the original violinist-violist in Hamilton: An American Musical on Broadway, Original Cast Recording, and Movie. Dr. Gotoh holds dual-degree Doctorates in both Violin and Viola Performance. She is currently on faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College, teaches workshops through Silkroad Connect and Kennedy Center’s Turnaround Arts, and has taught workshops and classes in Taiwan, China, Canada and colleges and institutions across the US. Dr. Gotoh is inspired by her community activism, language, literature, cooking, writing, visual arts, film, swimming, and exploring cultures everywhere.

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Artist Profiles Leonard Hayes piano Leonard Hayes is a doctoral student at the University of Southern California, where he studies under the tutelage of concert pianist Bernadene Blaha.

He serves as the graduate teaching assistant in the Keyboard Studies department.

Previously, Hayes served as head of piano studies and assistant director in the Music Conservatory at the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Texas.

Hayes is a winner of numerous piano competitions including the 2021 Los Angeles Korean American Music Competition and the 2015 National Piano Competition sponsored by the National Association of Negro Musicians. As a concerto soloist, he has performed with the Santa Monica Symphony, New England Repertory Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Korean American Orchestra.

As recitalist and chamber musician, Hayes has performed across the U.S. and abroad, including such notable venues as Sweelinkzaal at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion; Hammond Hall at the Winspear Opera House; Steinway Hall, Hatch Hall, and Kilbourn Hall (Eastman School of Music); Memorial Chapel (Lawrence University); Ayers Recital Hall (Texas Lutheran University); and Thrasher Opera House (Green Lake, WI). As a scholar, Hayes was awarded the prestigious 2015 Links Scholarship. The award, a cooperative effort between the Rochester (NY) Chapter of The Links, Inc., and the Eastman School of Music, recognizes and celebrates the extraordinary talent of an African American scholar musician.

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Hayes received a high school diploma from the Interlochen Arts Academy. He holds a bachelor of music degree from the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University with additional studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam; and a master of music degree from the Eastman School of Music. Leonard’s teachermentors have included Douglas Humpherys, Catherine Kautsky, and T.J. Lymenstull.

Nicholas Houfek lighting designer Nicholas Houfek is a NYC-based lighting designer working in music, dance, and theater.

Selected projects include Claire Chase’s Density Project (The Kitchen), International Contemporary Ensemble; Oyá by Marcos Balter (NY Philharmonic, soloist for light); Natalie Merchant; Maya Beiser; Ojai Music Festival; Silkroad Ensemble; Tyshawn Sorey’s Perle Noire directed by Peter Sellars (Ojai Music Festival, Oberon-ART); Marc Neikrug’s A Song by Mahler; Anohni’s She Who Saw Beautiful Things at The Kitchen; Suzanne Farrin’s La Dolce Morte at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, directed by Doug Fitch; George Lewis’s Soundlines featuring Steven Schick and directed by Jim Findlay (Skirball); Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s In The Light of Air; Ash Fure’s The Force of Things (Mostly Mozart); The 39 Steps (Olney Theatre Center). In addition to traditional lighting for live performance, Houfek has been developing a light-organ software interface called the ColorSynth that acts as a link between performer and lighting. Houfek has also designed for the Martha Graham Dance Company, Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance, and Ian Spencer Bell Dance; is an ensemble member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, a member USA829, and a graduate of Boston University.

Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh Three-time Grammy nominee Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh, who through his many musical collaborations has been instrumental in popularizing Persian music in the West and is a creative force in today’s music scene. His performances of traditional Persian music and multiple collaborations have attracted audiences around the globe. He has studied the music of Iran’s many regions, in particular those of Khorason and Kordestan, and has toured the world as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lyon. He is co-founder of the renowned ensembles Dastan, Ghazal: Persian & Indian Improvisations and Masters of Persian Music. Kayhan Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s most renowned vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri and has also performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists.

He has composed music for television and film and was most recently featured on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth in a score that he collaborated on with Osvaldo Golijov. In 2004, he was invited by American composer John Adams to give a solo recital at Carnegie Hall as part of his Perspectives Series and in the same year he appeared on a double bill at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, sharing the program with the Festival Orchestra performing the Mozart Requiem. Kalhor was a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and his compositions appear on several of the ensemble’s albums.

Artist Profiles Ross Karre percussion, projection designer Ross Karre is a percussionist, filmmaker, and producer based in Oberlin, OH, and New York City. He is the associate professor of percussion at Oberlin Conservatory. After completing his doctorate in music at UCSD with Steven Schick, Karre formalized his visual studies with a Master of Fine Arts degree.

He is a percussionist for the International Contemporary Ensemble, where he was artistic director from 2016 to 2022. He has performed regularly with red fish blue fish, Third Coast Percussion (Chicago), and Yarn/ Wire (NYC). He has performed at major festivals all over the world, including the Mostly Mozart Festival (NYC), the Holland Festival (Netherlands), Ojai Music Festival (CA), LA Phil Noon to Midnight, Lucerne Festival, Taipei International Percussion Festival, Big Ears (TN), MONA FOMA (Tasmania), Diskotek (Greenland), and Music Today Biennial (Brazil). Karre’s solo album 10.67 Cycles, featuring the music of Ash Fure and Pauline Oliveros, is available on Bandcamp.

His video design work has been presented all over the world in prestigious venues such as the Kulturkirche Liebfrauen Duisburg, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, BBC Scotland, Western Front, MCA Chicago, the Park Avenue Armory, the Kennedy Center, The Kitchen, Roulette Intermedium, Miller Theatre

at Columbia University, and the National Gallery of Art. Karre’s archival documentary and documentation work preserves unique moments in the creative processes of Claire Chase, Pauline Oliveros, Steven Schick, Matthias Kaul, Fritz Hauser, and creative collaborations of Third Coast Percussion, Yarn/Wire, ICE, Mount Tremper Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the Oberlin Percussion Group.

Seckou Keita kora Since arriving in the U.K. from Senegal in 1999, Seckou Keita has been on an epic creative journey that has seen him broaden the idiomatic scope of his instrument as well as spread his wings, literally and figuratively.

Nicknamed “the Hendrix of the Kora,” he has been celebrated for his ingenious tunings and virtuosity and praised as “one of the finest exponents of the kora.” Performing all over the globe as a solo artist and with his groundbreaking quintet, he has captivated audiences at WOMAD, Hay, Glastonbury, Tokyo Jazz, Chicago World Music Festival, Sydney International, Montreal Jazz Festivals, and other places.

Acclaimed collaborations with numerous jazz, pop, Latin, folk, and classical artists, notably include Damon Albarn & the Africa

Express; Welsh harpist Catrin Finch; Cuban pianist Omar Sosa; AKA trio with Italian guitarist Antonio Forcione and Brazilian percussionist Adriano Adewale; Paul Weller and the Folk Collective; The Lost Words: Spell Songs (2019) joined by the words of Robert Macfarlane and artwork of Jackie Morris. Since 2007, he has had several opportunities to perform with classical ensembles including Orchestre National de Bretagne, which has spurred him towards his dream of leading an orchestral work specifically for the kora.

Seckou Keita has released 11 albums as a leader and co-leader. Through this work, he has earned numerous accolades including three Songlines Music Awards, and several BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, including 2019 Musician of the Year. “I don’t know if I’m a folk musician, a jazz, or a world one,” he said at the time. “Forget about categories. My music is just music for the soul.”

Seckou Keita released African Rhapsodies (Claves Records), a work for kora and orchestra arranged by Italian composer and bass player Davide Mantovani and recorded with BBC Concert Orchestra. Directed by Royal Northern College of Music’s Head of Conducting Mark Heron, Keita also invited Mantovani on double bass and his brother, Gambian percussionist (and kora player) Suntou Susso; pride of place was given to the outstanding South African cellist and vocalist Abel Selaocoe.

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Artist Profiles Cheryse McLeod Lewis mezzo-soprano Greensboro, North Carolina, native mezzo-soprano Cheryse McLeod Lewis enjoys a diverse career in opera, musical theater, concert, commercial, print, and voiceover.

Lewis made her Spoleto Festival USA debut as The Mother (Fatima) in the world premiere production of Omar in 2022. She also recently reprised her world premiere role at Carolina Performing Arts in February 2023.

Other recent role highlights include Bess Understudy/Ensemble Swing in the first National Broadway Tour of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess; Girlfriend 3/Congregant 3 in Blue (Seattle Opera); Carmen in Carmen (Asheville Lyric Opera, Capital Opera Raleigh); Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia (Asheville Lyric Opera, Mansfield Symphony, Central Georgia Opera Guild); Hansel in Hansel and Gretel (Connecticut Opera, Greensboro Opera); The Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors (Opera Carolina, Connecticut Opera); Cinderella’s Stepmother in Into the Woods (Village Theatre); and Annie in Porgy and Bess (Seattle Opera).

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Lewis has been a concert soloist with Orchestra Seattle, Kirkland Choral Society, Eugene Concert Choir, Eastern Music Festival, Greensboro Symphony, Master Chorus Eastside and Greensboro Oratorio Society.

Recent commercial, print, and voiceover credits include national ads for Amazon, Microsoft, Costco, T-Mobile, and Zillow. In addition to performing, she runs her own company, Premier Vocal Entertainment, that provides top-tier, professional vocal entertainment for year-round events in the greater Seattle area, where she is based. Follow @CheryseMezzo and @ PremierVocalEntertainment to learn more.

Karen Ouzounian cello Described as “radiant” and “expressive” (New York Times) and “nothing less than gorgeous” (Memphis Commercial Appeal), cellist Karen Ouzounian leads a multifaceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, collaborator, and composer. Winner of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award, she is drawn to unusual collaborations and the development of adventurous new works, and is soughtafter for her open-hearted, passionate, and vibrantly detailed approach to music-making.

