“The Ojai Music Festival, a classical music festival long known for its championship of adventurous contemporary works, announced on Sunday that it has appointed Janneke Straub as its executive director, starting in January,” writes Allan Kozinn in Monday’s (11/11) New York Times. “Ms. Straub comes to the festival from the American Youth Symphony, where she has been executive director since 2008. Before that, she spent 13 years at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she raised money for projects that included several new-music commissioning programs. The festival’s tradition is to appoint a music director anew every year, who collaborates on programming with the artistic director (which, since 2004, has been Thomas W. Morris). For the 68th Ojai Music Festival, scheduled to run from June 12 to 15, the music director will be the pianist Jeremy Denk. Mr. Denk’s work as a librettist will also be heard at the festival: a likely highlight will be the premiere of The Classical Style, a comic opera based on Charles Rosen’s thought-provoking book about 18th- and early 19th-century musical language, with Mr. Denk’s libretto and a score by Steven Stucky.”
Posted November 12, 2013
