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.”

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.”

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.