Recent projects include the creation of an experimental theater work with director Joanna Settle; the world premiere of Lembit

Beecher’s cello concerto Tell Me Again with the Orlando Philharmonic; the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s Shorthand for solo cello and strings with The Knights, which she subsequently toured as soloist with The Knights throughout Europe and the U.S. and released on Avie Records; the release of Kayhan Kalhor’s Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur for solo cello, kamancheh, and tabla; the development, touring, and recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time; and the digital world premiere of Beecher’s A Year to the Day, filmed for The Violin Channel with Augustin Hadelich and Nicholas Phan. She is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated Aizuri Quartet, and appears regularly as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble and The Knights. Her eveninglength video work In Motion, an exploration of heritage, family history, and migration through interviews, her own compositions, and collaborations with visual artists Kevork Mourad and Nomi Sasaki and composerpercussionist Haruka Fujii, was presented

by BroadBand in 2021.

Artist Profiles Andy Papas bass-baritone Praised for his “vocal power and finesse” and “irresistible hijinks,” baritone Andy Papas is sought after for his impeccable musicianship and mastery of comic repertoire. In the 2022-2023 season, Papas is pleased to make his debut with Ojai Music Festival as Owen/Johnson in Omar’s Journey, roles which he recently covered in the Boston Lyric Opera production of Omar.

This season, he reprises the title role in Don Pasquale with Opera Saratoga and Union Avenue Opera. Last season, he returned to Anchorage Opera in one of his signature roles, Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance, which he has also performed with Opera Naples. He also rejoined Opera Company of Middlebury as John Styx in Orphée aux Enfers, brought his celebrated Doctor Bartolo (Il barbiere di Siviglia) to Pacific Northwest Opera, and reprised his acclaimed Don Magnifico (La Cenerentola) at Fargo-Moorhead Opera. Papas has sung Bartolo with Union Avenue Opera, Opera Theater of Connecticut, Anchorage Opera, Painted Sky Opera, and covered the role at Boston Lyric Opera. His committed, musically sophisticated performances have consistently earned him praise for “creating a character both sinister and silly,” and for his “rich voiced portrayals... of considerable aplomb.”

Other noteworthy recent engagements for Papas include the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos with Vashon Opera, Benoit in La bohème with The Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, Baron Zeta in The Merry Widow with Opera Saratoga, Pandolfe in Cendrillon with Opera Company of Middlebury; and the title role in Falstaff and Tonio in Pagliacci with Raylynmor Opera.

Papas can be heard on Bridge Records as Bugs/Gent, which he also performed with Opera Saratoga, on New World Records as part of White Snake Projects recording of The Ouroboros Trilogy: Naga, and on Albany Records as Stephano in the world premiere of composer Joseph Summer’s The Tempest.

Michael Preacely bass-baritone Michael Preacely, an American baritone based in Lexington, Kentucky, has proven himself a rising star on the operatic stage.

Over the course of his burgeoning career, he has worked with numerous major and regional opera houses and orchestras in the United States and abroad and has consistently garnered critical acclaim. Preacely’s international career has spanned the globe, having featured performances in Europe, Asia, Russia, and Canada. Domestically, he has been featured with the Cincinnati Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Opera Memphis, Kentucky Opera, and Cleveland Opera, rank among the multitude of distinguished companies with whom he has performed. He has appeared with many of the nation’s leading orchestras — including the Cincinnati Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Hilton Head Symphony, Asheville Symphony, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Pops, Cincinnati Pops, American Spiritual Ensemble, and most recently the American Pops Orchestra.

In addition to his noteworthy stage credits and history of critical acclaim, Preacely has also received a great many accolades, including his reception of awards in the Fritz and Jensen Vocal Competition and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Preacely is on faculty at the University of Kentucky as a lecturer in voice.

Upcoming engagements include his debut singing the title role of oratorio Elijah with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra.

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Artist Profiles Limmie Pulliam tenor Rising tenor Limmie Pulliam thrills audiences with his captivating stage presence and his “stentorian, yet beautiful,” sound.

Pulliam was praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for his “fullthroated vocal power, and intimate lyricism” in his debut at Livermore Valley Opera in Verdi’s Otello.

On December 17, 2022, Pulliam made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Radamès in Verdi’s Aida, which also served as his role debut. He recently reprised the role of Radamès with Tulsa Opera for their 75thanniversary gala concert. Elsewhere during the season, he returns to The Cleveland Orchestra for his first performances as Dick Johnson in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. In concert, he debuts with the San Diego Symphony singing Verdi’s Requiem and makes his Carnegie Hall debut performing The Ordering of Moses in collaboration with his alma mater, The Oberlin Conservatory. He also joins pianist Mark Markham for a series of recitals entitled “Make Them Hear You: A Spiritual Journey” and will also be featured on “operatic greatest hits” concerts with the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra and Delta Symphony. ​

The 2021–22 season was highlighted by his highly anticipated Los Angeles Opera debut as Manrico in Verdi’s Il Trovatore, where he was lauded by the Los Angeles Times for his “healthy, focused, ringing tenor.” He followed that with a successful role debut as Turiddu in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with Vashon Opera. Upcoming performances include his company debut with Livermore Valley Opera in the title role of Verdi’s Otello, his company debut in Fort Worth Opera’s A Night of Black Excellence concert, and his rescheduled appearance with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra as the tenor soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He is set to take the stage again as Verdi’s Otello in his highly anticipated debut with The Cleveland Orchestra.

Future engagements include a mainstage debut as Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca with Madison Opera, and international debuts with the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, Germany, in Verdi’s Requiem, and The Vienna Volksoper in Vienna, Austria, in John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary.

Jon Reimer director Jon Reimer is a freelance theatre artist and educator.

He holds a doctorate from the Joint PhD program in Theatre and Drama at the University of California San Diego and UC Irvine, and an MFA in Directing from UC San Diego.

Born, raised, and educated in eastern Pennsylvania, Reimer also earned a BA in Theatre Arts (Directing and Design) with a minor in Religion (Asian Studies) from

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Muhlenberg College. He is now based in Tokyo, Japan, where he lives with his husband and works as a drama teacher at the International School of the Sacred Heart.

Reimer’s doctoral dissertation, “Proximal and Reminiscent Nostalgias: Queer Potentiality in Postwar Japan and the Post-Method American Theatre,” explores how an expanded understanding of nostalgia on postwar Japan can influence acting pedagogy and play analysis. Its chapters center around concepts of nostalgia, traditional and modern Japanese performance (particularly that of Yukio Mishima), active-listening-based acting techniques, and cross-cultural theatre. His current research is focused on inter- and intra-cultural Japanese performance and their relevance amongst international perspectives of performance.

Reimer has served as a Visiting Professor in Theatre for the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego, an Adjunct Lecturer in the Japanese Program of the Department of Linguistics and Asian/ Middle Eastern Languages at San Diego State University where he taught Japanese Popular Culture, and a Guest Lecturer in Theatre at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he taught Japanese Theatre, Pan-Asian Theatre, Dramaturgy/Play Analysis, and Theatre & Society.

Accomplishments he is most proud of in his life so far: completing his dissertation during a global pandemic, converting to Judaism at the age of 16, moving to and living in Japan multiple times, marrying his wonderful husband Andy, and traveling the globe to better understand others’ cultures and customs.

Artist Profiles Justin Robinson fiddle Justin Robinson is a Grammy-winning musician and vocalist, cultural preservationist, and historic foodways expert. Robinson has used his wide range of interests and talents to preserve North Carolina’s African American history and culture, connecting people to the past and to the world around them.

Robinson grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina. Influenced by the musical tastes of his grandparents, he grew to love a diversity of musical styles. He played with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, thereby working to preserve traditional forms of music, to introduce new generations to musical legends like Joe Thompson, and to remind audiences that the fiddle was, historically, an African American instrument. He wrote the song Kissin’ and Cussin’ for the group’s Grammy-winning album, Genuine Negro Jig, and continued to write music after leaving the group in 2011, releasing the album Bones for Tinder as Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes in 2012.

In addition to preserving African American musical traditions, Robinson is known for his work as a culinary historian. He explores the ways that foods of the African diaspora shaped and influenced Southern foodways, and reveals how foods like rice, blackeyed peas, and okra can be traced directly to the African continent. Robinson is also committed to helping African Americans rekindle their ties to the land. He is a founding member of the Earthseed Land Cooperative, a collective in northern Durham “made up of farmers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and teachers who are currently engaged in creating alternative models for sustainability, equity, and cooperation within communities of color.”

Justin Robinson holds a BA in Linguistics from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MS in Forestry and Environmental Science from NC State University. He is a member of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina Board of Directors.

Joshua Rubin clarinet Joshua Rubin is a clarinetist and former artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. As a clarinetist, he was praised by the New York Times as “incapable of playing an inexpressive note.” His interest in electronic music has led him to work to make these technologies easier to use for both composers and performers, and to build platforms for collective management of ensembles.

He has collaborated with the foremost composers and performers of our time, and this season is featured in performances on modern and on historical clarinets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Houston, Geneva, Bergen, and Berlin. He is on the faculty of the New School, Ensemble Evolution, and soundSCAPE Festival in Switzerland, teaching clarinet and electronic music. He maintains an artistic presence in New York and Los Angeles.

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Artist Profiles Steven Schick conductor and percussion 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, “one of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion but of any instrument,” he has championed contemporary percussion music for nearly 50 years, and in 2014 was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.

Steven Schick is music director emeritus of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, serving as its music director from 2006–22, and the artistic director of the Breckenridge Music Festival. He has guest conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Ensemble Modern, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Asko/ Schönberg Ensemble. He was artistic director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (2010–18) and directed programs at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity from 2009–19, the last three as co-artistic director, with Claire Chase, of the Summer Classical Music program. He was the music director of the 2015 Ojai Music Festival.

In 2020, Schick won the Ditson Conductor’s Award, given by Columbia University for commitment to the performance of American music. Schick’s publications include a book,

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The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams; and numerous recordings including the 2010 Percussion Works of Iannis Xenakis and its companion The Complete Early Percussion Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen in 2014 (Mode). The latter received Germany’s award for the best new music release of 2015.

Steven Schick is distinguished professor of music and the inaugural holder of the Reed Family Presidential Chair at the University of California San Diego.

Niloufar Shiri kamancheh Niloufar Shiri is a kamancheh player, composer, and improviser from Tehran, Iran. Her music weaves Iranian musical structure from the Radif with timbres, textures, noise, techniques, and perspectives of contemporary music. She focuses particularly on the investigation of timbral and textural components, as well as the sonic capabilities of the kamancheh, a bowed string instrument.

