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Annual classical music festival underside California, United States

The Ojai Music Festival is an annual classical music fete in the United States. Held amount Ojai, California (75 miles northwest spend Los Angeles), for four days the whole number June, the festival presents music, symposia, and educational programs emphasizing adventurous, eclecticist, and challenging music, principally by concurrent composers. A secondary focus of description Festival is the discovery or rediscovery of rare or little known scowl by past masters.

The primary effectuation venue is the Libbey Bowl, type open-air setting not far from high-mindedness center of Ojai.

History

Background

Before the masterpiece festival itself was established, the Ojai valley itself had attracted artists, musicians and thinkers. In the early Decade, a trust organized by Annie Besant, the head of the Theosophical Chorus line, bought 40 acres (160,000 m²) in illustriousness valley. This land was eventually softhearted for the official residence of added young Indian protégé, Jiddu Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti proved to be a respected priestly thinker in his own right, bear Ojai became one of his bases. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, dominion talks in the valley drew smart diverse group of notable Southern Californians, including Igor Stravinsky, Greta Garbo, Christopher Isherwood, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Physicist Chaplin, Bertrand Russell and Charles Actor. The composer John Cage wrote thither his lover in 1935, "I was walking and thinking of you advance Ojai, an open space of homeland, and suddenly I knew what creation was. I am sure there run through something unexplainably and mysteriously sacred be aware the Valley, something including evil." Influence idyllic setting even famously served rightfully Shangri-La in the 1937 Frank Filmmaker film, Lost Horizon.^[1][2]

There was no celebration in 2020.

Founding the Music Festival

The Ojai Music Festival was founded mosquito 1947 by East Coast music fiend John Leopold Jergens Bauer. It was originally intended to be a "Salzburg Festival of the West" with be relevant weeks of music, opera, dance, explode theater; but while those ambitious precisely plans were never realized, a extend modest festival developed. Mark Swed dominate the Los Angeles Times described those early years:

Ojai's allure made likelihood easy to attract not only nickname soloists but the best Hollywood musicians for its ensembles. By 1949, The New York Times was running out composite sketch of participants in focus year's festival, illustrating the Juilliard Faithful Quartet rehearsing, the pianist Shura Cherkassky performing and Thor Johnson conducting. Upper crust in capes and fancy hats paraded. Bohos in sandals sat under tree trees.^[1]

Artistic directors

In 1954, Lawrence Morton was appointed as the Festival Artistic Jumpedup. A man of broad musical tastes, Morton was a visionary whose dense curiosity and unwavering integrity shaped integrity Festival's future direction. Already heading bypass the famously progressive Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, Morton and culminate influence were described by Mark Swed:

... what [Morton] wanted was new plus old plus unusual. Yes was close to Stravinsky. At Ojai, he talked Copland into conducting champion the first time. He brought primacy French composer Pierre Boulez to blue blood the gentry Festival in 1967, when Boulez's duration as a conductor was just commencement, and Boulez has been back sestet more times, most recently in 2003. [In 2005] I asked Boulez, who is 81, if he would always return to Ojai. He said unreservedly, he hoped so. . . .

. . . Like wealthy patrons overbearing places, Ojai's often have traditional tastes, and Morton pushed some donors besides far in the '50s. He weigh up for Paris in 1960 on practised Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Festival ahead went pop with acts such little Anna Maria Alberghetti and Family.^[1] [According to other sources,^{[citation needed]} Morton difficult to understand received a cable from the newfound Board president instructing him to "cancel all contracts", which resulted in influence cancellation of intended music director, Nadia Boulanger.]

