California’s Ojai Music Festival has announced the launch of OjaiU, a free three-week online course that begins on May 15 and is designed to provide insights into repertoire being performed this season in Ojai. On each of three Wednesdays leading up to the four-day festival—held this year from June 6 to 9—a new 30-minute class will be posted, with video lectures, music listening examples, exercises, and discussions. OjaiU courses will be led by Douglas McLennan, editor of ArtsJournal.com; instructors will include Festival Artistic Director Thomas W. Morris and choreographer Mark Morris, who is curating the 2013 festival; pianist Jeremy Denk; composer John Luther Adams; Juilliard School Dean Ara Guzelimian; music critic John Rockwell; filmmaker Eva Soltes; and Los Angeles Times classical music critic Mark Swed. Topics to be covered in the three sessions include “Ideas and the Power of Music,” “Music in its Place,” and “Dance and Music, a Love (it’s a little more complicated than that).” In addition to the Ojai Festival Orchestra, musicians and ensembles scheduled to perform in Ojai this June are the jazz trio The Bad Plus; pianist/organist Colin Fowler; the American String Quartet; percussion ensemble red fish blue fish; Gamelan Sari Raras, a Javanese gamelan ensemble based at U.C. Berkeley; and the Mark Morris Dance Group and the MMDG Music Ensemble. For more information on OjaiU, visit http://www.ojaiu.org/.
Posted May 8, 2013