Her distinctive language and approach explore the radical self-transformation that comes with displacement and the striving to reconnect to her sense of self as a woman.

She is a graduate of Tehran Music Conservatory, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine.

She is artist in residence at Pomona College at Claremont.

Joshua Stauffer theorbo Joshua Stauffer is a restless creative who performs music from over four centuries on a variety of plucked instruments. He began his career as an electric guitarist performing jazz and improvised music before transitioning to the classical guitar via contemporary works and chamber music. His diverse musical interests converged when he encountered the theorbo, a large lute that performs primarily basso continuo, or improvised accompaniment, in chamber and orchestral works from the 17th and early 18th centuries.

A keen interest in musical collaboration has taken Stauffer across the U.S. and around the globe, including concerts in Thailand, New Zealand, England, France, Switzerland, and Canada. He is a founding member and the executive director of Time Canvas, an ensemble dedicated to performing early music and new compositions on period instruments. Recent orchestral appearances include Portland Baroque Orchestra, Atlanta Baroque, and Ruckus, and performances as a guest artist at the Juilliard School, The Orchestra Now at Bard College, and the Festival de Música de Santa Catarina, Brazil.

He received his Master of Music in historical plucked instruments at The Juilliard School in New York City. Previous studies include a Master of Music in classical guitar in the studio of Jason Vieaux at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a Bachelor of Music in jazz guitar at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Artist Profiles Mazz Swift violin Mazz Swift is a violinist, singer, composer, and conductor, weaving improvisation, classic African American musics, electronica, and mindfulness into their work. They have composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Blaffer Foundation.

Aside from enjoying a robust career as a performer, Swift is an educator. They have performed and taught free-improvisation workshops on six continents, most notably having traveled to Suriname, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Albania, and Siberia as “cultural diplomat” for the U.S. Department of State.

Mazz Swift is also a performing member and teaching artist with the acclaimed Silkroad Ensemble. As part of that group, they spearheaded and developed Project MUSIC (Music, Uniting Strangers Into Community), through which they seek to develop abolitionist-minded and antiracist programming alongside incarcerated people, designing our own liberation through presence and creativity.

Swift is a 2021 United States Artist, and 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, continually creating orchestral compositions that involve “Conduction” (conducted improvisation — a system for group improvisation pioneered and trademarked by the late, great Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris), small ensemble works, and solo works that are centered around protest and freedom songs, spirituals, and the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa: looking back to learn how to move forward.

Francesco Turrisi multi-instrumentalist Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi has been described as a “musical alchemist” and a “musical polyglot” by the press.

He left his native Italy to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He moved to Ireland in 2004, where he’s currently based and where he is active as a freelance musician. He is equally at home playing with jazz veterans Dave Liebman and Bill Frisell as he is with Irish traditional sean-nós singer Roisin El Safty and with tarantella specialist Lucilla Galeazzi. Turrisi has toured with Bobby McFerrin, played baroque operas with ensemble L’Arpeggiata, toured with the Silkroad Ensemble, interpreted the music of Steve Reich with Bang on a Can All Stars, accompanied flamenco star Pepe El Habichuela and Greek singer Savina Yannatou.

His latest piano solo album Northern Migrations was described as “delicate, wistful, and wholly engrossing” by the Irish Times.

Since 2018 he has been collaborating with American Grammy-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 There Is No Other. The album single “I’m On My Way” was nominated for a 2020 Grammy. Their 2021 second duo album They’re Calling Me Home was nominated for two Grammy awards and won as best folk album at the 2022 Grammy Awards.

His long list of collaborators includes Bobby McFerrin, Dave Liebman, Gianluigi Trovesi, Bill Frisell, Rhiannon Giddens, the Silkoad Ensemble, Nils Landgren, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Gavin Bryars, Gabriele Mirabassi, Rolando Villazon, Lisa Hannigan, Savina Yannatou, Maria Pia de Vito, Theodosii Spassov, The King’s Singers, Veronique Gens, Philippe Jaroussky, Pepe el Habichuela, and Lucilla Galeazzi.

He has released five critically acclaimed albums as a leader and two as co-leader (Tarab, a cross boundary innovative ensemble that blends Irish and Mediterranean traditional music, and Zahr, a project that looks at connections between southern Italian traditional music and Arabic music).

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Artist Profiles Michi Wiancko violin Michi Wiancko is a versatile and highly imaginative composer, violinist, and collaborator, whose multifaceted creative projects and organizational work prioritize artistic discovery, as well as community resilience and social change.

Recent chamber music commissions include works for Boston Chamber Music Society, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Schubert Club, Accordo, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Anne Akiko Meyers, Ecstatic Music Festival, Aizuri Quartet, Parker Quartet, Friction Quartet, and the Jupiter Quartet, to name a few. She has composed three operas: Murasaki’s Moon (2019), commissioned by Met Live Arts, Onsite opera, and American Lyric Theater; Arkana Aquarium (2021), commissioned by Experiments in Opera; and The Stream (2022) commissioned by Baldwin Wallace and the Cleveland Lyric Theater. Wiancko has also composed music for short and feature-length films, commercials, and for her own band, Kono Michi.

A passionate collaborator, she has been fortunate to work and tour with renowned artists from across a vast musical spectrum: Gabriela Lena Frank, Missy Mazzoli, PaviElle French, Vijay Iyer, Steve Reich, Emily Wells, Laurie Anderson, William Brittelle, Kaoru Watanabe, Qasim Naqvi, Mark Dancigers, Satoshi Takeishi, Mazz Swift, Sandeep Das, Jessie Montgomery, Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Matt Berninger, Dolio the Sleuth, and Rench. A member of Silkroad Ensemble and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, she

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has also performed with The Knights, A Far Cry, Mark Morris Dance Group, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, and International Contemporary Ensemble.

Described by Gramophone Magazine as an “alluring soloist with heightened expressive and violinistic gifts,” Wiancko made her violin solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed her recital debut in Weill Hall, and released a solo album of new works on New Amsterdam called Planetary Candidate, as well as an album of the complete violin solo works of Émile Sauret on Naxos.

A native of California, she holds degrees from CIM and Juilliard, where she studied with Donald Weilerstein and the late Robert Mann, respectively. In addition to her composition and performing career, Michi Wiancko is director and curator of Antenna Cloud Farm, a music festival, arts retreat, and community organization based in western Massachusetts.

Wu Man pipa Wu Man belongs to a rare group of musicians who have redefined the role of their instruments, in her case, the pipa — a pear-shaped, fourstringed Chinese lute with a rich history spanning centuries. She is celebrated as one of the most prominent instrumentalists of traditional Chinese music, as well as a composer and educator. She has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa and has performed in recital and with major orchestras around the world. She is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such

as the Kronos and Shanghai Quartets and The Knights and is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble. She has appeared on more than 40 recordings, including the Silkroad Ensemble’s Grammy-winning recording Sing Me Home, featuring her composition “Green (Vincent’s Tune).” She is also a featured artist in the 2015 Emmy Award–winning documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. In the 2023–24 season, Wu Man premieres a new Pipa Concerto by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Du Yun with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and later with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She returns to Carnegie Hall for performances with the Kronos Quartet and The Knights.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. At age 13, she was recognized as a child prodigy and a national role model for young pipa players. Wu is a recipient of the 2023 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), one of the United States’ most prestigious honors in folk and traditional arts. In 2023 she was additionally honored with the Asia Society’s Asia Arts Game Changers Award, an annual award presented in New York City honoring artists and arts professionals for their significant contributions to contemporary art. She is a visiting professor at her alma mater, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; and a distinguished professor at the Zhejiang and the Xi’an Conservatories. In 2021 she received an honorary doctorate of music from the New England Conservatory of Music. She has also served as artistic director of the Xi’an Silk Road Music Festival at the Xi’an Conservatory.

ARA GUZELIMIAN Artistic and Executive Director

Ara Guzelimian is Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, beginning in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks at the Festival and as Artistic Director 1992–97. Guzelimian stepped down as provost and dean of The Juilliard School in New York City in June 2020, having served in that position since 2007. At Juilliard, he worked closely with the president in overseeing the faculty, curriculum, and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions: dance, drama, and music. He continues at Juilliard as special advisor to the office of the president.

Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was senior director and artistic advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. Guzelimian currently serves as artistic consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, the artistic committee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in London, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony foundations.

He is also a member of the Music Visiting Committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

THOMAS MAY Program Book Annotator

Thomas May is a freelance writer, critic, educator, and translator whose work appears in an array of international publications, including the New York Times, Gramophone, and the program books of Pierre-Boulez Saal in Berlin. The English-language editor for Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, he also writes for such institutions as the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Davos Festival, Metropolitan Opera, and The Juilliard School.

He has translated collections of essays on Toshio Hosokawa, Olga Neuwirth, Thomas Pintscher, and Rebecca Saunders for the Roche Commissions series as well as Protest: The Aesthetics of Resistance, published by the Zurich University of the Arts. His books include Decoding Wagner and The John Adams Reader: Writings on an American Composer (both published by Amadeus Press). He blogs at memeteria.com.

JOHN SCHAEFER Ojai Talks Host

John Schaefer is the host and producer of WNYC’s long-running new music show New Sounds (“The #1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard), founded in 1982, and its innovative Soundcheck podcast, which has featured live performances and interviews with a variety of guests since 2002. He created the New Sounds Live concert series in 1986, which features new works, commissioned pieces, and a special series devoted to live music for silent films. Produced largely at Brookfield Place and Merkin Concert Hall in NY, the series continues to this day.

Schaefer has written extensively about music, including the book New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide to New Music (Harper & Row, NY, 1987; Virgin Books, London, 1990); the Cambridge Companion to Singing: World Music (Cambridge University Press, U.K., 2000); and the TV program Bravo Profile: Bobby McFerrin (Bravo Television, 2003).

He has also written about horse racing (Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology, Vintage, NY 2006), hosted panels for the World Science Festival, and been a regular panelist on the BBC’s soccer-based program Sports World.

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2022-2023 Annual Giving Contributors “One of the world’s most lovably idiosyncratic festivals…”

—New York Times

You Are A Part Of Story Our story as the Ojai Music Festival is possible thanks to you, our Festival family.