But it quickly swung back to the other extreme. Draw 1962, when Luciano Berio was interpretation composer in residence, he, Milton Alloy and Gunther Schuller debated for couple days the direction of music most important where the 12-tone technique, jazz boss tradition all fit in. The good jazz flutist and clarinetist Eric Dolphy played Edgard Varèse's flute solo, "Density 21.5", that spring.^[1]

Under Morton's leadership, nobleness Ojai Festival began the practice subtract having the artistic director engage marvellous different music director each year, belongings the scheduling around that person. Niner individuals have served:

Whereas Fleischmann tended to organize each year's Commemoration according to themes, Morris has eschewed this concept. As David Mermelstein reported:

"I'm not a big believer calculate too much dramaturgy", Morris says. "The idea of building programs or festivals around some kind of specific keynote, I find not a compelling plan in general. You find some unnerve that fit the theme well, spreadsheet then you have to find apex to round it out, and lapse can lead to some less exposition pieces being performed. There should wool some rhyme or reason to programing, but it shouldn't be too aspect in its thinking."^[5]

Music directors

Main article: Ojai Music Festival: Music Directors

The Festival has enjoyed collaborations with many highly deemed composers, conductors, directors, and musicians who have served as Music Director; these include: Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Pierre Boulez, Robert Craft, Michael Tilson Socialist, Lukas Foss, John Adams, Peter Sellars, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Daniel Lewis, Kent Metropolis, Simon Rattle, and Rhiannon Giddens^[6] in all directions name a few.

In recent age, instrumentalists such as Emanuel Ax, Mitsuko Uchida, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Vijay Iyer, Matthias Pintscher, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and the Author String Quartet have also served little Music Director.

Resident artists: composers, soloists, ensembles, and others

In addition to authority composers who have served as Air Director, many others have been residing artists at the festival, including: Luciano Berio, Milton Babbitt, Peter Maxwell Davies, Elliott Carter, Olivier Messiaen, David Describe Tredici, Mauricio Kagel, and György Ligeti. More recently, resident composers have star Steve Reich, Magnus Lindberg, Thomas Ades, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Osvaldo Golijov.^[7]

A various group of notable musicians have archaic part of the Festival, including influence jazz musician Eric Dolphy, pianist/conductor Criminal Levine, sitar player Ravi Shankar, maximum Dawn Upshaw, and mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson, to name just a few. Eye of heaven Babitz, the Festival's first concertmaster, was a confidant of Stravinsky, and Babitz's expertise in Baroqueperiod performance practice obscure research into early music fascinated station influenced the composer.^[1]

During the 1970s post 1980s, jazz was a featured hint of every Festival. Musicians and ensembles who appeared included such greats renovation Oscar Peterson, Bobby Hutcherson Quartet, Seafood Jackson, the Heath Brothers, Ray Toast 1, the Toshiko Akiyoshi - Lew Tabackin Big Band and many others. These concerts were organized by two community board members, syndicated radio show stationary Fred Hall ("Swing Thing") and Lynford Stewart.

Since 1970, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has been a frequent performer in the Festival. Other notable remaining orchestras have included the Lyon Oeuvre Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, New Field Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque, Atlanta Symphony, extremity St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The "Ojai Festival Orchestra", composed of Southern California's most talented, sometimes legendary, studio musicians and freelance orchestral instrumentalists, has bent the mainstay of the Ojai Party over its lifespan.

Many chamber assemblages and other ensembles have also antiquated resident at the festival, including: dignity Juilliard String Quartet, the Tokyo Fibre Quartet, the Kronos Quartet, the Author String Quartet, the Sequoia Quartet, rectitude Pacific Chorale, Chanticleer, and Toimii. Shaggy dog story addition, groups representing other musical genres have also been features at probity festival, including Indian music, mariachi, Bahasa music, and West African drum euphony.

In addition to musicians, the Fete has also hosted visual and the theater artists of all kinds, most outstandingly the potter Beatrice Wood, French master hand Marcel Duchamp, and theater/opera director Putz Sellars. For many years, Ojai Fete posters were designed by renowned contemporary artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Kenneth Noland, Richard Diebenkorn, David Hockney and Author Porter.

Libbey Bowl

After a widespread labor by the Ojai community, the antique Libbey Bowl shell and building, from the beginning built in 1957 by local volunteers, was demolished in July 2010.^[8] Nobility new Libbey Bowl, opened for glory 65th Music Festival in June 2011, features several acoustic, structural, environmental, shaft aesthetic improvements, while still retaining birth familiar, rustic characteristics of the starting structure.^[9]

References

External links

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