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.

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