You inspire us to dream and to plan boldly for the future.

As an audience-supported organization, donations are impactful to the vitality of the Festival. Our community of donors make possible the celebration of each Festival, our free year-round BRAVO music education programs for Ojai Valley public elementary schools, digital offerings, and year-round events.

$75,000+ California Venues Grant Program California Nonprofit Performing Arts Program Terri and Jerry Kohl Carol and Luther Luedtke

$50,000-74,999 Ann Barrett, in memory of Olin Barrett Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne Margaret Bates, MD and Scott Johnson California Arts Council Cynthia Chapman and Neil Selman Lennie and Bernie Greenberg Cathryn and Thomas Krause Ida and Glenn Mercer Ojai Festival Women’s Committee Jill and Bill Shanbrom, Shanbrom Family Foundation

$25,000-49,999 Anonymous Michele Brustin Kathleen and Jerry Eberhardt Mechas and Greg Grinnell National Endowment for the Arts Nancy and Barry Sanders Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics Peter Schneider Esther Wachtell

$10,000-24,999

Thank you. With your support you help bring some of the most influential artistic work to be found anywhere, to this iconic setting.

We are truly grateful for every member of the Festival family.

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Anonymous Alice C. Tyler Perpetual Trust Carolyn and Jamie Bennett Evelyn and Stephen Block Susan Bowey Hyon Chough and Maurice Singer NancyBell Coe and Bill Burke Penny Donnelly Kathleen and James Drummy Constance Eaton and William Hart Ruth Eliel and William Cooney Stephan M. Farber Linda Joyce Hodge The Ojai Vineyard Ojai Women’s Fund Claire and David Oxtoby Pacific Harmony Foundation Donald Pattison Rachel Sater and Thomas McNalley Hope Tschopik Schneider Abby Sher Jackie Sherman and Fred Rothenberg Shelley and Greg Smith Smith-Hobson Foundation Fund, Ventura County Community Foundation Jane Taylor and Frederic Ohringer Bridget Tsao Brockman and Bruce Brockman Ventura County Community Foundation

2022-2023 Annual Giving Contributors $5,000-$9,999 The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Amphion Foundation Sasha and William Anawalt Barbara Barry Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff Sue Bienkowksi and Wang Lee Judy and Merrill Blau Lily and Thomas Brod Barbara Delaune Warren Michael Dunn Mary and Bill Duxler Lisa Field Ruth Gilliland and Arthur Rieman Chris Hacker and Will Thomas Kathryn Lawhun and Mark Shinbrot Raulee Marcus Geneva Martin and Patrick Garvey Sharon McNalley Pamela Melone Jane and Thomas W. Morris Steve Novick, in honor of Ara Guzelimian Ojai Valley School Linda and Ron Phillips Jennie Prebor and Fred Fisher Anne-Marie Spataru John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation Christine Upton Gary Wasserman and Charles Kashner, Wasserman Projects Fund Susanne and Blake* Wilson Christine Yano and Scott Wilson, BRAVO Program in memory of Ginger Wilson Cathy Zoi and Robin Roy

$2,500-$4,999 Marianne and Abdelmonem Afifi Barney and Kate Barnhart Jean and John Berghoff Kyle and Rodney Boone Burnand-Partridge Foundation City of Ojai Arts Commission Jill Cohen and Norman Siderow, Viniberia Selections Barbara and John Cummings Carol Ann Dyer Elizabeth A. Greenberg E.J. Harrison and Sons Janet Levin and Frank Gruber Dorothy Loebl Ann and Harry Oppenheimer Richard Shafer Emmanuel Sharef

$1,000-$2,499 Susan and Michael Addison Mary Baiamonte June and Shed Behar Nancy Bennett Marsha Berman Beverlee Bickmore and Jim Kelly

M Susan Bjerre Burnand-Partridge Foundation Janet Clough and Ara Guzelimian, in memory of Lawrence Morton Barbara Cohn Lynne Doherty and Helen Allen Hung Fan and Michael Feldman Rachel Fine and Christopher Hawthorne Fariba Ghaffari David Gilbert and David Farneth Gina Gutierrez and Gary Richardson Susan H. and David L. Hirsch III Mary and Jon Hogen Gary Hollander Naomi and Michael Inaba Russ Irwin Diane and Louis Jackson Kevin Keating Joan Kemper Matt Kilman Carol Krause* Thomas Kren and E. Bruce Robinson The Lenny Bruce Lee Memorial Weird Groove Fund Cheryl Lew Richard McCurdy Margaret and Fredrick Menninger Lena Muñiz Victoria Nightingale Joan Oliver Christian Perry Kathy and Peter Reynolds PK Righthand Fund at the East Bay Community Foundation Sandy Robertson and Marshall Donovan Joyce Avery Robinson Regina and Rick Roney Anita Rae Shapiro and Mark Howard Shapiro Marisa Silver and Ken Kwapis Ruth Simon Christine Steiner Mark Summa Ann and Steven Sunshine Rachel Ticotin and Peter Strauss Jane and Richard Weirick Joan Wynn

$500-$999 Scott Brinkerhoff Walker Crewson Fiona Digney and Michael Lee Parker Karen and Don Evarts Diana Feinberg Doris and Caleb Finch Gloria and Tom Forgea James Freeman Nancy Gallagher Lori Gay Kathan and Anthony Glassman Janet Greenberg and Mark Kempson Martha Groszewski Susan and Steven Hodges Carole and Charles Magnuson

Carolyn McKnight and Rajeev Talwani Susan and Joseph Miller Judith Hale Norris and Bill Norris Jane Salonen Beverly and Pierre Schuberth Sandy and Richard Schulhof John Schunhoff and Kenneth Titley Lucinda and Tim Setnicka Steve Starkey The Steele Family Elizabeth Strutzel Anne and Tony Thacher William Ulrich Sandra Wagner Jill and John Walsh Ralph E. Wiggen Bonnie Wright

$250-$499 Lisa and John Adair Margaret and Danilo Bach Elizabeth Bachman and Bob Tallyn Priscilla Lambert Brennan Erica and William Clark Nancy and Herb Conley Ross Conner and Emmett Carlson Esther da Costa Meyer and Christopher Hailey Robert Eisler Susan Feder and Todd Gordon Karen Fiske Peter Flint, Jr Barry Gold Susan and Kim Grossman Barbara and Anthony Hirsch Terry Hoffman Judith Holly Jeff Ingram William Ireland Eric and Cathy Kadison Mark Kalow Jenny Kallick and Robert Bezucha Hannah and Marshall Kramer David Lea Peggy and Gerald Matchin, Stiix Billiards Lisa McKinnon Carla Melson Ann and David Millican Trisha and Todd Mills George Mood Marilyn Nissenson Cynthia Nunes and Barbara Nye Patricia O’Connor Diana and Bijan Rezvani Lisa Roetzel and Alan Terricciano Eric Sather Irna Sayn-Wittgenstein Nancy and Rob* Stewart Anna Thomas Susan and John Trauger Libby and Sandy Treadwell Cynthia Ulman and Lyle Novis Betsy Watson

CONTINUED }}

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2022-2023 Annual Giving Contributors Karen Wilson

$150-$249 Lisa Anderson Susan Anderson Patricia and Martin Angerman Karen Bailey Mary Bergen Suzan Boatman Soo Borson Francisco Bracho Cathy Colloff Peter Corrigan Laurel Crary Cynthia and David Dunlop Anne and James Edwards Caroline and Ralph Grierson Judy Fish Lauren Hobratsch Louie Hopkins and Douglas Mirk Lavon Kellner Clare Kiklowicz Richard Lewis Mary Ann Makee Theodore McCombs Mary McConnel Angela and Jeffrey McGregor Heidrun Mumper-Drumm Karen and Christopher Noren Joan Petty Dan Savell Danner Schefler Leah and Norm Schwetizer Susan Suriyapa and Luca Ferrero Aryna Swope and Phil Caruthers Arthur and Judith Vander Robin and James Walther Carolyn Yancey

$75-$149 Betsy Atwater Kay Austen and Craig Houx Louisa Bonnie Thomas Boo Barbaran Britton and Ursula Britton Ramona Jean Burns Cynthia Butler Joseph Carroll Lisa Cervantes Donald Crockett Dee Dee Dorskind and Bradley Tabach-Bank Pamela Drexel Susan and David Egloff Ann Erickson and Stephen Jacobsen Lore and Ted Exner Ronald Lee Fleming Richard Foye Fred Frumberg Kenneth Fry Etsu Garfias Ronald Garrity

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Sharon and William Griswold Susie Edberg and Allen Grogan Carole and Roger Hale Jeff Hall Karen A. Hesli Holly Hickman Camille and Kingsley Hines Essie and David Horwitz Jacaranda Music Lynn Julian Birgit Jung-Schmitt Elaine Klasson and David Wong Margaret and John Kaufman Robin Kissell and George Kushner Kathleen Kottler Diane Kravif Helen Little Sophie Loire C Lucero Barbara Masters Siobhan McDevitt Tom and Nancy Michali Helen Milner Deborah Mintz Rusti and Steven Moffic Gail Osherenko Sharon Palmer Sue Perry Daniel Petry Scott Pollard Stephen Pope Caitlin Praetorius Andrew Radford Faith Raiguel Emilie Robertson Marueen Robinson Stephen Rochford Frank Salazar Sandra and Charles Sledd Jeff and Rebecca Smith Scott Sorrentino Benjamin Sperber Elizabeth Spring and Michael Hince Teri Strickland Carolyn and Robert Wagner Glen Wallick Geoffrey Winterowd Neal Wrightson Charles Zeltzer

Up to $75 Myron Aguilar Ginny Atherton Joy Atrops-Kimura and Greg Kimura Linda and Robert Attiyeh Aviva Bergman and Garett Carlson Janet Black Caryn and Charles Bosson Ruth and Steve Bramson Shelley Burgon Seline Burns Pradeep and Ranjit Dhillon

Maggie Bradley Sharon and Robert Eaton Michele Edelman William Edwards Jessica Ehrhardt Gerald Faris Cynthia Fitzpatrick Barry Forman Pablo Frasconi Kevin Gilbert Patricia Glasow Karen Lawson Harris Leslie Hawker Ann Hester Susan K. Hogan Eric Hughes Monica Irauzqui Larry Isberg Stanislaw Jarecki Jason LaPadura Louisa Laroche David Leland Jack Leland Carolyn Lingl Mary K McCool Sue McDonald Consuela Metzger P. Lyn Middleton and Geoffrey Wardle Jane Milner Eileen Monahan Sara Munshin Carol Munter Dolores Murphy Michael Newlson Polly Nelson Camille Patrao Mimi Platt Susan Reardon Don Roberts Uma and Lilit Sanasaryan Karen Schneider Lisa Shirley Madeleine Sifantus Dennis Thompson Kathleen Waltrip-Gardella Danielle Waters Joann Yabrof Kendra Yoes Patti and Stephen Yoshida Anne Zimmerman Many thanks to all our generous donors!

