Virtual Edition in Honor of the 74Th Festival

Home , Calder Quartet, Kevin Kwan Loucks, Kevin McMahon (musician), Larry Beauregard, Matthias Pintscher, Ojai Music Festival

ARA GUZELIMIAN artistic director

0611-142020* Save-the-Dates 75th Festival June 10-13, 2021 JOHN ADAMS music director “Ojai, 76th Festival June 9-12, 2022 a Musical AMOC music director Virtual Edition th Utopia. – New York Times *in honor of the 74 Festival OjaiFestival.org 805 646 2053

@ojaifestivals Welcome to the

To mark the 74th Festival and honor its spirit, we bring to you this keepsake program book as our thanks for your steadfast support, a gift from the Ojai Music Festival Board of Directors.

Contents Thursday, June 11 PAGE PAGE

2 Message from the Chairman 8 Concert 4 Virtual Festival Schedule 5 Matthias Pintscher, Music Director Bio Friday, June 12 Music Director Roster PAGE 12 Ojai Dawns 6 The Art of Transitions by Thomas May 16 Concert 47 Festival: Future Forward by Ara Guzelimian 20 Concert 48 2019-20 Annual Giving Contributors 51 BRAVO Education & Community Programs Saturday, June 13 52 Staff & Production PAGE

24 Ojai Dawns 28 Concert 32 Concert

Sunday, June 14 PAGE

36 Concert 40 Concert 44 Concert for Ojai

Cover art: Mimi Archie

74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 1 A Message from the Chairman of the Board VISION STATEMENT Transcendent and immersive musical experiences that spark joy, challenge the mind, and ignite the spirit. Welcome to the 74th Ojai Music Festival, virtual edition. Never could we daily playlists that highlight the 2020 repertoire. Our hope is, in this very modest way, to honor the spirit of the 74th have predicted how altered this moment would be for each and every MISSION STATEMENT Ojai Music Festival, to pay tribute to those who imagined what might have been, and to thank you for being unwavering one of us. Throughout this time and going forward, our wish is for you Enable artists and inquisitive audiences to engage with champions of this very special Festival. and your loved ones to be safe and well. one another around adventurous programming in the intimate setting of Ojai and reach out beyond the Festival There is simply no way to thank Matthias Pintscher and Chad Smith − and our 2020 Festival artists and production Much has changed from the course that was set for our annual and the Ojai community throughout the year to connect team − for planning an experience that would surely have transported and transformed us. CEO Jamie Bennett and our gathering in Ojai. What remains an absolute today, as it has throughout with broader audiences. dedicated administrative team responded to the challenge we faced due to the worldwide pandemic. With warmth and this remarkable organization’s history, is the very spirit of the Festival, compassion, Jamie and his team led us through this unprecedented moment, and I am grateful. We would have been which is realized each June through boundless creativity and genuine BOARD OF DIRECTORS BOARD OF GOVERNORS richer for the time spent together in this enchanted place, immersed in the magic that we know to be the Ojai Music collaboration. All who comprise our family give breath to this spirit, Festival. Even as we are called to connect virtually this week, the very spirit of this Festival will carry us forward. including our many artistic partners from across the globe and our JERRY EBERHARDT WILLIAM J. SHANBROM singular audiences, who are renowned for their bold curiosity and Chairman of the Board Co-Chair On behalf of my Board colleagues, we thank all of you for your steadfast support. While we certainly hope to see you insatiable appetites for adventure. BARRY SANDERS KATE BARNHART much sooner, we anticipate our reunion in Ojai in 2021 as we begin our 75th anniversary celebration. The Festival’s Vice Chairman Co-Chair future with Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian begins in partnership with Ojai’s next music directors: composer/conductor

The unfettered inventiveness and passion with which our 2020 Music MICHELE BRUSTIN OLIN BARRETT John Adams as Music Director for the 75th Festival (June 10 to 13, 2021) and AMOC (American Modern Opera Company) Vice Chairman Director Matthias Pintscher and Chad Smith, who led our artistic BARBARA BARRY as Music Director for the 76th Festival (June 9 to 12, 2022). Mark your calendars! direction this year, assembled artistic collaborators, programmed CATHRYN KRAUSE MARGARET BATES Secretary concerts and planned the many intimate moments which are integral MARJORIE BEALE Warmest wishes, to the fabric of each Festival, would have offered all of us an experience STEPHAN FARBER SUE BIENKOWSKI Treasurer to remember. This week, we would have celebrated Mr. Pintscher MERRILL BLAU as composer, conductor and collaborator, diving deep into his SANDRA BUECHLEY STEVEN BLOCK commitment to strengthen the interactions and connections between NANCYBELL COE BRET BRADIGAN THOMAS BROD Jerrold Eberhardt the music of today and seminal works from across the centuries. We JIM DRUMMY PAMELA BURTON Chairman of the Board would have met his extraordinary Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC), FRED FISHER DAVID NYGREN, PHD HYON CHOUGH founded by seven-time Ojai Music Director Pierre Boulez. Their arrival DAVID OXTOBY JILL COHEN in Ojai would have been a powerful connection to Ojai’s storied past. MAURICE SINGER WILLIAM COONEY Alongside works by Mr. Pintscher, Boulez’s provocative and riveting BRIDGET TSAO BROCKMAN WILLIAM DUXLER music was to be a featured thread across the Festival, as well as the MERRILL WILLIAMS CONSTANCE EATON music of Olga Neuwirth, one the most brilliant composers of our RUTH ELIEL TIESE QUINN BERNARD A. GREENBERG time. In addition, we would have welcomed the return of the Calder OFWC President Quartet, plus the Ojai debuts of mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor GREG GRINNELL RICHARD HERTZ Andrew Staples, vocalist Della Miles, and the LA Phil New Music Group. JAMIE BENNETT SCOTT JOHNSON We would have heard US and world premieres, and we would have President MOE KRABBE concluded with a free concert for the community featuring Steve Reich LESLIE LASSITER CHAD SMITH performing in his iconic Drumming. It would have been a remarkable RAULEE MARCUS Artistic Director four days together! SHARON MCNALLEY

PAMELA MELONE ARA GUZELIMIAN What we offer you now, with this limited edition program book and with STEPHEN J.M. MORRIS Artistic Director designate curated online offerings, is in no way intended to be a substitute for RON PHILLIPS

ABBY SHER what we would have experienced together in the beautiful oasis that is Directors Emeritus GREG SMITH Ojai. This keepsake includes program notes by Thomas May to enhance RICK GOULD, MD ESTHER WACHTELL the Festival’s planned events, which can be found at OjaiFestival.org JOAN KEMPER BARBARA DELAUNE WARREN beginning June 11. We invite you to enjoy insightful conversations with STEPHEN J.M. MORRIS some of our 2020 principals, hosted by Ara Guzelimian. You’ll also find GARY WASSERMAN JANE WEIRICK BLAKE AND SUSANNE WILSON

2 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 3 Virtual Festival Schedule Matthias Pintscher, Music Director

