Ojai Music Festival June 8th-11th- Preview and Tickets
Vijay Iyer is joined by a community of artistic collaborators, including Ojai Festival alumni 2015 Music Director Steven Schick, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Carnatic vocalist Aruna Sairam, flutist Claire Chase, and composer/percussionist Tyshawn Sorey
Iyer introduces Ojai to master musicians from various backgrounds and communities: Brentano Quartet; violinist Jennifer Koh; vocalist/composer Jen Shyu; Vijay Iyer Trio; Vijay Iyer Sextet; Tyshawn Sorey Double Trio; tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain; saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa; composer/flutist Nicole Mitchell; trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; and The Trio featuring Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis, and Roscoe Mitchell
Highlights of the 2017 Festival include the world premiere of Vijay Iyer’s Trouble, a violin concerto written for and performed by Jennifer Koh; the American premiere of Iyer’s Emergence for trio and ensemble; RADHE RADHE: Rites of Holi with music by Iyer and film by Prashant Bhargava; the West Coast premiere of the opera Afterword by George Lewis; and Yet Unheard (world premiere of chamber version) by Courtney Bryan
Six free performances for the community feature works by Bach, Berio, Anthony Braxton, Courtney Bryan, Mario Diaz de Leon, Vijay Iyer, George Lewis, Missy Mazzoli, and Esa-Pekka Salonen
Audio-kinetic installation, Rio Negro II, created by Douglas Ewart, Douglas Repetto, and George Lewis, on display at Libbey Park
Cal Performances’ Ojai at Berkeley is slated for June 15-17, 2017 following the Ojai Music Festival
(April 10, 2017 – Ojai, California) – The Ojai Music Festival, June 8-11, 2017, with Music Director Vijay Iyer celebrates diverse communities of music, artists, and collaboration in a weekend of stimulation and reflection.
Artistic Director Thomas W. Morris stated, “Vijay Iyer is usually described as a composer, a pianist, an improviser, a collaborator, and a teacher. What really distinguishes him, however, is not just what he does but who he is and what he stands for. Vijay believes a life in the arts is a life of service in imagining, building, and enacting community that transcends heritage, nation, and creed. The 2017 Festival reflects these beliefs in the range of collaborators joining us – from Carnatic vocalist Aruna Sairam to percussionist/composer Tyshawn Sorey, to the virtuosic ensemble ICE, to trumpet legend Wadada Leo Smith; in the breadth of roles Vijay will play – from composer, to performer, to collaborator, to intellectual guide; and in the historical and social perspectives represented by the music and artists – from how so much of the Festival’s foundation is based on the groundbreaking Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM), to young composer Courtney Bryan’s powerful tribute to Sandra Bland, a vivid testimony to music’s ability to bring communities together in healing.”
Vijay Iyer commented, “When I was invited to take on the role of Music Director for the 2017 Ojai Music Festival, it was a shocking but validating proposition. As an artist, I like to insert myself into situations where some might not necessarily imagine I belong. I have many different affinities musically, and also very real associations across different musical communities, generations, geographic locations, and traditions that speak to me and through me. Our 2017 Festival feels like a good opportunity to update the idea of what music is today. I know the hallowed history of this Festival and I’ve seen different versions of what it can be. I’m just glad that Tom Morris invited me to intervene, and to bring my people with me. I’m going to learn so much over those few days in June, and I believe everyone there will discover a great deal – not just about music, but about themselves.”
Watch Vijay Iyer Discuss the 2017 Festival
Much of the four-day Festival programming revolves around the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an organization founded in Chicago in 1965 by a group of African-American experimentalists. Musicians of the AACM were not only committed to an adventurous synthesis of music making strategies – contemporary and ancient, familiar and faraway – but their very being responded to the Civil Rights struggles of that era. The New York Times, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the AACM a year ago said, “The AACM has been one of the country’s great engines of experimental art, producing work with an irreducible breadth of scope and style.” Some of the early and founding AACM members, including Wadada Leo Smith, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Roscoe Mitchell will be featured 2017 Ojai artists, as will composer/trombonist George Lewis, whose book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music tells the definitive history of the AACM. Lewis’ opera Afterword, which is receiving its West Coast premiere, is based on the organization’s inception.