Every effort has been made to accurately list donors to the Festival (5/16/22 – 5/16/2023).

If you have any questions or a correction, please contact Anna Wagner at 805 646 2094.

Ojai Festivals, Ltd. Is a 501 c3 non-profit tax exemption organization.

*Deceased

Innovation is Our Legacy Join Us in Celebrating Our Story and Inventing the Future The Ojai Music Festival is a creative laboratory for musical innovation — launching artists’ careers, creating new works, starting musical conversations, and weaving together music, artists, and engaged audiences in the enchanting Ojai Valley. The alchemy of Ojai is recognized and respected nationally and internationally — at a level far beyond its size and resources.

You are a part of our story, and this is a moment to celebrate our shared story, your legacy, and most importantly, the vibrant future to come.

For the first time in our history, we’ve launched a $14 million campaign to ensure that the Ojai experience you love can be sustained for future generations of musicians and audiences.

Your investment in the Festival’s Future Forward Campaign will: • Nurture Artistic Excellence • Cultivate a Creative Laboratory • Expand BRAVO Education and Community Programs Join us in our next chapter and help bring the Future Forward!

For more information about the campaign, please scan this QR code: Or contact Anna Wagner, Director of Philanthropy at (805) 646-3178, or awagner@ojaifestival.org.

Campaign Visionary Supporters Join us in thanking these visionary supporters who have participated in the Future Forward campaign. We welcome all Festival Family members to join in supporting future of the Ojai Music Festival.

$1,000,000+

$100,000 - 249,000

$25,000 – 49,999

$10,000 – 24,999

Bernice and Wendell Jeffrey*

Ann and Olin* Barrett Judy and Merrill Blau NancyBell Coe and Bill Burke The Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund Carol and Luther Luedtke Ida and Glenn Mercer Charles Millard* David L. Nygren Donald Pattison Esther and Tom* Wachtell

Anonymous Hyon Chough and Maurice Singer Ruth Eliel and William Cooney Lisa Field Ruth Gilliland and Arthur Rieman Mechas and Greg Grinnell Jennie Prebor and Fred Fisher Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting Peter Schneider Bridget Tsao Brockman and Bruce Brockman Wilson Family Fund, Ventura County Community Foundation

Evelyn and Stephen Block Susan Bowey Stephan Farber Raulee Marcus Ojai Civic Association

$500,000 – 999,999 Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff Cathryn and Tom Krause Jill and Bill Shanbrom, Shanbrom Family Foundation

$250,000 – 499,999 Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson Jamie and Carolyn Bennett Kathleen and Jerry Eberhardt Louie Hopkins and Douglas Mirk Terri and Jerry Kohl Hope Tschopik Schneider

$50,000 – 99,999 Michele Brustin Cynthia Chapman and Neil Selman James and Kathy Drummy Nancy and Barry Sanders

Gifts reflects a comprehensive gift which includes an annual pledge, special campaign gift, or an estate gift.

$5,000-$9,999 Pamela Burton and Richard Hertz Linda Joyce Hodge Kathryn Lawhun and Mark Shinbrot Catherine and Barry Schifrin Mark Summa Jane Taylor and Frederic Ohringer Merrill Williams

*Deceased

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2022-23 Annual Giving Contributors INSTITUTIONAL FUNDERS The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Alice C. Tyler Perpetual Trust Amphion Foundation City of Ojai Arts Commission Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics Brooks Dry Cider California Arts Council California Venues Grant Program California Nonprofit Performing Arts Program E.J. Harrison & Sons

Farhang Foundation John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation Lorraine Lim Catering National Endowment for the Arts Ojai Festival Women’s Committee Ojai Valley School The Ojai Vineyard Ojai Women’s Fund Pacific Harmony Foundation Smith-Hobson Foundation Fund Ventura County Community Foundation Vinberia Selections

CORPORATE PARTNERS

CORPORATE PARTNERS

MEDIA PARTNERS

BUSINESS COMMUNITY & MEDIA PARTNERS

edible

Ojai & Ventura County

MEDIA PARTNERS

edible

Ojai & Ventura County

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Lifetime Giving Our steadfast supporters make adventurous and transcendent music possible - year after year.

$1,000,000+

$100,000-$249,999

$50,000-$99,999

Bernice and Wendell Jeffrey* Ojai Festival Women’s Committee Esther and Tom* Wachtell

Anonymous (2) Sue Bienkowksi and Wang Lee Judy and Merrill Blau Michele Brustin California Venues Grant Program Lainie* and Peter Cannon Hyon Chough and Maurice Singer Dunard Fund USA Ltd. Constance Eaton and William Hart Ruth Eliel and William Cooney Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation Richard S. Gould E.J. Harrison and Sons Linda Joyce Hodge Russ Irwin Jordan and Sandra* Laby Robert M. Light* Sharon McNalley Ida and Glenn Mercer The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Charles Millard III* Thomas W. and Jane Morris Nesbitt Foundation Ojai Valley Inn & Spa Ann and Harry Oppenheimer Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Linda and Ron Phillips Fred Rothenberg Nancy and Barry Sanders Catherine and Barry Schifrin Abby Sher Shelley and Gregory Smith John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation Bridget Tsao Brockman and Bruce Brockman Alice C. Tyler Perpetual Trust Wallis Foundation Gary Wasserman and Charles Kashner Jane and Richard Weirick Nita Whaley and Don Anderson

Amphion Foundation Anonymous The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Barney and Kate Barnhart William H. Brady, III* Lynn Bremer William Burr Castagnola Family Fund, Santa Fe Community Foundation California Nonprofit Performing Arts Program Richard Colburn* Joanne Ernst and James Collins Zoe and Donald Cosgrove* Robert C. Davis Barbara Delaune Warren Carlos Diniz* Christine and Sanford Drucker* Mary and Bill Duxler Stephan M. Farber Fred Fisher and Jennie Prebor Betty Freeman* Eve Steele and Peter Gelles Bernard Gondos* Mechas and Gregory Grinnell Ara Guzelimian and Janet Clough Mary and Jon Hogen Joan Kemper Dorothy Loebl Carol and Luther Luedtke Ginny Mancini Raulee Marcus Pamela Melone Margaret and Fritz Menninger Metabolic Studio, Annenberg Foundation Nancy and William Myers* Neubauer Family Foundation Shelby Notkin* Ojai Women’s Fund Claire and David Oxtoby Pacific Harmony Foundation Jan and Alan* Rains Judith and Ronald* Rosen Rotary Club of Ojai Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting The Barbara Barnard Smith Fund for World Musics Wade Family Trust Marilyn Wallace Jeanne C. Wanlass Wells Fargo Bank Ginger and John Wilson* Susanne and Blake* Wilson Wood-Claeyssens Foundation

$500,000-$999,999 Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff James Irvine Foundation The Walter Lantz Foundation Jill and Bill Shanbrom, Shanbrom Family Foundation Smith-Hobson Foundation Cathryn and Thomas Krause

$250,000-$499,999 Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne Ann and Olin* Barrett Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson Jamie and Carolyn Bennett California Arts Council NancyBell Coe and Bill Burke The Colburn Foundation Kathleen and James Drummy Kathleen and Jerry Eberhardt Michael Gorfaine, Gorfaine-Schwartz Agency Lennie and Bernie Greenberg Carolyn Huntsinger* Terri and Jerry Kohl Daniel Lewis E. Louise Gooding* Stuart Meiklejohn Anne and Stephen J.M. Morris National Endowment for the Arts David L. Nygren Donald Pattison Hope Tschopik Schneider Ventura County Community Foundation

*Deceased

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Longtime Festival Attendees “The Ojai faithful – an audience prized for its open minds and congeniality – proved ever faithful.”

—Los Angeles Times

THANK YOU to our longtime Festival patrons attending 10 or more years. You are why we exist. We are grateful for your longstanding appreciation of adventurous music.