Join Ojai Talks host and Artistic Director designate Ara Guzelimian How to Watch Matthias Pintscher is the Music Director of the Ensemble Matthias Pintscher began his musical training in conducting, for virtual offerings that will feature insightful conversations with intercontemporain, one of the world’s leading contemporary studying with Peter Eötvös in his early 20s, during which time special guests, interspersed with video and music excerpts. Join us every evening at www.OjaiFestival.org music ensembles founded by Pierre Boulez in 1976. Known equally composing soon took a more prominent role in his life. He rapidly Following each 30-minute segment, watch selected archived @ 7pm Pacific Time. as one of today’s foremost composers, Mr. Pintscher conducted the gained critical acclaim in both areas of activity, and continues to concerts for your enjoyment. the premiere of his new work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra, compose in addition to his conducting career. As a composer, his performed by Georg Nigl and the Chorus and Symphonieorchester music is championed by some of today’s finest performing artists, THURSDAY, JUNE 11 | 7pm Add to Your Virtual Experience des Bayerischen Rundfunks at their Musica Viva festival in February orchestras, and conductors. His works have been performed Conversation with Matthias Pintscher 2020. by such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Musical excerpts of Ensemble intercontemporain’s performance We know that the Ojai experience is always more than just Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin of Pierre Boulez’s sur Incises and Matthias Pintscher’s Bereshit. concerts. Visit our website for a touch of Ojai! With the Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) in 2019/20, Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre Mr. Pintscher premiered new works by Beat Furrer, Pierre-Yves • Ojai Photo Gallery with recent photos provided by the talents de Paris, among others. Bärenreiter is his exclusive publisher, Macé, Johannes Boris Borowski, Clara Iannotta, and others. Other and recordings of his compositions can be found on Kairos, EMI, FRIDAY, JUNE 12 | 7pm of local Ojai photographers projects include bringing the large-scale audiovisual work From Teldec, Wergo, and Winter & Winter. Mr. Pintscher has been on the Conversation with Matthias Pintscher and Olga Neuwirth • Recipes from a few of our Ojai restaurants to try at home Within, created by Marco Nikodijevic and Robert Henke and composition faculty of the Juilliard School since 2014. Musical excerpts of Ensemble intercontemporain’s performance th premiered by the EIC in June 2018, to the BOZAR in Brussels. of Olga Neuwirth’s Le Encantadas and Eleanor. • 74 Festival playlists to enjoy before or after our virtual Festival OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL MUSIC DIRECTORS In the 2019/20 season, Mr. Pintscher made debuts with the th SATURDAY, JUNE 13 | 7pm • 74 Festival artist profiles to learn more about our artists symphony orchestras of Montréal, Baltimore, Houston, Pittsburgh, 1947 THOR JOHNSON 1983 DANIEL LEWIS Conversation with the Calder Quartet and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra when they returned to 1948 THOR JOHNSON 1984 PIERRE BOULEZ • Festival alum video introductions from our Tune in Tuesdays EDWARD REBNER 1985 KENT NAGANO With musical excerpts of a Calder Quartet performance. Interlochen for the first time since 2006. He also made his debut at 1949 THOR JOHNSON 1986 KENT NAGANO the Vienna State Opera conducting the premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s 1950 THOR JOHNSON STEPHEN MOSKO LIKE US ON FACEBOOK 1951 WILLIAM STEINBERG 1987 LUKAS FOSS SUNDAY, JUNE 14 | 7pm new opera Orlando, and returned to the Staatsoper Unter den 1952 THOR JOHNSON 1988 NICHOLAS MCGEGAN Facebook.com/OjaiFestival 1953 THOR JOHNSON SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES Conversation with Steve Reich Linden in Berlin to conduct performances of Beat Furrer’s Violetter 1954 ROBERT CRAFT DIANE WITTRY Musical excerpts of Steve Reich’s Tehillim and Drumming. Schnee, which he premiered in January 2019. Re-invitations this 1955 ROBERT CRAFT 1989 PIERRE BOULEZ VIEW AND SUBMIT IGOR STRAVINSKY 1990 STEPHEN MOSKO FESTIVAL PHOTOS season include the Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse 1956 ROBERT CRAFT 1991 JOHN HARBISON ojaifestivals/#ojai2020 Romande, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. IGOR STRAVINSKY SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES 1957 AARON COPLAND, 1992 PIERRE BOULEZ Special thanks to DEFINITE Production and INGOLF DAHL 1993 JOHN ADAMS Highlights of Mr. Pintscher’s 2018/19 season included serving Square Production companies. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER 1958 AARON COPLAND 1994 MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS @ojaifestivals | #ojai2020 as the season creative chair for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, 1959 ROBERT CRAFT 1995 KENT NAGANO 1960 HENRI TEMIANKA 1996 PIERRE BOULEZ the artist-in-residence at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, 1961 LUKAS FOSS 1997 EMANUEL AX, DANIEL HARDING and finishing a nine-year term as the BBC Scottish Symphony 1962 LUKAS FOSS 1998 MITSUKO UCHIDA VIEW US ON YOUTUBE 1963 LUKAS FOSS DAVID ZINMAN Orchestra’s artist-in-association. Last season, he made his debuts 1964 INGOLF DAHL 1999 ESA-PEKKA SALONEN @ojaifestival with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, 1965 INGOLF DAHL 2000 SIR SIMON RATTLE 1966 INGOLF DAHL 2001 ESA-PEKKA SALONEN and the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, and returned to 1967 PIERRE BOULEZ 2002 EMERSON STRING QUARTET the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, 1968 ROBERT LAMARCHINA 2003 PIERRE BOULEZ LAWRENCE FOSTER 2004 KENT NAGANO Indianapolis, Milwaukee, the New York Philharmonic, and the New MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS 2005 OLIVER KNUSSEN 1969 MICHAEL ZEAROTT 2006 ROBERT SPANO World Symphony in Miami. In Europe, he conducted the Scottish STEFAN MINDE 2007 PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival and MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS 2008 DAVID ROBERTSON 1970 PIERRE BOULEZ 2009 EIGHTH BLACKBIRD returned to the Orchestre de Paris, Danish National Symphony 1971 GERHARD SAMUEL 2010 GEORGE BENJAMIN Orchestra, and Helsinki Philharmonic. An enthusiastic supporter of 1972 MICHAEL ZEAROTT 2011 DAWN UPSHAW 1973 MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS 2012 LEIF OVE ANDSNES and mentor to students and young musicians, Mr. Pintscher served 1974 MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS 2013 MARK MORRIS as principal conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra 1975 MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS 2014 JEREMY DENK 1976 AARON COPLAND 2015 STEVEN SCHICK from 2016-2018 and worked with the Karajan Academy of the Berlin 1977 MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS 2016 PETER SELLARS Philharmonic in their 2017/18 season, culminating in a concert at 1978 CALVIN SIMMONS 2017 VIJAY IYER 1979 LUKAS FOSS 2018 PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA ARA GUZELIMIAN MATTHIAS PINTSCHER OLGA NEUWIRTH CALDER QUARTET STEVE REICH the Philharmonie. 1980 LUKAS FOSS 2019 BARBARA HANNIGAN Artistic Director designate Music Director 1981 DANIEL LEWIS 2020 MATTHIAS PINTSCHER 1982 ROBERT CRAFT