The 2017 Festival begins on Thursday, June 8 showcasing Vijay Iyer’s creative breadth. The program features two recent works by Mr. Iyer, the American premiere of Emergence, performed by ICE and the Vijay Iyer Trio conducted by Steven Schick; and the world premiere of his violin concerto Trouble, Commissioned by Ojai Music Festival, Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, and Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, music director. Trouble is composed for and will be performed by violinist Jennifer Koh. The premiere will feature the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble along with ICE and conductor Steven Schick. The evening closes with a duo comprising Mr. Iyer and the celebrated trumpet player and a founder of the AACM, Wadada Leo Smith. Described by Mr. Iyer as his “hero, friend, and teacher,” Mr. Smith collaborates with the pianist on music that is “spellbinding and traverses musical identities.” The duo will perform selections from their critically acclaimed album A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke, released on ECM Records in 2016.
The two-part Friday afternoon concert on June 9 features flutist Claire Chase performing a selection from Density 2036, an ambitious 22-year project conceived by Ms. Chase in 2014 to commission an entirely new body of repertory for solo flute each year until the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse groundbreaking 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. Each season between 2014-2036, Ms. Chase will premiere a new 60-minute program of solo flute works commissioned that year in a special performance at The Kitchen in New York City and on tour in select cities thereafter. Joining Ms. Chase for Ojai’s Density 2036 will be Pauchi Sasaki (violin and vocals) and Tyshawn Sorey (drums). A highlight of the program, which includes works by Suzanne Farrin, Vijay Iyer, Pauchi Sasaki, and Varèse, is an excerpt from Marcos Balter’s Pan, which calls for audience participation. Following Density 2036 will be a rare performance by Tyshawn Sorey’s Double Trio in a program called “The Inner Spectrum of Variables,” named after the Double Trio’s 2016 album. Mr. Sorey made his Ojai debut last year composing music for and performing in the Josephine Baker Portrait.
Friday evening’s concert features the West Coast premiere of George Lewis’ Afterword, an opera for a small ensemble and three singers, performed by ICE with soprano Joelle Lamarre, contralto Gwendolyn Brown, and tenor JuIian Otis, all of whom performed in the 2016 American premiere of the work in Chicago. 2015 Music Director Steven Schick returns to Ojai and will conduct. A 2002 MacArthur Fellow, George Lewis is a composer, theorist, musicologist, and virtuoso trombonist with an endowed chair at Columbia University. His A Will to Adorn was performed during the 2015 Ojai Music Festival. Mr. Lewis is the author of A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, a prizewinning, comprehensive cultural history of this influential organization and its members. The opera Afterword draws from the book’s own afterword, consisting of transcribed dialogues and testimonials about the AACM’s founding in 1965. Afterword will be semi-staged and directed by Sean Griffin.
Saturday, June 10’s afternoon concert begins with a program by the Brentano Quartet. In addition to performing the entire two-century range of standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet has a strong interest in new music. The concert features music by György Kurtág and Mozart, as well as Vijay Iyer’s Mozart Effects, written for the quartet. The Brentano Quartet’s century-spanning performance will be followed by Conduction®, led by Tyshawn Sorey, who is widely considered to be among the most important young artists at the intersection between composed and improvised music. Conduction®, is a gestural language invented by the acclaimed cornetist and composer Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris. As defined by the composer, “Conduction® is the practice of conveying and interpreting a lexicon of directives to construct or modify sonic arrangement or composition; a structure-content exchange between composer/conductor and instrumentalists that provides the immediate possibility of initiating or altering harmony, melody, rhythm, tempo, progression, articulation, phrasing, or form through the manipulation of pitch, dynamics (volume/intensity/density), timbre, duration, silence, and organization in real-time.” Featured in the Conduction® program with be Autoschediasms for Creative Chamber Orchestra, a 60-minute piece of new music for an ensemble of 20 players being composed in real time – none of the performers nor conductor have a note of music in front of them.