SINCE 1940s Joyce Epstein Diane and Louis Jackson The Steele Family SINCE 1950s Elisa Callow Sally Stevens Tony Thacher Lavonne Theriault SINCE 1960s Sue-Ellen Case Betty and Robert Emirhanian Caroline and Ralph Grierson John May Rita Moran Laura Peck Mark Swed

SINCE 1970s Dan Barham Beverlee Bickmore and Jim Kelly Barbara and John Cummings Robert C. Davis, Jr. Richard Ginell/American Record Guide Anthony Glassman Richard S. Gould Judith Holly Paul Homchick Patrick Scott, Mark Hilt (Jacaranda Music) Cathy Kadison Susan and Joseph Miller James Spitser Mark Summa Stephen and Christy Sylvester Denise VanZago and C. M. Bowen Esther Wachtell

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Merrill L. Williams SINCE 1980s Marsia Alexander-Clarke Kate and Barney Barnhart Maureen Bauman and Isaac Malitz Elisabeth Clark NancyBell Coe Michael Dunn Mary and William Duxler Gwen Erickson James Farber Jan and Mark Fisher Gloria and Tom Forgea Moey and Bruce Gilman Peggy Grossman and Josef Woodard Linda Joyce Hodge Jude Sharp and Jack Jackson Joan Kemper Lorraine Lim and Glenn Fout Margaret and Fredrick Menninger Annat Provo Stephen Rochford Jonathan Said Helen and Justus Schlichting Jill and William Shanbrom Jude Sharp and Jack Jackson Noreen Stimac and Thomas Powers Anna Thomas Bridget Tsao Brockman and Bruce Brockman Roberta Weiser Blau Ralph E. Wiggen Susanne and Blake* Wilson SINCE 1990s Lisa and John Adair Marianne and Abdelmonem Afifi Lisa and Leslie Anderson Patricia and Martin Angerman Ginny Atherton Linda and Bob Attiyeh Kay Austen and Craig Houx Margaret and Danilo Bach Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff June and Shed Behar Jeanette and Joel Berkovitz Caryn and Charles Bosson Marie and Bruce Botnick Diana Burman Pamela Burton and Richard Hertz Eric Callow Renee Castagnola Deanna and Robert Chauls Lora and Philip Clarke Debra Cohen and Thomas Stahl Francine T. Cooper Peter Corrigan Kathleen Crandall Donald Crockett Lynne Doherty and Helen Allen

Richard Dolen Barbara and Alan Ducker Sharon and Robert Eaton Diane Eisenman Ruth Eliel and William Cooney Gerald Faris Diana Feinberg Kathryn Fellows Frank Finck Susan Foster Ruth Gilliland and Arthur Rieman Linda Granat Lennie and Bernie Greenberg Camille and Kingsley Hines Barbara and Anthony Hirsch Gary Hollander Essie and David Horwitz Marion and Hector Inchaustegui Cynthia Kaplan Terry Knowles and Marshall Rutter Joan Huang-Kraft Cathryn and Tom Krause Susan and David Kuehn Karen Lewis Richard Linnett Barbara and David Littenberg Amanda McBroom and George Ball Amanda and Linda McIntyre Gerald McIntyre Lisa McKinnon Tom McNalley Joyce McWilliams Karen Merriam Raffi and Myrna Mesrobian Anne and Stephen J.M. Morris Wyant Morton Mary and Weston Naef Victoria Nightingale Cynthia Nunes and Barbara Nye Ann and Harry Oppenheimer Nancy Pepper Nancy Perloff and Robert Lempert Joan Peters and Peter Passell Linda and Ron Phillips Paris Poirier Stephen Pope Ruth and Rodney Punt Sylvia and Shlomo Raz Stephen C. Reilly Penny Righthand Emilie Robertson Linda Rudell-Betts and John Betts Nancy and Barry Sanders Heather and Bob Sanders Catherine and Barry Schifrin Barbara Schwartz and Thomas Moore Anita Rae Shapiro Marisa Silver and Ken Kwapis Ellen Sklarz and Peter Thielke Elizabeth Spring and Michael Hince Christine Steiner Kit Stolz

Longtime Festival Attendees Ann and Steven Sunshine Kenneth Titley and John Schunhoff Christine Upton Glen Wallick Barbara and Deric Washburn Neil Watt Susan and Michael Weaver Jane and Dick Weirick Arnold Weiss Beth Wickstrum Ed Yim Mary and Jerry Zinser SINCE 2000s Caroline Allen Joyce and Ronald Allin Sasha and William Anawalt Susan Anderson Gregory Angsten Barbara Aran and Lawrence Hawley Alice Asquith John Aufderheide Elizabeth Bachman and Bob Tallyn Karen Bailey Philip Baily Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff Mary Bergen Karen and Michael Berk Susan Bienkowski and Wang C. Lee Rosalyn Bloch Susan Bloom and Dirk Farner Kyle and Rodney Boone Francisco Bracho Bret Bradigan Thomas and Lily Brod Joseph Bulock Betye Burton Cindy Pitou Burton Margaret Carey Lisa Cervantes Nancy and Martin Chalifour Tina Chappel and Thomas Lane Ruth Charloff Maurice Singer and Hyon Chough Marsia Alexander-Clarke Brooks Cochran Debra Cohen and Thomas Stahl Sheila and Sidney Cohn Annete Colfax and Tom Wilson Ross Conner and Emmett Carlson Kyle and Stuart Crowner Nava and Gabriel Danovitch Juanita J. Davis and Dan Saucedo Kenneth Delbo Carin Dewhirst and William Knutson Penny Donnelly Kathy and Jim Drummy Constance Eaton and Bill Hart Jerrold L. Eberhardt Karen and Don Evarts Karen and William Evenden David Falconer

Judy Fish Dana and Fred Fleet Barry Forman Kimberly Fox and Robert Fink Pablo Frasconi Jan and Arnold Friedman Kenneth Fry Carol Garramone Margaret Gascoigne Berta and Frank Gehry Andreas Georgi John Grant Martha Groszewski Carole and Roger Hale Sasha Heslip Mary Ann Hill and Laszlo Engelman Susan and Steven Hodges Terry Hoffman Farzaneh and Brian Hulan Naomi and Michael Inaba Jeff Ingram Russ Irwin Linda Kachel and David Katz Cathy Karol-Crowther Cecilia Kazol Diana Kelly Ruth Lasell and Robert Bonewitz Lydia and Scott Lawson Lynda and Stan Levy Cheryl Lew Daniel Lewis Mary and Robert Lynch Raulee Marcus Geneva Martin and Patrick Garvey Mitchell Matsey and James Schultz Morency Maxwell Elizabeth and Paul McConnaughey Christina and Todd McGinley Carolyn McKnight and Rajeev Talwani Gillian McManus and Chris Newell Sharon McNalley Pamela Melone Carla Melson Elizabeth Memel George Mood Thomas and Jane Morris Nomi Morris Sally Mosher Lena Muniz Sara Munshin Stacey Nakasone Jennifer and Richard Niles David L. Nygren Victoria and Thomas Ostwald Claire and David Oxtoby Donald Pattison Christian Perry Lisa Roetzel and Alan Terricciano Mary Rupp Peggy and John Russell Desy Safán-Gerard Louise Sandhaus and Michael Shapiro

Ruth Sayre Leah and Norm Schweitzer Susan Scott Lucinda Setnicka Sandra and Harold Shapiro Abby Sher Fred Rothenberg Thomas Moore and Barbara Schwartz Jane and Lee Silver Shelley and Gregory Smith Edda Spielmann and Andrew Nichelson Gretel Stephens Nancy Stewart John Strysik Susan Suriyapa and Luca Ferrero Aryna Swope and Phil Caruthers Brett Tarnet Alan Terakawa Alice Terrell and Alex Matich Gail Topping and George Berg Susan Tova and Lawrence Clevenson Hope Tschopik Schneider Judy and Art Vander Jill and John Walsh Robin and James Walther Jeanne C. Wanlass Leslie Westbrook Andrea and Bernard White Geoffrey Winterowd Soni Wright Kathy and Larry Yee Charles Zeltzer Anne Zimmerman SINCE 2010s Susan and Michael Addison Elizabeth Alvarez Lani Asher Catherine Sharkey Mary Baiamonte Ann Barrett Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson Carolyn and Jamie Bennett Richard Bentley John Berezney Judy and Merrill Blau Scott Brinkerhoff Sandra Buechley Nova Clite Stephen and Sheila Cox Jared Dawson Jane Deknatel and John Seddon Barbara Delaune Warren Stuart and Beverly Denenberg Charles Donelan Cynthia and David Dunlop Carol Ann Dyer Doris and Caleb Finch John Finch Bonnie Freeman Jocelyn Gibbs

Robina and Rene Goiffon Susan and David Hirsch Louie Hopkins and Douglas Mirk Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson Anne Johnstone Clare Kiklowicz Hannah and Marshall Kramer Kathryn Lawhun and Mark Shinbrot Mary McConnel Sheila McCue Sue McDonald Christina McPhee Rusti and Steven Moffic Rex Moser Charles Mosmann Anthony Parr Joan Petty Krisanto Pranata Jennie Prebor and Fred Fisher Joyce A. Robinson Nikki Scandalios Ruth Simon Kathy Solomon and Bob Burchman Eva Soltes Elizabeth St. Clair Libby and Sandy Treadwell Douglas Whitney Joann Yabrof We have made every effort to accurately list longtime attendees and regret any errors or omissions.

We invite you to visit our Future Forward Campaign Booth to make your own Longtime Attendee Button or to add or make changes to this list!

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

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210 E Ojai Avenue, Ojai, CA 805.646.6075 info@ojaiicecream.com

Make us your destination for Ojai history, art and culture.

Hours: Fri–Sun 10–4 130 W Ojai Avenue 805 640-1390 ojaivalleymuseum.org

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Matilija Society

THANK YOU! Matilija Society Members are generous donors to the Festival Endowment or have included the Festival in their estate plans.

Matilija Society Members help the Festival to be bold and pioneering in its artistic programs, while deeply influencing the Festival’s capacity to carry out its mission.

We gratefully acknowledge the following Matilija Society members who have included the Ojai Music Festival in their estate plans: Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff Carolyn and Jamie Bennett Judy and Merrill Blau NancyBell Coe Sheila* and Don Cluff Lynne Doherty Kathleen and Jerry Eberhardt Theresa and Jeff Ferguson Ruth Gilliland and Arthur Rieman Richard S. Gould Frank* and Linda Granat

Cathryn and Tom Krause Louie Hopkins and Douglas Mirk Russ Irwin Raulee Marcus Anne and Stephen J.M. Morris David Nygren Don Pattison Laura and William* Peck Hope Tschopik Schneider Leslie Westbrook Nita Whaley and Don Anderson

Should your name appear here? If so, please tell us about it!

We can tell the world or keep it quiet if you want to stay anonymous.

Either way, knowing about your plans will help us to better prepare for the future. Visit the Future Forward Campaign Booth to learn more and sign up!

Making a planned gift is a wonderful way to show your support for the Ojai Music Festival, while achieving your own philanthropic, estate-planning, and financial goals. Planned gifts can benefit you and your loved ones today and, in the future, and allow the Festival to provide innovative musical programming, create groundbreaking new work, engage students and learners of all ages through music education, while securing this creative laboratory for generations to come.