4 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 5 The Art of Transitions

How do we listen to music now? That question might at Pintscher’s intricately designed sequence of programs. Take the to conduct the U.S. premiere of Le encantadas, her immersive promised to spark a very different understanding of this music, first prompt a quick checklist of our tech gear — the tools of transition from his own mentor, Pierre Boulez, to himself and response to Herman Melville, in Los Angeles — a prelude to set its dazzlingly planned intricacies of texture coming closer to the mechanical reproduction and propagation that have become other peers who have navigated paths unforeseen by the postwar the stage for the Ojai Festival. complex freedoms of jazz — or of the skeins of melody Steve ever more refined over the 143 years since Thomas Edison Modernists. Pintscher stands as a prime exemplar of these, Reich liberates from amplified voices and tuned percussion in first introduced the wax cylinder. But several months into the combining formidable gifts as a composer, conductor, curator, and A fiercely original and independent musical thinker, Neuwirth Tehillim. The presence of Reich and other American composers, coronavirus pandemic — with our experience of live performances teacher. A self-described wanderer who was led by curiosity to is well represented here in works that respond, variously, to incidentally, helps to right a notable shortcoming of Boulez’s Ojai at best limited to streaming — many of us have been forced to leave his native Germany as a teenager and who lived in England Billie Holiday, the ascetic outsider artist Henry Darger, and J.S. programming, which notoriously skipped over the work being rethink our relationship to music itself. and Israel in his 20s, Pintscher now divides his time, when not on Bach. She relishes theatrically animated hybrids of style, genre, done by Americans in those years, particularly those animated the road, between Paris and Manhattan. His compositions often and mood, always showing an urge to reinvent herself and her by the energy of Minimalism. How we listen now comes with a fresh awareness of the fragility, explore the transition from indistinct noise to the most refined inspirations. As a young student, Neuwirth spent formative years the vulnerability of this art — the very traits that make it so timbral combinations. They draw on his love of visual art, poetry, in San Francisco and developed an abiding fascination with The Reich title is one of several Hebrew words that pop up in transformative. For music exists most fully as a live, present-tense and theater, transitioning among these different artistic media American culture — especially its subversive trends in film and Pintscher’s programs, beginning with The Beginning — Bereshit, exchange among what Benjamin Britten famously termed the without betraying music’s inherent self-referentiality. The 2020 music. Yet she is also a “deeply Austrian” artist Pintscher notes, the name of Pintscher’s fascinating meditation inspired by the “Holy Trinity” of audience, performer, and composer. Music is an program encompasses a de facto retrospective of Pintscher’s sharing the obsessions of Schubert and Alban Berg and rebellious first word of Genesis — and continuing with an entire program art of transitions. It travels between these vertices in unrepeatable instrumental writing, from an early string quartet that responds in her critiques of philistine conformity by her fellow Austrians. built around the biblical Creation story, including a new Ojai ways, tracing interactive pathways that are unique to each to Gesualdo’s late-Renaissance spiritual strife to his recent piano For this she was often marginalized early in her career, when commission from Toshio Hosokawa treating the Flood, which performance. And, in the process, music moves from the material concerto Nur (the Hebrew word for fire), in which impulses from Boulez became one of the few in power to offer his support. sets the whole process back in motion again. Pintscher’s own to the immaterial. By definition bound to time, it exists through today’s young American avant-garde are discernible. catalogue is replete with Hebrew titles. Those chosen for the ephemeral sounds that reverberate in a specific space. Yet music What was intended as the long-overdue Ojai debut of the Festival programs in turn suggest a thread of spirituality — in simultaneously occupies a realm, inscribed in memory, that defies As a conductor educated in the fine details of Boulezian Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) further underscores the counterpoint to Boulez’s resolutely materialist secularism — time and physical distance. aesthetics, Pintscher fondly recalls the first score he studied with complexity of the Boulezian-Pintscher lineage and brings to that subtly emerges alongside references to J.S. Bach’s divinely the Frenchman Debussy’s exquisite late ballet Jeux. Boulez’s mind key moments of transition in Ojai’s history as well. As the inspired quest for compositional perfection, Martin Luther King All of these topics come into play in the program that Matthias simultaneous command of surface and structure, detail and embodiment of Boulezian values in practice today, EIC would Jr.’s Gospel-based calls for justice (Olga Neuwirth), and American Pintscher planned for the 2020 Ojai Festival. Against the backdrop design, “informed my insight into sound production, into what it have given the 2020 Festival a striking historical footprint — Transcendentalism (Charles Ives). Steve Reich’s Tehillim itself of the current crisis, his vision has an added resonance that is means to tackle a style to conduct an orchestra.” Boulez himself even though the ensemble had never previously appeared here. implicitly asserts the ancient link between words and music as uncanny, since Pintscher’s core approach to music is to shake proved to be a master of the “art of transition” in the sense in Starting in 1967, Boulez served as music director for seven an organized ritual of praise. away facile assumptions, inviting the audience to question again which Wagner used the phrase: with reference to Tristan und summers at various points in the Festival’s history up to 2003. the very basis of how they listen, and to listen with heightened Isolde, where he described his ability to shift gradually from one As an art of transitions, music is blessed/condemned to be an art awareness — to intriguing discoveries from contemporary extreme state to another as perhaps his “finest and deepest art.” Boulez’s repeated attraction to this special place — over a of transience: the notes, colors, combinations which it comprises composers and familiar repertoire alike. The metaphor of a period spanning some 36 years — is a remarkable phenomenon, are destined to fade into nonexistence. Like immortality, music landscape appears frequently in his discussions of music: Pintscher ascribes Boulez’s outlook to a “consciousness of according to Chad Smith, artistic director of the 2020 edition. that did not die would rob us of any sense of meaning. This is detail” that he associates with French culture (and with cooking, “Southern California might seem an unlikely place for a Parisian the paradox Mahler, another traveler between worlds (Old and “Landscapes are mostly diverse. Landscapes hold surprises another passion). But this also coexists for Pintscher with a love intellectual who brought such a sense of rigorousness to music.” New, Jewish and Christian, composer and performer) explores and are deeply human in the end. Music somehow has the of surprises, with unexpected juxtapositions. Olga Neuwirth’s Yet Ojai provided a kind of freedom to breathe that the French so movingly in his late Das Lied von der Erde. The longing for same vulnerability and sensitivity as a landscape. You have music could hardly be more different, yet Pintscher, who has master lacked elsewhere. Ojai, a place of natural perfection that eternity, given voice in the final, longest movement, is at its most to care deeply when you put together a program or cultivate long felt a close rapport with his Austrian peer, is one of her conjures paradise for so many, beckoned to Boulez with his own acute in a scene of leave-taking. a landscape. These are all works that have been part of my most steadfast champions. He recently conducted the world concepts of musical perfectibility, as Smith points out. It was here life for a long time. As music director, you bring works and premiere of her Virginia Woolf–inspired opera Orlando — the that he could make an attempt at “perfecting paradise.” In this —THOMAS MAY flavors and personalities that people have never heard of, first opera commissioned from a female composer by the storied sense, Pintscher’s Ojai programs posit another transition — an and you present pieces they know in a new light.” Vienna Staatsoper. The moment he began thinking up his ideal invisible bridge — between concepts of new music in Europe and in the U.S., from the linearity of discarded notions of “progress” programming choices for Ojai, Pintscher says, he knew he wanted Thomas May is a freelance writer, critic, educator, and translator. He has Landscapes, like music, are also about transitions. Various kinds to spotlight Neuwirth. Before the pandemic, the plan was for him to the riotous, chaotic crazy quilt of diverse possibilities that of transitions emerge from the underlying threads that link written for The New York Times and regularly contributes to the program are a young composer’s to choose from today. The chance books of the Lucerne Festival, Metropolitan Opera, and Juilliard School. to encounter sur Incises, arguably the French master’s most His books include Decoding Wagner and The John Adams Reader. satisfying composition, in the beautiful setting of the Bowl

Libbey Bowl Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971) bereshit (2012)

Olga Neuwirth (b. 1968) Eleanor (2014-15) UNSUK CHIN Gougalōn: Scenes from a Street Theater, for ensemble Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) Matthias Pintscher conductor In Search of Beginning MATTHIAS PINTSCHER bereshit EIC Matthias Pintscher conductor “A beginning, middle, and end” — these The title Gougalōn comes from Old The blank page holds terror — and are the essentials, and in that order, for a High German, not Korean — Chin endless possibility. For there is no single OLGA NEUWIRTH Eleanor, for blues singer, battery, electric guitar, and ensemble narrative to convey a satisfying sense of relocated in her 20s to Germany, where right beginning, but as many beginnings completion, according to Aristotle. she studied with György Ligeti — and as can be imagined. Matthias Pintscher EIC He was referring specifically to the genre refers to traveling jesters or jugglers who dramatizes the act of creation by boldly Matthias Pintscher conductor of tragedy, but the formula remains entertained at folk festivals. Much like linking it with the myth of cosmogony Lucas Niggli percussion paradigmatic for the classical structures the composition it names, the word at with which the Bible begins. bereshit, the Della Miles vocalist of music — even for the stories we tell once operates on multiple, ambiguous — very first word of the Hebrew Torah (and to make sense of our own experiences. even contradictory — layers of meaning. of what is more widely known as the Book Try to reach for the moment of beginning, Gougalōn performers offered welcome of Genesis), reminds us of how slippery however, and it slips away, elusive as the entertainment but were also fortune- our putatively fixed points of origin reflection of Narcissus. The artist not tellers and con artists who pretended actually are. merely knows but cherishes the yearning to ply magic. According to the scholar behind that search, the desire to transform Habakuk Traber, their work encompassed That the first word of divine revelation how it all began into how it might “an eccentric range of gestures and should begin not with aleph but with the begin anew. comic movements, but also all manner of second letter of the alphabet is a matter wizardry, from awe to mumbo-jumbo,” of much discussion in Jewish teaching, Sometimes personal memory can exhibiting an “ambivalent, dual nature as is the inaccuracy of the familiar catalyze this quest. Unsuk Chin refers between liberation and deception…” translation “in the beginning” (there is to “a Proustian moment” that occurred [see sidebar on p. 10]. no definite article in the construction without warning when she visited China bereshit). Properly, the phrase means “in for the first time in 2008 and 2009. The In Gougalōn, subtitled “Scenes from a a beginning.” Deeply fascinated by the lively food vendors and street markets Street Theater,” Chin is not interested bridges between spoken and musical of the old neighborhoods of Hong Kong in programmatically reproducing or language, Pintscher — who learned and Guangzhou, inhabited by the poor illustrating these memories. Moreover, Hebrew while living in Israel during his 20s but juxtaposed close up against the she did not set out to write a piece — remarks that “words [in Hebrew] are like glittering showcases of modern urban life, “‘about’ Korea or ‘about’ a certain era” islands, like energy sources” because so triggered memories of “long-forgotten and doubts whether music “is able much is derived from “short root words” — childhood experiences” in her native to express anything other than itself.” such as the root rosh (“head”) in bereshit. Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org Seoul of the 1960s, she writes — “a period Rather, the memories “merely provide a Elsewhere, Pintscher likens the piece to “a characterized by poverty and military framework” for “an ‘imaginary folk music’ great river.” dictatorship,” before the modernization that is stylized, broken within itself, and that first comes to mind for many only seemingly primitive.” Westerners today. CONTINUED }}