The Saturday evening centerpiece is Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, commissioned five years ago by Carolina Performing Arts at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to celebrate the centennial of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps. Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi is a vivid and mesmerizing multimedia collaboration by Mr. Iyer and filmmaker Prashant Bhargava (who passed away in 2015 at the age of 42), exploring another sort of rite of spring, the Hindu festival of Holi, famous for its revelry of color in celebration of the love between the divine Krishna and Radha. In northern India, Mr. Bhargava captured ravishing hi-definition footage of the eight-day Holi festival, later editing the footage into a finished 37-minute film with Stravinsky’s Sacre musical structure as the basis for its film structure. Mr. Iyer composed a new score as the musical complement to Mr. Bhargava’s visual ballet, drawing at times on the rhythms and chants of the Holi festival. The result is one of Mr. Iyer’s warmest, most colorful creations to date, as rich melodically as it is texturally. The work is for an ensemble of 13 players that will be performed by ICE and conducted by Steven Schick, who will accompany the projected film live on the Libbey Bowl stage. The first half of the concert will be the West Coast premiere of a new version of Le Sacre du printemps, arranged by composer Cliff Colnot for the same instrumental forces.
Sunday, June 11 closes the Ojai Music Festival with a mini-festival of improvisation. It begins in the early morning with a free concert of living legends that will be one of the historical highlights at Ojai – The Trio featuring octogenarian pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis on trombone and electronics, and Roscoe Mitchell on assorted woodwinds. Mr. Abrams and Mr. Mitchell were among the founders of the AACM. The afternoon concert presents Vijay Iyer and his close collaborator for more than twenty years, the award-winning saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, joining forces with two living giants of Indian classical music: celebrated Carnatic vocalist Aruna Sairam and tabla maestro and world music pioneer Zakir Hussain. This day realizes one of Vijay Iyer’s dreams for the 2017 Festival, to create a new musical fabric with these remarkable artists together in Ojai. The Festival closes with Vijay Iyer and his all-star sextet including bassist Stephan Crump, Tyshawn Sorey on drums, alto saxophonist Steve Lehman, Graham Haynes on cornet and flugelhorn, and tenor saxophonist Mark Shim, an ensemble The New York Times has said, “addresses original music with a gripping sense of purpose.”
In addition to the main concert lineup there will be two Daybreak Concerts both starting at 9am at Zalk Theatre at Besant Hill School in the upper Ojai for Ojai Music Festival members. On Friday, June 9 the performance features Jen Shyu, experimental vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer, and Fulbright scholar, who will perform her own work, Solo Rites: Seven Breaths. Saturday, June 10 features three world premieres by Nicole Mitchell, flutist, composer, bandleader, and educator. Ms. Mitchell’s music celebrates African-American culture while reaching across genres and integrating new ideas with moments in the legacy of jazz, gospel, experimentalism, pop, and African percussion. She formerly served as the first woman president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
Free Community Concerts and Events
Ojai continues to build on its commitment to reach an ever-broader audience, and the 2017 Festival offers two free Late Night Concerts in the Libbey Bowl, in addition to the Sunday morning community concert by The Trio with Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell. Friday evening (June 9) at 10:30pm features a free recital by Jennifer Koh, entitled “Bach and Beyond” in which Ms. Koh will perform works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Missy Mazzoli, Luciano Berio, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Saturday night (June 10) at 10:30pm brings Vijay Iyer together with the Brentano Quartet to perform his Time, Place, Action. The Brentano Quartet opens the concert with selections from Bach’s Art of the Fugue, and the concert closes with the American premiere of a new version of Yet Unheard by the versatile composer and pianist Courtney Bryan. Written for chorus, orchestra, and the vocalist Helga Davis, Yet Unheard sets a new text by poet Sharan Strange memorializing Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African American woman who died in police custody in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015. Her death was classified as a suicide, though many dispute the cause of death and allege racial violence. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Ms. Bryan’s recent compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation.