We encourage you to discuss your planned gift confidentially with the Ojai Music Festival. Please contact Anna Wagner, Director of Philanthropy at 805-646-3178 or awagner@ojaifestival.org

Our heartfelt thanks to the following supporters of the Ojai Music Festival Endowment: Kate and Barney Barnhart Meg Bates and Scott Johnson Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff June and Shed Behar Jamie and Carolyn Bennett Lerie Bjornstedt* Judy and Merrill Blau Barbara Bowman and Sol de la Torre Bueno Witold Brabec William H. Brady, III* Marion and William Burke* Lainie* and Peter Cannon Ara Guzelimian and Janet Clough Don and Sheila* Cluff NancyBell Coe and Bill Burke The Colburn Foundation Jennifer Coleman Molly Cook Joan Davidson Robert C. Davis, Jr Carlos Diniz* Lynne Doherty and Helen Allen Christine and Sanford Drucker* Constance Eaton and William Hart Merilee* and Samuel Eaton Kathleen and Jerry Eberhardt Mercedes H. Eichholz* Yvette Ellis* Betty and Robert Emirhanian Harriette and Robert Erickson* Evans Foundation Theresa and Jeff Ferguson Lorraine Holve Finch Frank and Maudette Fink* Fund Frances Fitting Ernest Fleischmann* Kate and Richard Godfrey E. Louise Gooding* Helene Gordon and Bill Blackburn Richard S. Gould Dennis Gould Virginia and Richard Gould* Linda and Frank* Granat Caroline and Ralph Grierson Ginger Harmon* Philip Heckscher Janette and Richard Hellmann Louie Hopkins and Douglas Mirk Natalia and Michael Howe Carolyn Huntsinger* Nancy Huntsinger Russ Irwin Betty Izant* Barbara Jackman Bernice and Wendell Jeffrey* Edith and Jack Jungmeyer* Jorjana and Roger Kellaway Joan Kemper Pat Kennedy* Margaret Krauss

Muriel Lavender Robert M. Light* Andree Lindow Dorothy Loebl Jon Lovelace* Carol and Luther Luedtke Raulee Marcus Elise Marvin* Martha and Thomas May Zelda and Dennis McCarthy Quentin McKenna* Pamela Melone Margaret and Fritz Menninger Lolita and Joe Metscher Charles Millard III* Rachael and Philip Moncharsh Thomas W. and Jane Morris Anne and Stephen J.M. Morris William Myers* Sandi Nicholson Marianne and Philip Nielsen Victoria Nightingale Maj. Gen. Frank Norris David L. Nygren Donald Pattison Laura and William* Peck Barbara and Martin Pops Ruth and Rodney Punt Claire Rantoul Alice and Robert* Rene John Rex* Susan and Mark Robinson Merle and Hans Schiff Jill and Bill Shanbrom, Shanbrom Family Foundation Helen and Edward Shanbrom* Dorothy and Richard Sheahan* Harry Sims* Ellen Sklarz and Peter Thielke Paula Spellman Melody and John Taft Sheila Tepper Margaret Thomas* Charlotte and Charles Thompson Glenda Tippett* Hope Tschopik Schneider Ventura County Community Foundation Joan and William Vogel Patricia Weinberger* Jane and Richard Weirick Harriet Wenig* Joyce and Allan West Leslie Westbrook Nita Whaley and Don Anderson Julia and Marc Whitman Margaret and Philip Williams Susanne and Blake* Wilson Helen Wolff Constance Wood Willard Wyma

*Deceased

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

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BRAVO Music Education Program Music is an important communal activity. BRAVO gives students a chance to make music together. Whether singing or playing an instrument, we create feelings of peace, unity, and belonging. Our story is part of a larger story. Our brains release oxytocin when we sing with others, a chemical involved in social bonding, which can give rise to feelings of togetherness and friendship.

Whether we are with an 18-year-old who remembers the joy of music class, or a 5-year-old who wonders about the marvel of music, together we create a sense of reciprocity.

We experience kindness, acceptance, and integrity.

—LAURA WALTER, BRAVO education coordinator

IMPACT & ENGAGEMENT IN THE COMMUNITY

The Ojai Music Festival BRAVO program brings music and laughter to local students and the Ojai community through educational workshops, interactive demonstrations, and free concerts.

BRAVO EDUCATION COORDINATOR

Laura Walter EDUCATION COMMITTEE

Bridget Brockman, Co-Chair Judy Fish, Co-Chair Licity Collins Laura Denne Lynne Doherty Gina Gutierrez Martha Highfill Leigh Ann McDonald Audrey McPherson Jane Roberts Kathleen Robertson Michelle Sherman Lillian Tally Joann Yabrof

INSTITUTIONAL FUNDERS

BRAVO VOLUNTEERS

Alice C. Tyler Perpetual Trust California Arts Council City of Ojai, Arts Commission John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation Ojai Festival Women’s Committee Ojai Valley School Barbara Barnard Smith Fund Ojai Women’s Fund Ventura County Community Foundation

Helen Allen Babette and Bob Betsy Bachman Fern Barishman Jim Bell Hitesh Benny Hadley Christenson Kerri Climer Caressa Cowan Lynne Doherty Maddy Doss Michael Estwanik Jodie Farrell Diana Feinberg Judy Fish Melissa Flores Jackie Francis Louis Grace Bonnie Griffin Jim Harmon Gretchen Hays

ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

Shelley Burgon David Cipriani Rosanne Forgette Ojai Library Ukulele Group Cameron Schubert Julie Tumamait

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2023 BRAVO by the numbers: 3,575 105 65 26,850

Children Served Workshops Classrooms Direct experiences

Martha Highfill Kathie Kottler Raul Kottler Bryan Lane Melanie Link The Lotus Trio Madrigali Lorraine McDonald Audrey McPherson Liz Memel Don Midgett Mood Swing Karen Nelson Ojai Library Ukulele Group Ann Oppenheimer Audrey and Emmy Pearson Nancy Pepper Gail Peterson Cindy Pitou-Burton Dori Riggs

Joyce Robinson Jane Roberts Ronnie Rodriguez Roy Rodriguez Anna and Mattie Rowlands Santa Barbara County Flute Ensemble Ruby Skye Michelle Sherman Gail Smith Starlight Quartet Ray Sullivan Morgan Swaidan Tracy Sweetland Lillian Tally Lizzy Tepaske Randee Vasilakos Anna Wagner JB White and Friends Joann Yabrof Kendra Yoes

BRAVO PROGRAMS INCLUDE

COMMUNITY EVENTS IMAGINE Concert is part of our school and community outreach. In collaboration with Ojai Valley School and the Barbara Barnard Smith Fund, more than 600 students and adults enjoyed music and dance from around the world this past spring. Audience members were treated to a performance of Tamakan Rhythms African Dance and Drumming. In addition, the Festival invites Ojai students who participate in BRAVO to attend a Festival concert free of charge and presents free community concerts during the Festival in June.

EDUCATIONAL AND COMMUNITY PROGRAMS BRIDGE Program enriches our world through interactions of third grade students with our local seniors through music and song games. Children invite the residents to join them in walking or skipping, or even just staying in their place and having a turn in the song!

We introduce ourselves and find out about the lives of the residents, all while singing folk songs.

We work with the Ojai Unified School District to bring free of charge music education to local students and to provide interactive song and dance for residents of assisted living facilities.

EDUCATION THROUGH MUSIC

brings interactive song and play to students in grades TK-3, building empathy, intelligence, and cooperation. Experiences with pitch and rhythm prepare them for further musical experience and increase language and math literacy.

ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE conduct workshops including Chumash Song and Dance, Cello, Indian Slide Guitar, Harp, and Drumming, teaching students about history, geography, and world cultures through music.

Our MUSIC VAN visits eight elementary schools to encourage students to choose their favorite instrument to learn in their own school music programs. Students blew, plucked, and bowed, all to great laughter, inspiring our future citizens!

Photos by Cindy Pitou Burton, Misty Hall, and Fred Rothenberg

SUMMER MUSIC AND ARTS CAMP will celebrate its fifth year. Children and adults will sing, play, and explore art and storytelling in an interactive environment. Through music and movement, we encourage imagination, questioning, collaboration, and determination.

Learn more about the program at www.OjaiFestival.org

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Ojai Music Festival Arts Management Internship Program

“Unique mentorship experiences with the Festival’s staff allowed me to explore different facets of the industry and deepen my commitment to further developing as a well-rounded arts administrator.”

—LANDON WILSON, MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC OJAI ALUMNUS 2022

The Festival’s Arts Management Internship program welcomes college students and recent graduates to go behind the scenes working closely with the staff and production team and gain invaluable hands-on experience for their future careers.

Festival interns have gone on to have successful careers in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Those who have gone on to work in the arts have done so at organizations across the country, including AMOC*, Ojai Music Festival, San Diego Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Early Music Guild of Seattle, and Voices of Change, as well as forged new paths as entrepreneurial performing artists and composers.

Colleges and universities represented have included Berklee School of Music, Boston University, CalArts, California Lutheran University, Cal State UniversityLong Beach, Manhattan School of Music, Occidental College, San Diego State University, Stanford University, UCLA, USC, Moorpark College, and Westmont College.

Steven Rothenberg Internship Fellow In 2011, Ojai Valley residents Ila and Fred Rothenberg generously provided the Festival with a fund to support the Festival’s growing internship program, which is dedicated in memory of their son, Steven Rothenberg. The 2023 Rothenberg Fellow is Landon Wilson.

The Festival’s Arts Management Internship Program is made by possible by the generous support of Fred Rothenberg, in memory of Steven Rothenberg.

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Special Thanks The Ojai Music Festival wishes to express our deepest gratitude to the following: Ashly Piano Crafts/Dennis Ashly & Evan Austin Besant Hill School/Alex Smith Barbara Bowman Brooks Dry Cider Ed Brooks City of Ojai Community Memorial Hospital Syste Custom Printing Gold Coast Ambulance Company Integrity Wealth Advisors Joan Kemper Kathie Kottler LA Percussion Rentals/Dan & Abby Savell LS Promotions/Linda Schimmel Lorraine Lim Catering Music Academy of the West Nordhoff High School Music Department/Bill Wagner Ojai Chamber of Commerce Ojai Citrus Growers Ojai Valley Museum Ojai Valley School Ojai Wesleyan Church/Pastor Lyn Thomas Pacific Western Bank Pure Wild Co. SANE Living Center/ Aubrey Balkind Louise Sandhaus Steinway & Sons LA/Benjamin Salisbury Ventura Rental Center Ventura’s Water Store Viniberia Selections/Jill Cohent

OJAI FESTIVAL WOMEN’S COMMITTEE

Heartfelt thanks to the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee for all they do in support of the Festival throughout the year. Special thanks to those members who host the Festival Lounge.