8 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 9 Gougalon CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE Neuwirth’s encounters with racism and Jordan’s poetry. The drum-kit player also Eleanor was a spontaneous IN SEARCH OF BEGINNING sexism during her various stays in the becomes her “ally.” Neuwirth provides expression of my helplessness and Gougalōn was originally performed in United States forced her to confront further commentary: outrage at the racist violence and 2009, but Unsuk Chin expanded the work the intense contradictions at the root bloodshed committed in the editorial to six movements on a commission from EIC premiered bereshit in Paris early in sound.” Within Pintscher’s body of work, of American society. Its vibrant cultural “Beginning in childhood, [Eleanor/ offices of Charlie Hebdo. I could EIC, which premiered the new version 2012; later that year, Pintscher introduced bereshit’s concept of sound and space pluralism — a signature of Eleanor and of Billie Holiday’s] life was marked by not and did not want to remain in Paris in 2012 under Susanna Mälkki. his two-part Chute d’Étoiles (“Falling “ventures far beyond the chamber music- Neuwirth’s music in general — attracted abuse, which left deep wounds. silent. After the initial shock, the time Each of the six short movements is a title Stars”), which similarly addresses the like dimension of ensemble forces.” her: even as a youngster studying trumpet Wounds that made it difficult to live. had come to find the courage to that hints at different aspects of Chin’s theme of cosmic beginnings — here, back in her native Austria, Neuwirth Her great talent and the enormity reflect. The piece was already almost memories of these interlopers and their conceptualized as the Big Bang and The creative act of imagining beginnings dreamed of following in the footsteps of of her soul and spirit were thus finished, but I did not want to let “dilettante and shabby music.” They also paying homage to a sculptural installation can also take a critical turn, driven by the Miles Davis. Her father was, in fact, a jazz constantly fighting a sense of the heat of that moment dissipate, performed stunts and attracted peddlers by Anselm Kiefer. urge to call attention to what has gone pianist. In 2006, in pre-Obama America, emptiness. Nothing was able to dull because doing so would not, as of every variety, including “wig-dealers wrong. The legacy Eleanora Harris Fagan she embarked on American Lulu, a radical her profound nihilism. we have so often been told, lead from whom young girls could earn some The musical point of departure in bereshit (professionally known as Billie Holiday) has new take on Alban Berg’s unfinished opera automatically to a more balanced money for their families by sacrificing is also a psychological one: “as if you woke been enshrouded in romanticizing myth Lulu. Neuwirth set the story in the Civil Which is why I have replaced the truth. I wanted to react right away their pigtails.,” notes the composer. As up in a strange room in the pitch darkness that blots out memories of the racism she Rights era, incorporating speeches from cultivated aura of classical song and not later, when everything had part of the ensemble, Chin calls for four of night, realizing your whereabouts only endured and that countless others still King as well as the poetry of June Jordan with the directness of the blues. ‘settled’ down. harmonicas and prepared piano to evoke after a few seconds,” according to the endure. Olga Neuwirth looks back to the to dramatize the courage of those resisting Eleanor insists on the irrevocability the aura of a town fair. composer. “In this state, you attempt reality she faced, as an African-American systemic racism and discrimination against of pain and her own subjectivity. Eleanor is my way of showing to make out the shapes of the space. artist and woman. Her suffering is bridged women. She struggles for freedom, treading solidarity and protesting artistically I. Prologue: Dramatic Opening of It is a beginning of a beginning from by the unacceptable truth that more a difficult path, yet one she has against the daily pressures to the Curtain absolute darkness and shapelessness. than 50 years after the assassination of Eleanor, commissioned by the Salzburg chosen. Despite the abuse, she self- conform, and against external and II. Lament of the Bald Singer Very cautiously and gradually, particles Martin Luther King, Jr. (in 1968, the year in Festival, premiered in 2015, with Della confidently seeks her own form of internal repression.” III. The Grinning Fortune Teller with the disentangle and then condense, fitting which Neuwirth was born), the “shameful Miles creating the title role as “blues expression, her own identity. Music —THOMAS MAY False Teeth together in shapes.” conditions” that King denounced in his singer” and Tyshawn Sorey on percussion. and text have been conceived to IV. Episode between Bottles and Cans final speech have persisted. Neuwirth adapted material from the third unleash an unrelenting maelstrom. V. Circulus vitiosos: Dance around The initial sound, emerging from silence, act of American Lulu for Eleanor, which, The musical form should exude a the Shacks is an incredibly soft, flutelike, sustained Eleanor, writes Neuwirth “is a tribute to as the composer explains, “tries to mount spontaneity that is not, as so often VI. The Hunt for the Quack’s Plait F in the highest register of a solo double all those who have dared and still dare a kind of accusation from the standpoint in ‘contemporary classical’ music, bass. Pintscher likens the note F to to voice criticism despite social and of one person alone. Without giving the obstructed by structural limitations. a “horizon” that stretches across the political opposition. In our oh-so-worldly perpetrators a voice, Neuwirth develops a Eleanor begins like a review of old composition. It gives way to percussive times, when even faint dissent is seen as structure in which “the woman’s voice is blues records in the tradition of sounds “from which elements then detach a threat, fingers are scandalously quick surrounded and symbolically encouraged” Williams, Lambert and Hendricks: and condense.” He describes the music as to pull triggers. Eleanor would, however, by narrations from King’s speeches and with quasi instrumental jazz vocals — “highly organic,” the material “developing especially like to pay tribute to courageous transformed by means of percussion, slowly, in quasi-chronological fashion.” women — which explains the woman’s electric piano, and electric guitar into Overall, bereshit “arose from the idea name in the title. Here the spotlight is an illusory now. of liberating an entire compendium of on the many forgotten female African- sounds, gestures, rhythms, and orchestral American jazz musicians from the era combinations from a primordial state of ‘when men ruled the beat.’”

Zalk Theater, Besant Hill School Franz Schubert (1797-1828) String Quartet in G Major, D. 887 (1826)

Ojai Dawns

OLGA NEUWIRTH in the realms of the unreal Outsider Art FRANZ SCHUBERT String Quartet in G Major, D. 887 1. Allegro molto moderato 2. Andante un poco moto Olga Neuwirth approaches each The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Relying solely on an acoustic ensemble 3. Allegro vivace composition with a radical individuality. known as The Realms of the Unreal, of of four strings, Neuwirth constructs a 4. Allegro assai Each work responds unpredictably the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, soundscape of almost unbelievable variety Calder Quartet to whatever stimulus has sparked her Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion runs and dramatic contrast. A sustained chord Benjamin Jacobson violin imagination, with the result that her music the fittingly epic title that adorns Darger’s of quarter-tones clustered around A sets Tereza Stanislav violin sounds remarkably different from piece vast work of fiction (more than 15,000 the music in motion, fluoresces, is cut Jonathan Moerschel viola to piece. At the same time, Neuwirth has pages of typescript), which the self-taught off by silence, after which G becomes Eric Byers cello forged this breathtaking diversity into artist accompanied with a sequence of the anchor. The unifying motto of the a unique and unmistakable style rich in watercolor scrolls. piece, A and G also form the initials of the allusion, flexible, and provocative in its composer’s beloved grandmother (Alfreda ambiguity. As Catherine Kerkhoff-Saxon Neuwirth composed in the realms of Gallowitsch), who had recently died and to remarks: “Her genre-crossing works, the unreal — the title itself resonates whose memory the work is dedicated. which cannot be associated with any one with music — in late 2009, while living in school, are free and uninhibited.” Venice, for the Arditti Quartet, which gave The first two minutes alone encompass its premiere in Paris; she revised the score aggressive, knife-sharp attacks, agitated That holds true not only across the in 2011. Her works are usually sui generis, bowings, floated harmonics, arpeggios span of Neuwirth’s creative output but conceptually and in their instrumentation, light as rainbows, alongside a fleeting, within a given composition as well. but even when Neuwirth addresses subliminal recall of the “polite” classical Characteristically, each new piece involves a genre and medium as weighted by quartet. Such rapid-fire contrasts are an exhilarating blend of inspirations from classical tradition as the string quartet, simultaneously riveting and unsettling — and beyond the world of music. in the surprises abound. This is the third quartet Neuwirth refers to “catastrophe music.” realms of the unreal, for example, probes in her oeuvre, preceded by two others Fingernail pizzicati and feverish glissandi the very idea of the string quartet. It also from the 1990s: Akroate Hadal (inspired by continue to expand the sonic repertoire, pays homage to the American novelist and the fable-spoof Vampyroteuthis Infernalis which includes a celestial passage almost artist Henry Darger (see sidebar), taking its by the cultural philosophers Vilém midway through of high-lying harmonics name from a manuscript that was found Flusser and Louis Bec, which involves an and flute effects — like a distant memory after his death in 1973 amid the clutter of imaginary sea monster) and settori, which of the Lohengrin Prelude — that gives way his Chicago apartment. glosses on the earlier work from new to a mad waltz. perspectives. Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org

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12 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 13 The Outsider Art of Henry Darger CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE (1892-1973) OUTSIDER ART

