Claire Chase, music director of this year’s Ojai Music Festival in Southern California. Photo courtesy of Ojai Music Festival.
In Tuesday’s (6/10) New York Times, Zachary Woolfe writes, “That a couple of hundred people showed up at 8 a.m. for an experimental performance in the middle of a field speaks volumes about the Ojai Music Festival. Since the 1940s, this annual event, nestled in an idyllic valley in Southern California, has catered to audiences eager to be challenged. Each year, a different music director is invited to guide the programming. For this installment, which took place Thursday through Sunday, morning to night, the festival looked to the flutist Claire Chase, one of the most important nodes of creation and collaboration in contemporary music. Chase, a founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble and the instigator of ‘Density 2036,’ an ongoing 24-year commissioning project to create a new repertoire for her instrument, has an aesthetic well matched to Ojai. Her approach is rigorous yet relaxed, with an improvisatory, cooperative, nature-loving, even hippie bent—meditative, sunny and smiling, encouraging open minds and open ears. Two dozen musicians performed in shifting combinations throughout the weekend … About 40 works were played over the course of the festival.” The article includes videos of performances of works by Susie Ibarra, Annea Lockwood, Liza Lim, and Marcos Balter.