FESTIVAL HOUSING HOSTS

An important part of the Ojai Music Festival community is the housing hosts. They graciously open their homes every year to visiting artists, interns, and the production crew.

Their wonderful hospitality makes each visit a memorable occasion for Festival guests. If you are interested in being a Housing Host, call Deirdre Daly at 805 646 2094 or email ddaly@ ojaifestival.org.

Guests at the OJAINEXT event, Hike & Hear, in partnership with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy in the spring.

OJAINEXT is the Ojai Music Festival program to welcome and build community for new audience members - from college students, recent college grads to young professionals.

OJAINEXT friends are invited to special events and performances during the year and the Festival.

Thanks to our OJAINEXT Ambassadors who help spread the word!

Shelley Burgon Lisa Casoni Madeline Doss

Sierra Dudas Thomas Kotcheff Mia Orozco Dominique Wright

Learn more about OJAINEXT on our website or ask our Box Office staff how to get involved.

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

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Volunteers

Work With Us to Help Fight Climate Change JOIN OUR RECYCLING TEAM, as we at Harrison, Gold Coast and Agromin take on the epic challenge of recycling EVERYTHING from organics including food and yard waste to glass, paper, metals and plastics. TEAMWORK is essential for the future of our planet.

VISIT US ONLINE to learn more.

Many thanks to Festival Volunteers for their tireless efforts in helping make this year another tremendous success!

1-800-41 TRASH

www.ejharrison.com Connect with us! @ejharrisoninc

Still leading the way, since 1989

805-642-9236

www.goldcoastrecycling.com

Loni Anderson Gabriel Aubert Vicki Aubert Shayan Barati Arshan Barati Daryan Barati Evalina Barth Tom Boyles Barbara Britton Ursula Britton Dianne Bullard Kat Burke Susan Carpenito Kelly Carrol Jill Chesley Daphne DiFrancesco Donna Elam Luka Falvo

Wonu Familoni Brenda Farrant Jacqueline Francis Meg Goffredo Wendy Gray Jodine Hammerand Gretchen Hays Birgit Jung-Schmitt Blake Kasting Kevin Keating Christina Kim Lane Sophie Loire Margaret Marapao Sheila McCue Gillian McManus Allison Monahan Kasey Moore Tisha Morris

Karen Nelson Peter Parziale Vickie Peters Irene Ricci Caren Rich Barbara Rosen Kate Russell Beverly Schuberth Carol Shaw-Sutton Carla Sherman Jackie Sherman Antoinette Tivy Barry Verga Ruth Walker Paula Wayne Christine White Devoney Wolfus Mary Ann Zalokar list as of May 11, 2023

™

805-485-9200

www.agromin.com

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If you are interested in volunteering at next year’s Festival, please email info@ojaifestival.org.

Staff ARA GUZELIMIAN Artistic and Executive Director GINA GUTIERREZ Managing Director/ Director of Marketing ANNA WAGNER Director of Philanthropy

FIONA DIGNEY Producer and Artistic Administrator AMBER YOUNG Operations & Events Manager BRYAN LANE Patron Services Manager JEANNINE COBB Finance Manager

ELIZABETH HERRING Development Associate MADELINE DOSS Patron Services & Office Administrator LAURA WALTER BRAVO Education Coordinator

Festival Production KATHRYN STURCH Technical Production Manager MELISSA SOMRACK GORRIS Libbey Bowl Stage Manager JONATHAN BERGERON Production Assistant/ Zalk Theater Stage Manager ANNA DROZDOWSKI Greenberg Center Stage Manager MADDI BAIRD Libbey Park Stage Manager EMILY PERSINKO Assistant Stage Manager MARK GREY Sound Designer/ Head Audio Engineer NATHAN GRATER Associate Sound Designer TOBY TITTLE Monitor Engineer CHRISTINA GASPARICH Sound Assistant MOMENTUM MEDIA/ VINCE PECCHI Lighting Provider JEFF CLINTON KEITH FENTON DAVID GUTHRIE ALEX HALL-MOUNSEY KIRK ZAHARRIS Lighting Techs CLAIRE CLEARY Lighting Designer, Zalk Theater NICHOLAS HOUFEK Lighting Designer/ Light Board Operator MIKE’S TECHNICAL SERVICES/ MIKE TREGLER Ancillary Event Engineer LUKE TAYLOR Steinway Piano Technician RICHARD NEWSHAM Green Room Manager MICHAEL COOLEY Rigger

DAN RILEY DOOJIE SELINGER Stage Crew TRISTAN COOK Live Stream Director GROPIOUS PRODUCTION/ WALTER PARK Live Streaming Production Company

TIMOTHY TEAGUE Photographer DIEGO AZARTE NATHAN CARDENAS JOE NORRIS RICHARD WARNER Parking NIKKI SCANDALIOS Public Relations

RAY SULLIVAN On-Site Libbey Park Manager

KERI SETNICKA Social Media Coordinator

EMILY DEL SIGNORE BILLY RUSSO SHANE SCHAFER Park Operations Crew

JERRY MARYNIUK, MD Medical Tent Volunteer Coordinator

CARISSA CORRIGAN Operations Assistant DEIRDRE DALY Housing Manager MARY ANN MAKEE Front of House Manager/ Covid-Safety Consultant JUDITH PIAZZA Associate Front of House Manager JANE ROBERTS TERRY WRIGHT Head Ushers BRIAN TURNER Security Manager DAVID ABE JONATHAN ABE XANDER DUBEAU LORI ECKBERG ANGELA MCHALE LARRY MCMILLAN HOLLY MEADOWS MARSHALL THOMAS JIM VERKUIL Security Team LOUIS ALMARAZ Retail Consultant ELIZABETH SPILLER DOMINIQUE WRIGHT Pop-Up Retail & Concessions Managers SHEILA COHN Festival Concierge

TARA SAYLOR Volunteer Coordinator LYNN MALONE Suppers in the Park Coordinator GLENDA YOUNG Craft Services LORRAINE LIM CATERING Catering Services MIMI ARCHIE KATHLEEN KENNEDY Graphic Design BITVISION TECHNOLOGY IT Providers DOMINIQUE WRIGHT Intern Assistant Coordinator LANDON WILSON Rothenberg Fellow HITESH BENNY ELIZABETH CALLAHAN ELIANA CHOI MIA CONDON WILLIAM JAE SOPHIE LITTLE NIAV MAHER DIEGO MARTINEZ MARIAH DIVIANNE MUSNI DANI NOLLENBERGER MARGARET RODENBURG KEVIN SPOONER MATTHEW THACHER Interns

780 N. Ventura Ave, Oak View 93023

805 649 4018 | www.Oakridge-Inn.com

77TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL

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Advertiser Index CULTURE & PERFORMING ARTS

MEDIA & MUSIC

25 IFC 61 19 1 35 3 28 4 36 77 108 31 7 12-13

77 15 33 17

29

2023 Ojai Music Festival canvas & paper CAMA Chamber on the Mountain Hutchins Consort Laguna Beach Music Festival Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Libbey Bowl Canyon Concert Series Meditation Mount Music Academy of the West Ojai Holiday Home Tour & Marketplace Ojai Valley Museum Ojai Playhouse Pasadena Conservatory of Music Silkroad Ensemble 2023 Tour/ American Railroad UCSB Arts & Lectures

Ojai 101 Guide Ojai Quarterly Ojai Magazine/Ojai Valley News WNYC/New Sounds

SERVICES 116 114 26 20 19 BC 37 108 67 115 34

Custom Printing E.J. Harrison & Sons Frederick Fisher and Partners Gables of Ojai Heritage Financial Patty Waltcher/Berkshire Hathaway Sharon Maharry/Berkshire Hathaway SB Travel/Sheila Cohn Sound Post Capital The Oakridge Inn Topa Topa Optometry, Inc.

EDUCATION

SHOPPING & GALLERIES

57 73 27 5 11 18 21

108 IBC 26 108 73

Barbara Bowman Boutique Bart’s Books Blanche Sylvia Cercana Noted (Stationery, Cards & Gifts)

Gina Gutierrez, managing editor Thomas May, program book editor and annotator Doug Adrianson, June Behar, editorial assistants Kathleen Kennedy of Waller Design, graphic designer Printed by Custom Printing, Inc. Oxnard CA | www.CustomPrintingInc.com

2023 Ojai Music Festival program Ojai Festivals, Ltd. © All rights reserved.

PO Box 185 Ojai CA 93024 805 646 2094 info@ojaifestival.org www.OjaiFestival.org

Agora Foundation Besant Hill School Monica Ros School Oak Grove School Oberlin Conservatory of Music Ojai Valley School Villanova Preparatory School

FOOD & DRINK 34 27 104 61 108 39 73 115 15 21 9 108

805.485.3700 customprintinginc.com

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Agave Maria’s Beato Chocolates Brooks Dry Cider Farmer and the Cook Ojai Ice Cream Ojai Rotie Pinyon Ojai Pure Wile Co. The Dutchess The Ojai Ranch House The Ojai Vineyard Sam’s Place

Over 25 years of experience matching people and property in the Ojai Valley

Aspen Grove Ranch is a luxury ranch estate on 177 prime acres of rolling hills and fenced meadows, flanked by the Topa Topas. Main residence has a large great room, grand fireplace, chef’s kitchen, wrap-around veranda, pool/spa, and outdoor BBQ/entertainment area. The ranch spans 5 legal lots and has 2 large 3bd/2ba guest houses. Equestrian facilities include two barns, pristine stables, arena, round pen, and hot-walker. This is a truly unique property in both scope and design, providing exquisite facilities, excellent quality, stunning beauty and spacious luxury. More photos and information at: AspenGroveRanchOjai.com

I will help you find the home that brings peace to your mind and heart

www.pattywaltcher.com pattywaltcher@mac.com (805) 340-3774 DRE# 01176473

© 2022 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHHS and the BHHS symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.