Henry Darger has become something of a pop-cult hero — inspiring music by Though cast as a single movement, in the immense power of abrupt contrasts — alt-rock artists like Natalie Merchant — but realms of the unreal traverses a gestural above all, from major to minor, casting lived a painfully solitary existence after and emotional spectrum at least as wide an ambiguous shadow within the first growing up institutionalized in an asylum as that of Schubert’s mammoth G Major measures, one that defines much of for children where punishment and child Quartet, which is a good two-and-a-half what is to come. He similarly exploits labor were standard. Finding a niche times as long. Neuwirth’s predecessor and contrasts of dynamics, careening from working as a hospital janitor for many fellow Austrian, like Darger, created a vast fierce outbursts — note how these undo decades, Darger produced massive fantasy body of work that remained unknown the tranquility established in the first part narratives that process the abuses he to the world at large until after his death. of the slow movement — to frightening suffered and witnessed. His accompanying The last — and most ambitious — of his silence. illustrations “envision a cosmic, erotically essays in the genre, the G Major Quartet charged struggle between good and evil, dates from June 1826 (a bit over two years “I’m afraid there are moments in life when innocence and experience, freedom and before he died) but remained unheard even Schubert has nothing to say to us,” captivity,” according to the art critic Ken in its entirety until 1850. Death and the remarks one of Henry James’s characters Johnson, who also likens Darger’s visual Maiden, the nickname of the D minor in The Portrait of a Lady. “We must admit, style to “William Blake meets L. Frank Quartet from 1824 that preceded this however, that they are our worst.” Even Baum’s Wizard of Oz.” work, is also the title of an electronic score Schubert, an outsider in his own way, and for ballet that Neuwirth wrote to a text that all too aware of his fragile health, seems at “These are definitely extraordinary times. Every year, the deconstructs the Sleeping Beauty legend moments here to reach a nadir of despair festival is such a special experience for us & we will miss by her frequent collaborator, the Nobel — of the music having nothing to say it greatly this year.” Prize-winning writer Elfriede Jelinek. but yielding to silence. The light-hearted scarring of the Scherzo proves all the —BETTY AND ROBERT EMIRHANIAN Juxtaposed against the opening chords more powerful as a foil. Schubert again “ of in the realms of the unreal, the way underscores the quartet’s tonal ambiguity Schubert launches this quartet can in the dizzying oscillation between minor be heard from a fresh perspective. and major of the tarantella-driven finale. Like Neuwirth, Schubert unlocks the —THOMAS MAY ”

14 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 15 Chaya Czernowin (b. 1957) Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977) Mark Andre (b. 1964) Friday, June 12, 2020 | 11:00am On the Face of the Deep (2017) Illumine (2016) riss 1 (2015-17; rev. 2019)

Libbey Bowl Marko Nikodijević (b. 1980) Joan Margrané Figuera (b. 1988) Toshio Hosokawa (b. 1955) dies secundus (2017) Marines i boscatges (2016) The Flood (2020)

Franck Bedrossian (b. 1971) Stefano Gervasoni (b. 1962) Genesis Cycle US Premiere Vayehi erev vayehi boker (2017) Eufaunique (2016-17)

CHAYA CZERNOWIN On the Face of the Deep (First Day), for large ensemble The Labyrinth of Musical Creation MARKO NIKODIJEVIC dies secundus (Second Day), for ensemble

FRANCK BEDROSSIAN Vayehi erev vayehi boker (Third Day), for ensemble What does it mean to “create” a new piece Pintscher had previously written his was upon the face of the deep.” What of music? Where does the process start? own meditation on the first word of the especially struck Israeli composer Chaya ANNA THORVALDSDOTTIR Illumine (Fourth Day), for string octet Pierre Boulez famously declared: “Music Hebrew Scriptures (bereshit), which was Czernowin about this passage describing is a labyrinth with no beginning and no which was heard in the opening concert. the First Day was “the gap between chaos, JOAN MAGRANÉ FIGUERA Marines i boscatges (Fifth Day), for 14 instruments end, full of new paths to discover, where He gave the seven composers free rein, the void, and the abyss on the one hand mystery remains eternal.” He founded aside from these parameters: they had and, on the other, this divine presence that the Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) to restrict their instrumentation to the is simply there and which is observed from STEFANO GERVASONI Eufaunique (Sixth Day), for ensemble in 1976 as a collective of virtuosos — ensemble, without special additional above.” Her piece conveys a wondrous and, you might say, a mega-instrument forces; the pieces had to be instrumental, sense of new sonorities emerging, of the MARK ANDRE riss 1 (Seventh Day), for ensemble — to explore that labyrinth from a with no setting of text; and each piece had fascinating beauty of disorder. contemporary perspective. to give special prominence to the E-flat Second Day: Serbian composer Marko TOSHIO HOSOKAWA The Flood (Eighth Day), for ensemble at the center of the keyboard, so that the The Genesis Cycle was launched to Nikodijević found the biblical description World Premiere and co-commissioned by the Ensemble intercontemporain pitch would function as a sort of “horizon” celebrate EIC’s 40th anniversary. Because (the same image Pintscher uses for the of the separation of “the waters from the and the Ojai Music Festival Boulez died at the beginning of 2016, role that F plays in his bereshit). waters” to be “extremely musical” in itself. it also became a remembrance of Recalling the metaphor favored by Boulez, Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) his legacy of seeking out new artistic The unpredictability of the outcomes was he refers to the creative act as a labyrinth Matthias Pintscher conductor voices and “new paths” — as seen in his an essential feature. In the case of Haydn’s and frequently works from pre-existing encouragement of Matthias Pintscher, late-period oratorio The Creation, the material. The “horizontal” E-flat that lies who started his tenure as music director of composer’s unifying perspective in telling in the general background of the whole EIC in 2013. the same story reaffirms Enlightenment cycle is violently sounded at the start values. The diversity — along with the (notated as a D-sharp, the same tone on To mark the milestone, EIC commissioned contradictions — of the Genesis Cycle is the keyboard). seven composers, broadly ranging in attuned to the present era. age, background, origin, and aesthetic Third Day: E-flat, though heavily clouded temperament, to respond to the same First Day: The first separation thatGenesis by opaque harmonies, is heard at the stimulus: the creation myth recounted describes is that between “heaven and start of Franck Bedrossian’s piece, titled at the beginning of the Book of Genesis. earth.” Before light is created — thereby after the Hebrew words meaning “and the Each composer became responsible for a inaugurating the very first distinction evening and the morning,” which recur, Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org different day in the week of Creation. between day and night — “darkness refrain-like, to bridge the account of

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16 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 17 CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE THE LABYRINTH OF MUSICAL CREATION each day. A native Parisian who studied at For the Fifth Day — on which creatures the Old and New Testaments, suggesting a IRCAM, Bedrossian was attracted to “the that swim and fly are given life — Figuera link between the Seventh Day and “the life dynamic dimension of the Third Day and homes in on the symbolic significance of of Jesus of Nazareth, who was baptized its elements of contrast”: the separation of the numbers five (the day) and seven (the in the River Jordan that flows through the seas and dry land and the emergence week). These numbers he translates into the deepest valley in the world,” explains of plant life, which involves a “dramaturgy intervals and instrumental combinations, the composer. “During the Passion, the without people,” as he puts it. Reflecting with a trio of percussionists serving as a heavens are rent asunder.” the dichotomy of night and day, the piece kind of continuo, together with harp and is in two parts, with jazzy eruptions in the piano. In the third part, he quotes from the Eighth Day: For this performance, EIC and second (where the instrumental group for famous early-17th-century madrigal The Ojai joined to commission The Flood by the most part “should sound like a hybrid Silver Swan by Orlando Gibbons. the eminent Japanese composer Toshio between acoustics and electronics”). Hosokawa, who dedicates his new piece Sixth Day: “Throughout the whole of to the Ensemble intercontemporain and Fourth Day: “I work by seeking inspiration Genesis, we witness a twofold process Matthias Pintscher. Writes the composer: from light and darkness, from the of separation and refinement,” says the “In Genesis, the human world created contrasts between them, the different Italian composer Stefano Gervasoni, who by God has become overrun by evil, and degrees of ‘imposing light’ and ‘least light,’ studied with Györgi Ligeti and at IRCAM God upon seeing this created a Flood and the structure of the seasons, and the and is now on the faculty at the Paris tried to destroy humankind. He saved only “Although we will miss our own Ojai friends whose company relations between the sun, the moon, and Conservatoire. Genesis offers an extensive Noah’s family and commanded Noah to makes the Festival so enjoyable, we applaud your online efforts the stars,” says the Icelandic composer account of the Sixth Day, which accounts build an ark. The ‘flood’ is a familiar theme to honor the creative composers, musicians, and singers whom Anna Thorvaldsdottir, who studied at the for the vast biodiversity of the land, for us Japanese. The damages made by University of California San Diego. Illumine including the creation of humankind — the tsunami in 2011 are symbolic, but it we hope to see flourish again.” offers her response to the complex with the added qualification that “God saw does not come only from that, as we are “ —JUNE AND SHED BEHAR creation of the earth’s lighting system everything that he had made, and, behold, also often raided by typhoons, heavy rain, of sun, moon, and stars. Thorvaldsdottir it was very good.” Accordingly, Eufaunique and flooding. Floods of water when out scores her piece for eight strings (three comprises several episodes wherein of control, make us aware of the strong violins, two violas, two cellos, and a elementary gestures ramify into glorious energy of nature and create a sense of fear double bass), weaving their lines into a complexity. and even of reverence in us. In my short great variety of textures. piece The Flood, sound waves created by Seventh Day: Creation Week culminates in acoustic crescendos and decrescendos Fifth Day: The youngest of the cycle’s a day of rest, as God surveys what he has are repeated. The acoustic spiral created composers, Joan Magrané Figuera studied created. A former student of both Gerard here causes us to feel the ‘fear’ and at the in Paris with Stefano Gervasoni (composer Grisey and Helmut Lachenmann, the same time leaves us feeling purified.”The of the Sixth Day). The title of his Paris-born Mark Andre shows a fascination Flood thus opens the way to a new path contribution comes from a collection of for subtle sonorities and gradations. The within the Genesis labyrinth and the start stories published in the early 20th century longest of the pieces in the original cycle, of a new cycle of creation. by fellow Catalan writer Joaquim Ruyra. riss 1 (German for “crack” or “tear”) bridges —THOMAS MAY ”

