Tag archives: Ojai Music Festival
Pianist and conductor Mitsuko Uchida, Musical America’s 2022 Artist of the Year and a Grammy nominee in 2023, serves as music director of this year’s Ojai Music Festival, the 78th edition of four days of musical brainstorming in an enchanted setting amid audiences eagerly anticipating challenge and discovery. The 2024 Ojai Festival takes place June […]
If the Music Academy’s eight-week summer festival (see separate feature) is the main course on the current classical calendar, the equally venerable Ojai Music Festival is a savory and sumptuous appetizer as the already contemporary boundary-pushing fest takes a further step afield with the highly-decorated roots music superstar Rhiannon Giddens as 2023’s musical director and […]
Every November, I look forward to the Holiday Home Tour in nearby Ojai that benefits the annual Ojai Music Festival, now entering its 75th year. Organized by the OMF Women’s Committee, this year, due to COVID, they have done a terrific job of creating a video tour of three lovely homes. Narrated by architect/designers Steve […]
The concerts everywhere are all canceled, at least for the remainder of the 2019-20 season, and on into the summer, but the classical music organizations are doing their level best to keep in touch and keep you entertained. Camerata Pacifica might be leading the charge, as the chamber music ensemble is not only upgrading its […]
It’s no surprise that Jerome Lowenthal responds to interview questions with the same sort of erudite yet playful tone anyone familiar with his master classes has come to know and love, as well as a particular precision, with personal flair, that mark his piano performances. So when asked what it means to be notching his […]
Not surprisingly, the Moldovan-born virtuoso violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja turned out to be one of the most ambitious and active music directors of the Ojai Music Festival when she headed up the venerable classical music festival this past summer. Her four-day visit to the mountain village veered from a solo performance unplugged in Libbey Park to […]
Normally, there’s nothing major on the classical calendar between the closing of the Ojai Festival and the opening bell of the Music Academy of the West’s summer festival, which this year is on Monday, June 18. But due to the closure of the 101 Freeway in the wake of the Montecito debris flow, the Santa […]
It would be sheer folly to expect a linear conversation when interviewing Nellie McKay. The British-American singer-songwriter and actress may be sharp as a tack in creating diverse albums that range from her brilliant 2004 debut Get Away from Me – a double-album from a 21-year-old that was full of clever and original pop songs […]
Mark Morris got on the phone only a few minutes after the interviewer finished reading the latest about the furor surrounding Michelle Wolf’s controversial set at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Quickly it was apparent – but not surprising – that the choreographer famous for creating dances to curated classical music can be as crude […]