Newly added to the Festival schedule are three free Pop-Up Concerts that feature members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). The Thursday evening (June 8) Pop-Up features George Lewis’ Emergent. On Friday morning (June 9), the Pop-Up includes Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music. The final Pop-Up on Saturday morning (June 10) includes two works by Maria Diaz de Leon, including Labrys. These concerts will take place in the Libbey Park Gazebo nestled in the Libbey Park.
On Saturday, June 10, at 11:30am, the Ojai Music Festival’s BRAVO education program will offer an interactive demonstration featuring its “Education Through Music” (ETM) program with Ojai elementary school students and will include audience participation. ETM uses song, play and movement in the classroom, and it is one of the Festival’s seven types of free education workshops.
Ideas: Ojai Talks, Concert Insights and Festival 2018 Preview
The 2017 Festival begins with Ojai Talks presented by Ara Guzelimian, former Festival Artistic Director and current Dean and Provost of The Juilliard School. On Thursday June 8, the first session topic is “The Art of Improvisation” with Vijay Iyer. The second part of the Thursday Talks features a panel discussion of “Music as Community” with Mr. Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith and Steven Schick. On the evening of Friday, June 9 the Ojai Talks will be held prior to the 8pm concert of George Lewis’ Afterword on the Libbey Bowl stage. The session will feature a discussion with Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Tyshawn Sorey, and Claire Chase regarding the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and its ongoing impact.
Concert Insights with Christopher Hailey interviewing featured artists, including Courtney Bryan, Claire Chase and Tyshawn Sorey, will take place prior to select performances.
Artistic Director Thomas W. Morris joins Christopher Hailey for an early exploration into next year’s Festival. This exclusive event for renewing series subscribers will take place on Friday, June 9, 11am at the Ojai Art Center.
Art Installation in Libbey Park: Rio Negro II
Rio Negro II, an audio-kinetic art installation, will be on display in the Libbey Park for the duration of the 2017 Festival, open to the public for interaction. Rio Negro II, created by Douglas Ewart, Douglas Repetto, and George Lewis, reflects the spirit and legacy of the AACM, internationally recognized for its multidimensional approach to American experimental music. From text offered by the Museum of Contemporary Art, “Douglas R. Ewart and George Lewis are both longtime members of the AACM. In 1992, the two joined together to produce Rio Negro. That first version was commissioned in Chicago by Experimental Sound Studio, a long-standing nonprofit organization. It was presented at the now-defunct Randolph Street Gallery. In 2007, Mr. Ewart and Mr. Lewis collaborated with sound artist Douglas Repetto on an enhanced version of the sound environment. According to Mr. Lewis, the title of the work references the Rio Negro in Brazil, a major tributary of the Amazon River, and the largest black-water river in the world. “Rio Negro” references both indigenous people and notions of blackness. The name also suggests the sounds of rain forests, and the work’s strategically conceived silences enhance the nature of the work as a space for contemplation”.
Ojai at Berkeley
Marking the seventh year of artistic partnership, Ojai at Berkeley celebrates the dynamic nature of the Ojai Music Festival and of Cal Performances. As two distinct communities, Ojai and Berkeley are both known for intrepid artistic discovery, spirited intellect, and enduring engagement in the arts. Inaugurated in 2011, Ojai at Berkeley is a joint force that enables co-commissions and co-productions and allows artists to achieve more than could be imagined by each organization separately. Ojai at Berkeley will take place from June 15-17 in Berkeley, CA, following the Ojai Music Festival. For more information, visit CalPerformances.org.