Libbey Bowl Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971) Nur (2018)

Steve Reich (b. 1936) Tehillim (1981) FELIX MENDELSSOHN Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 Allegro moderato ma con fuoco Andante Scherzo: Allegro leggierissimo Presto Fire, Metal, and Praise Calder Quartet Benjamin Jacobson violin Tereza Stanislav violin “You are my David, and if I am ever ill or own classical renderings, that the poet movement is ambitious, suggesting Jonathan Moerschel viola sad, you must banish my bad dreams by compared his young friend to David. the sweep of Beethoven’s Eroica (also Eric Byers cello your playing; I shall never throw my spear in E-flat). Woven into the fabric as well In short, young Mendelssohn was Nathan Cole violin at you, as Saul did.” The elderly Goethe’s is evidence of his time spent with, and assiduously pursuing the ideal of Bildung Akiko Tarumoto violin comparison of young Felix Mendelssohn thinking about, Goethe: particularly in the — the humanistic cultivation of an Ben Ullery viola to the Biblical king and psalmist is among intricate, gossamer Scherzo. Felix’s sister autonomous sense of self — advocated Dahae Kim cello the most touching testimonies of their Fanny revealed that his imagination had extraordinary, intergenerational friendship. not only Goethe but by his own been fired by a passage from the eldritch grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, the Walpurgisnacht scene of Goethe’s Faust, MATTHIAS PINTSCHER Nur After being introduced to the 12-year- leading light of the Jewish Enlightenment Part I. Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) old prodigy in 1821, Goethe invited of the 18th century. “Every person has their Matthias Pintscher conductor Mendelssohn to his home on several own religion:” Goethe approvingly quoted Through his tutelage under Carl Friedrich occasions. Initially, the reigning figure the Mendelssohn patriarch’s saying in his Zelter — the pedagogue who introduced STEVE REICH Tehillim of German letters — whose own gifts autobiography. him to Goethe — Mendelssohn acquired a manifested at a miraculously young age — sure grounding in contrapuntal technique, LA Phil New Music Group was reminded of his long-ago encounter Mendelssohn completed the Octet, widely displayed in all its glory in the exuberant, Paolo Bortolameolli conductor with the child Mozart in the early 1760s. regarded as his first full-scale masterpiece, Handel-quoting, fugal finale. in October 1825. Its status as a miracle of Already during his teenage years, youth tends to overshadow what would Matthias Pintscher was also still in his Mendelssohn was rapidly making his way be a display of imaginative brilliance at teens when he impressed the late Hans through all the genres. And his creative any age. Mendelssohn’s scoring for eight Werner Henze and found a powerful drive was hardly limited to music. He players is emphatically not a string quartet model in his “imaginary, instrumental studied painting and watercolor and doubled. The Octet, he noted, “must be theater” for his own musical language. showed a passionate interest in classical played by all of the instruments in the Having written numerous concertos for antiquity. In 1825, the year of the Octet, symphonic orchestral style.” other instruments, Pintscher had resisted Mendelssohn made a stylish German requests to write one for the piano for translation of a comedy by the Latin Mendelssohn’s ingenious adjustments years but found the impetus when the writer Terence, The Woman of Andros. of relative textural weights and registers philanthropist Paul Sekhri commissioned It was in grateful response to this work, almost anticipate later experiments him to write a work for Daniel Barenboim Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org which shows the influence of Goethe’s with spatial music. The vast opening and the Boulez Ensemble, who gave the premiere in January 2019.

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20 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 21 CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE FIRE, METAL, AND PRAISE

The title Nur inspired Pintscher because Steve Reich once observed. Within the oral tradition among Jews in the West of its many layers of meaning. Nur is a rich spectrum of those non-Western for singing Psalms has been lost. (It has transliteration of the ancient Hebrew word musical sources can be found Ghanaian been maintained by Yemenite Jews.) for “fire” ( ) which, he points out, is a drumming, Balinese gamelan, and the This meant that I was free to compose root shared by Arabic ( ) — where it Sephardic music he encountered in the the melodies for Tehillim without a living also appears as the name (male or female) mid-1970s in Israel. oral tradition to either imitate or ignore.” Noor. The title is meant to represent Handclapping, rattles, tuned tambourines “various forms of fire, all sorts of states.” The last involved a fresh encounter with without jingles, and small pitched cymbals Reich’s own roots and has born fruit are the closest analogues he uses to Nur is not so much a piano concerto as a in numerous compositions that reflect instruments that would have made music “dialogue between this metallic instrument on the meaning of Jewish tradition and in the Biblical period. “Beyond this, there and what it elicits in the sonic realm of philosophy. Tehillim, premiered in 1981, is no musicological content to Tehillim. the orchestra,” as the composer explains: is the first of these — and Reich’s first No Jewish themes were used for any of metal and its shadow. “The piano rises piece incorporating voices since the mid- the melodic materials.” The rhythms of the up from this acoustically dark space” in 1960s, when he experimented with taped texts suggest the musical rhythms. the opening and reaches, at the center, a material. Here, he scores for four female moment “where the ash speaks” — this is voices plus chamber ensemble (with For the first text, Reich implements a “what remains after the fire, in fine, tender, voices, winds, and strings amplified). sequence of canons leading up to all four “We are sorry as well, especially for those who will isolated little spots. The music returns voices in canon on each of the text’s four miss out on the potentially life changing experiences Referring to the Biblical Psalms attributed to the point where silence is the actual verses. A transition on the drum leads to that happen almost every year.” event.” to David, Tehillim literally means “praises,” two- or three-voice harmony for Psalm Reich explains, adding that the word 34, with English horn, clarinet, drums, —ROB AND NANCY STEWART In the final section, the piano’s “metallic derives from the same three-letter Hebrew and clapping interwoven into the texture. “ brilliance” comes to the fore. As a whole, root as does “Hallelujah.” The work is The attention to melody here is inspired Nur evokes fire’s immemorial associations divided into four parts based, respectively by Reich’s experiences of Sephardic with myth, ritual, transformation — with on these Psalms (Hebrew sources are cantillation. the fire of artistic inspiration itself. followed by the equivalent Christian translations shown in parentheses): 19:2-5 The third part (Psalm 18), a slow A Hebrew title also graces Tehillim, a (19:1-4), 34:13-15 (34:12-14), 18:26-27 movement, is unusually chromatic and landmark composition in Steve Reich’s (18:25-26), and 150:4-6. begins as a duet between two of the long career. “Western music before 1750 voices. Ending with Psalm 150, Reich and from Debussy onwards, as well as jazz “One of the reasons I chose to set Psalms recapitulates ideas from the first three and non-Western music, are the sources as opposed to parts of the Torah or parts, returning to the opening tempo, from which I’ve drawn almost everything,” Prophets,” according to Reich, “is that the and ends with full ensemble for a setting of Halleluyah. —THOMAS MAY ”

Zalk Theater, Besant Hill School Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971) Uriel (2011-12)

Charles Ives (1874-1954) Ojai Dawns String Quartet No. 2 (1907-13)

JOHN CAGE String Quartet in Four Parts 1. Quietly Flowing Along Seasons of the Sublime 2. Slowly Rocking 3. Nearly Stationary 4. Quodlibet In 1946, just one year before the Ojai The Sonatas and Interludes for prepared But within this familiar, four-movement Calder Quartet Music Festival was founded, John Cage piano explored what Cage called the context, Cage’s sound world is alien and Benjamin Jacobson violin had a life-changing encounter with “‘permanent emotions’ of Indian tradition often bewildering. The material comprises Tereza Stanislav violin the Indian singer and tabla player Gita … and their common tendency toward a kind of palette (Cage called it a “gamut”) Jonathan Moerschel viola Sarabhai. “She was concerned about the tranquility.” He turned to the Hindu of fixed sonorities, organized in advance, Eric Byers cello influence Western music was having on understanding of the annual cycle in his each of which remains unchanged each traditional Indian music, and she’d decided 1947 ballet The Seasons (with Lou Harrison time it recurs. The light bowing and lack MATTHIAS PINTSCHER Uriel to study Western music for six months contributing his efforts as an orchestrator). of vibrato he requests result in a weirdly Eric Byers cello with several teachers and then return to In String Quartet in Four Parts, composed archaic, not-quite-early-music sound. Kevin Kwan Loucks piano India to do what she could to preserve the between 1949 and 1950 and dedicated Indian traditions,” Cage wrote. He offered to Harrison, Cage again used the cycle of If such austere melodies generate an aura to teach her for free if she would in turn seasons as understood in Hinduism as a of calm illumination, Matthias Pintscher’s CHARLES IVES String Quartet No. 2 (Calder) help him understand Indian music. framework, tracing the phases of creation, Uriel is “about resonances, about the 1. Discussions (Andante moderato-Andante con spirito-Adagio molto) preservation, destruction, and quiescence inward and outward givens of existence, 2. Arguments (Allegro con spirito) The mutual exchange left a profound mark (which are associated with spring, about life itself,” as he observes. Hebrew 3. The Call of the Mountains (Adagio-Andante-Adagio) on Cage, who was coping with personal summer, fall, winter, respectively). Cage’s titles are found throughout his oeuvre — crisis during these years. When Sarabhai as with bereshit and nur, both of which Calder Quartet plan begins with summer and proceeds introduced him to the Gospel of Sri through the cycle, ending with spring. are part of the programming of this year’s Ramakrishna, the effect was so powerful Festival — though Uriel is also recognized that it “took the place of psychoanalysis,” Cage traveled to Europe in 1949 — where in English as one of the principal figures he remarked. Cage recalled that from he met and was initially championed by in the hierarchy of angels — described by Sarabhai he learned that “the purpose of Pierre Boulez — and started composing Milton as the “sharpest sighted spirit in all music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus the quartet while in Paris during the of Heaven” and cast as a tenor narrator in making it susceptible to divine influences.” summer: hence, the work begins with Haydn’s Creation. Along with aesthetic and metaphysical the season of “preservation.” The tempo ideas from Hinduism, Cage also continued seems to slow down gradually to near The Hebrew word itself means “light of to explore his ongoing interest in Zen stasis for the third part (winter) and then God.” The archangel Uriel is additionally Buddhism and its concepts of silence and suddenly quickens for the season of associated with “God’s fire,” the sun, mindfulness. creative renewal, spring. illumination, and artistic inspiration. Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org

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24 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 25 CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE SEASONS OF THE SUBLIME

Pintscher wrote Uriel in 2011-12 but later he says. Pintscher chose the cello as a Annoyed by what he perceived as the made it the final panel in a chamber highly suitable instrument for depicting affected refinement of the classical triptych he calls Profiles of Light. The cycle such existential conditions” — mediating European tradition of quartet playing, Ives begins with Now I, a work for solo piano in between the inward and outward produced one of his most challenging, homage to his great mentor Pierre Boulez illumination signified by the angel. most maverick creations in the Second on his 90th birthday, and Now II for solo Quartet. He composed it between 1911 cello (both from 2015). Following Cage’s elate stasis and and 1913 but drew on earlier material; Pintscher’s exquisite, visionary dialogue the work was not premiered until 1946 at The names of all three pieces derive between cello and piano, Charles Ives’s Juilliard. from the work of the American abstract Second String Quartet stages a stunning expressionist Barnett Newman. His essay range of confrontations. The composer Woven into the score, as expected The Sublime Is Now points to the ways in supplied a terse program of his own: “Four with Ives, is an abundance of musical which American abstract artists “free from men — who converse, discuss, argue quotations, both vernacular American the weight of European culture” (in 1947) (in re ‘Politick’), fight, shake hands, shut tunes and the flotsam of Old World reassert the “natural desire for the exalted.” up — then walk up the mountainside to tradition (Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”) — all view the firmament.” Along the way, their set against a sinewy atonal background. Pintscher, an avid collector of visual art, discourse is a far remove from Goethe’s The final, transcendent movement in was especially drawn to the essence “conversation between four reasonable, particular sets a snippet from Tchaikovsky’s “It saddens us to miss this year’s event, however, we understand Newman distills in his painting Uriel intelligent people.” Pathétique against “Nearer My God to the need to cancel it. The efforts the organization puts into its (1955): “The closer Newman got to death, Thee.” the more luminous his work became,” success pales in the face of our humble contribution.” —THOMAS MAY “ —RAFFI AND MYRNA MESROBIAN ”

Libbey Bowl J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major, BWV 1049 (completed in 1721)

Olga Neuwirth (b. 1968) GYÖRGY LIGETI Concerto for Piano and Orchestra Aello – ballet mécanomorphe (2017) I. Vivace molto ritmico e preciso II. Lento e deserto III. Vivace cantabile IV. Allegro risoluto Swerving In and Out of Time V. Presto luminoso Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) Hidéki Nagano piano In a beautiful obituary she wrote for In the wake of his sole opera Le Grand Ligeti meanwhile persevered in several Matthias Pintscher conductor Pierre Boulez in 2016, Olga Neuwirth Macabre (he called it an “anti-anti-opera”), stages with the Piano Concerto. recalls being captivated by his “musical which premiered in 1978, Ligeti — always After unveiling his first version in the personality” while still a teenager growing skeptical of dogma and systematic traditional three-movement format in J.S. BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major, BWV 1049 up in the Austrian provinces. She found approaches — endured a creative dry 1986, he concluded that it “demanded Allegro inspiration not only in his music but spell during which he struggled with continuation” and added two more Andante in Boulez’s “uttermost conviction that finding his way forward. The Jewish- movements, with the fourth now serving Presto we are living in the here and now and Hungarian composer ceased to produce as the conceptual center of the whole Ojai Music Festival Ensemble that we must think and write music any significant new works, though he work. This final version was first performed accordingly, while countering cynicism continued making, as he put it, “hundreds in 1988. Ligeti considered the result no and indifference.” of sketches, only to abandon them.” less than a statement of his “artistic credo” OLGA NEUWIRTH Aello – ballet mécanomorphe During this period, he was hard at work showing his “independence from criteria EIC How does the endeavor to write music on a commission for a piano concerto. of the traditional avant-garde, as well as Matthias Pintscher conductor that acknowledges our “living in the Its genesis cost enormous creative toil — the fashionable postmodernism.” here and now” play out in a context and opened the way to a way out of his that’s as self-conscious about traditions dilemma. The Piano Concerto realizes what Ligeti and historical connections as classical called “new concepts of harmony and music? The program Matthias Pintscher By the 1980s, the postwar avant-garde’s rhythm.” One of his students, the Puerto has designed for this concert presents utopian idealism had mostly faded, while Rican composer Roberto Sierra, sparked examples both by Neuwirth and by György the emerging ideology of post-modernism his fascination with different kinds of Ligeti, another leading figure of the Boulez seemed, to Ligeti, to encourage a rhythmic complexity from Latin American generation whose music shares her spirit reactionary if not cynical stance of bad and African cultures. These impulses set of unpredictable imagination and fondness faith: this was the past recuperated as the stage in the opening movement, in for what the absurd can disclose. The commodity. Ligeti did refocus his lens on which Ligeti splits the ensemble into two idea of the concerto itself, around which the past, but with characteristic originality parts, each playing a different meter. The this program revolves, ranks among the and quirkiness, in ways that are thrillingly Concerto exploits “illusory rhythmics most enduring genre conventions in unsettling. His Horn Trio of 1982, for and illusory melody,” as Ligeti defines the classical art music — and has proved to example, is an explicit homage to the trompe l’oreille effects of individual layers be inexhaustible precisely through the template Brahms created, while at the that, in concert, cause us to hear patterns Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org innovations, the infusion of the “here and same time a creative swerving from the that are not actually written in the score. now,” by composers such as Neuwirth source (to borrow the literary critic Harold Similarly, Ligeti is fond of tricking the ear and Ligeti. Bloom’s term). with counterintuitive instrumentation (high