Vijay Iyer, Music Director
Composer-pianist Vijay Iyer is the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University. He was named Downbeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year for 2012, 2015, and 2016, and he received a 2016 US Artists Fellowship, 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and a 2011 Grammy nomination. He has released twenty-one albums, including A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM, 2016) in duo with legendary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, named “Best New Music” by Pitchfork; Break Stuff (ECM, 2015) with the Vijay Iyer Trio, winner of the German Record Critics’ Award for Album of the Year; the live score to the film RADHE RADHE: Rites of Holi (ECM, 2014) by filmmaker Prashant Bhargava; and Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project (Pi Recordings, 2013), his third politically searing collaboration with poet-performer Mike Ladd, named Album of the Year in the Los Angeles Times.
Mr. Iyer’s compositions have been commissioned and premiered by Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Silk Road Ensemble, Ethel, Brentano Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Imani Winds, American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum, Matt Haimowitz, and Jennifer Koh. Mr. Iyer serves as Director of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music.
Thomas W. Morris, Artistic Director
Thomas W. Morris was appointed Artistic Director of the Ojai Music Festival starting with the 2004 Festival. Morris is recognized as one of the most innovative leaders in the orchestra industry and served as the long-time chief executive of both The Cleveland Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is currently active nationally and internationally as a consultant, lecturer, teacher, and writer. As Artistic Director, Morris is responsible for artistic planning and each year appoints a music director with whom he collaborates on shaping the Festival’s programming. During his decade-long tenure, audiences have increased and the scope of the Festival has expanded, most recently to include a collaborative partnership, Ojai at Berkeley, with Cal Performances at UC Berkeley. Morris was a founding director of Spring for Music at New York’s Carnegie Hall and served as the project’s artistic director. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He is also an accomplished percussionist.
About the Ojai Music Festival
From its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has created a place for groundbreaking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic setting 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The Festival presents broad-ranging programs in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of rarely performed music, refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles, and works by today’s composers. The four-day festival is an immersive experience with concerts, free community events, symposia, and gatherings. Considered a highlight of the international music summer season, Ojai has remained a leader in the classical music landscape for seven decades.
Through its unique structure of the Artistic Director appointing an annual Music Director, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Robertson, Eighth Blackbird, George Benjamin, Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, Steven Schick, and Peter Sellars.
The Festival, which enters its 71st year in 2017, is a nonprofit organization based in Ojai, California. The Board Chairman is David Nygren and President is Jamie Bennett.
Live video streaming of the Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival continues to draw thousands of curious and engaged music enthusiasts from across the country. As tickets remain in high demand, Ojai includes free access to the Festival experience through live and archived video streaming at OjaiFestival.org. This year’s live streaming will begin on Thursday, June 8 through June 11. The live streaming includes guest interviews throughout the web cast. Hosting this year will be editor of Log Journal and longtime journalist Steve Smith, Classical KUSC Alan Chapman, and LA-based composer/musician Thomas Kotcheff. Festival concert archives can also be heard on media partner Q2 Music’s website at WQXR.org.
Single Tickets for 2017 Ojai Music Festival
2017 Festival single tickets are available and may be purchased online at OjaiFestival.org or by calling (805) 646-2053. 2017 Ojai Music Festival ticket prices range from $45 to $150 for reserved seating and lawn tickets are $20. Student and group discounts are available.
Directions to Ojai and Libbey Bowl, information about lodging, concierge services for visitors, and information on other Ojai activities are available on the Festival website. Follow Festival updates at OjaiFestival.org, Facebook (Facebook.com/ojaifestival), and Twitter (@ojaifestivals).
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Ojai Music Festival: Gina Gutierrez, [email protected] (805) 646-2094
National/International: Nikki Scandalios, [email protected] (704) 340-4094