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28 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 29 CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE a chamber violin concerto, as Bach new music champion Claire Chase. The Harpies associated with storms, who SWERVING IN AND OUT OF TIME assigns much virtuosity to the solo violin, part, which calls for flute and, in the final would torment victims while leading them with its two wind companions offering movement, bass flute, involves a repertoire to the Underworld. That, however, is her encouragement. of unusual tone productions, attacks, and reputation from a biased male perspective. “Musical illusions which I consider to be instruments playing in low register and assigned to respond to Brandenburg even jet whistling. In Neuwirth’s view, Aello is “someone sent also so important are not a goal in itself for vice versa) and unexpected sounds from Concerto No. 4. (The other five Premiered in 2018, Aello – ballet by the gods to restore peace, if necessary me, but a foundation for my aesthetical the ocarina and slide whistle. composers include Uri Caine, Brett Dean, mécanomorphe at first suggests a direct Neuwirth also transforms the soundscape with force, and to exact punishment for attitude. I prefer musical forms which Anders Hillborg, Steven Mackey, and Mark bridge between the musical past and of the continuo, whose function in Bach is crimes.” Similarly, the “macho” persona of have a more object-like than processual Still another inspiration comes from the Anthony Turnage.) the “here and now” — Brandenburg to provide harmonic scaffolding. Intrigued Baroque trumpets is tamed and Dada-fied character. Music as ‘frozen’ time, as an ground shared between science and art Concerto No. 4 is, after all, its model, by a phrase (attributed to the French through muting. The entire ensemble and object in imaginary space evoked by music — which is the case for Neuwirth as well. Bach’s revered collection was apparently formally and thematically as well as in writer Colette) that Bach sounds like “a trio of soloists, meanwhile, are tuned to in our imagination, as a creation which Ligeti delighted in computer simulations never even heard by their namesake, who terms of instrumentation. Yet Neuwirth celestial sewing machine,” she makes the four different pitches. really develops in time, but in imagination of the Julia and Mandelbrot fractal sets. lacked the richly varied musical resources “swerves” from all of these parameters harpsichord into a multiple-personality it exists simultaneously in all its moments. The fourth movement emulates such and virtuoso musicians needed to realize in wonderfully unexpected ways. small band of its own comprising a subtly While echoes of the Bach source clearly The spell of time, the enduring its passing “self-similar” structures on a poetic level them. Familiar as they have become, Investigating what Bach may have meant amplified, classic Olivetti Lettera 22 emerge, they do so in the way dreams are by, closing it in a moment of the present is — becoming a metaphor for the general the Brandenburg Concertos themselves by fiauti d’echo, she found a strange typewriter, a reception bell, a water-filled recalled. What may sound at one point like my main intention as a composer.” principle of remaking and renewing the subvert and interrogate the conventions double-pipe instrument that led to the glass, a mechanical milk frother, and a carnivalesque parody suddenly swerves past, what is given, in the here and now: that had grown up around what was then idea of using a pair of muted trumpets — synthesizer. into the “celestial” and mysterious — and —GYÖRGY LIGETI “always new but however of the same,” the still-young genre of the Baroque one regular, one piccolo. (The trumpet the uncanny. The flute-goddess walks per Ligeti. Overall, the Piano Concerto concerto in three movements (fast- was Neuwirth’s instrument when she These “modern mechanicals” in turn are a tightrope, leading us along a path that represents his “main intention as a slow-fast). While the concertmaster had was growing up.) In another identity evoked by the Dadaist subtitle (worthy of touches on childhood memories, cultural composer”: to convey “the spell of time, emerged as the expected virtuoso soloist transformation, she turns the violin, Ligeti), a “ballet in the form of a machine.” ambiguity, and fresh-eyed wonder. the enduring its passing by, closing it in a for a concerto, “a whole concerto is now with its leading role, into a “super-flute,” Aello, by contrast, is a mythic-poetic —THOMAS MAY moment of the present.” to be dominated by two violas, or two originally tailored to the virtuosa and allusion to one of the three ancient Greek flutes, or even by the harpsichord,” notes Olga Neuwirth’s Aello – ballet Dausgaard. “Hierarchy has been dissolved mécanomorphe originated as part and an alternative world-order presented.” of the “Bach Brandenburg Project” commissioned by the Swedish Chamber No. 4 in G Major is scored for strings Orchestra and the Danish conductor and continuo and three soloists: violin Thomas Dausgaard. The project set out and a pair of fiauti dolci or flauti d’echo to present a contemporary counterpart (possibly treble recorders) — a much- to the group of six concertos that J.S. debated phrase whose interpretation Bach presented in 1721 to the Margrave played a key role in Neuwirth’s choice of Brandenburg-Schwedt (half-brother of instrumentation for her new work. of Friedrich I of Prussia). Neuwirth was The outer movements behave like

Libbey Bowl Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) sur Incises (1995-98)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Serenade in B-flat Major, K. 361/370a (“Gran Partita”) I. Largo. Molto Allegro II. Menuetto III. Adagio. Andante IV. Menuetto. Allegretto A Twitch Upon the Thread V. Romance. Adagio VI. Tema con variazioni. Andante VII. Finale. Molto Allegro Paths, cycles, labyrinths: the geometries concertos, quartets. Above all in his that respect, the “Gran Partita” invokes Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic traced by a composition shape our final decade, each fresh foray into a characteristics of the Salzburg serenade. experience of the music that is expressed given genre is unique, implying a kind of Biographer Maynard Solomon describes moment by moment. The linear pattern of commentary on what preceded it. the image this prototype conjures as PIERRE BOULEZ sur Incises beginning, middle, and end — otherwise one of “plenitude, springing from an Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) construed as exposition, adventure, The same thing happens in the Serenade overflowing abundance of unsullied reprise with a coda — found favor with the in B-flat Major, though in this case its idealism as yet untouched by any hints of Viennese Classical mindset of Mozart and predecessors belong to a messy category morbidity, cynicism, or disillusionment … his peers. — alongside divertimentos, cassations, imbued with an innocent utopianism, a and the like — mostly associated with the faith in perfectibility, beauty, and sensual For Pierre Boulez, the quest for perfection business of entertainment. The nickname fulfillment.” led him to continually revise, to consider “Gran Partita” (actually misspelled “Gran multiple points of entry, expanding an Parttita” on the manuscript, where it By the time he resettled in Vienna for idea into labyrinthine complexity with was clearly added by a hand other than a riskier but more liberated way of life no definable end. As he once observed: the composer’s) represents just one of as a freelance artist, Mozart turned his “The most tempting situation is to create several interesting puzzles about the focus to the more formally sophisticated a labyrinth from another labyrinth, to work. It predates the work catalogue demands of other genres. Yet he returned superimpose one’s own labyrinth on the Mozart began keeping in 1784, though on several occasions to the serenade labyrinth of the composer.” the only record of its performance comes and with K. 361/370a created one of the from that year, when his clarinetist friend most stirringly beautiful and texturally The way through a labyrinth is to Anton Stadler joined a dozen other adventurous works of his entire career. continually adapt to its shifting musicians to play four of the serenade’s perspectives, as in any confrontation of seven movements. (The actual year Mozart wrote it as a chamber wind the present with the past. The labyrinth of composition has been the topic of serenade but with an unusual luxuriance is proliferation, so that no single point fascinating musicological sleuthing, with of clarinets and the odd addition of a of view can be central. Ariadne’s thread 1782 proposed as a plausible though not string instrument. (The scoring is for pairs continues to unspool, never running out. conclusive date.) of oboes, clarinets, basset horns — a kind of clarinet with a deeper register — and Something of this urge to see what lies Mozart’s youthful serenades from his bassoons, along with a horn quartet and a Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org around the corner seems to motivate Salzburg years were clearly written as single double bass). Mozart’s continual return to the occasional pieces — for weddings or finished forms that attracted him most: other notable public ceremonies. In instrumentally, the many symphonies,

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32 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 33 CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE A TWITCH UPON THE THREAD

This is the last of Mozart’s wind serenades fact, Incises itself adapted a musical idea and the steel drums evoke “a prepared and weaves symphonic aspects into the spelling Sacher’s name (as transcribed into piano.” Boulez also uses strategic spatial breezier, more fancy-free genre of the the notes E-flat—A—C—B—E—D), which positioning of the players to highlight the past — much as the earlier serenade style Boulez had introduced in Messagesquisse shifting textures: as the music ricochets persists in certain movements of the later for his 70th birthday in 1976. between groups, “you see what you hear.” instrumental music and even in moments of the late operas, as Solomon observes, sur Incises went through various The percussion instruments and harps, “wherever [Mozart] seeks to represent expansions and revisions into the explains the composer, “are at times currents of nostalgia, elegy, and longing by vast, scintillating structure we hear for completely integrated and sometimes employing what [has been referred to as] an ensemble of nine musicians. The play only a minor role.” In one section, ‘the artifacts of temps perdu.’” composer continued to refer to it as a “the pianos play an elaborate ostinato “work-in-progress.” passage, thus a very strict compositional Something of that longing inspired the structural form while the percussionists unforgettable scene in the 1984 film The number three plays a determinative simultaneously play very free figures. But Amadeus, when Salieri first encounters the role, beginning with three groups of three you also find moments when this role play music of Mozart as he listens with mingled players each: three pianos, three harps, is divided up, such that one piano and awe and envy to the third-movement and three percussionists playing tuned one percussionist play the free structures Adagio: “This was a music I’d never heard. instruments. Boulez initially had in mind while the other pianos and percussionists “We often talk about good memories in Ojai. We hope Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable “a kind of piano concerto” for Maurizio must follow the strict ostinato movement we can visit the town, listen to the music festival, and Pollini “although without reference to the longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to … Another attractive aspect is that at see our favorite people in Ojai again!” me that I was hearing a voice of God.” traditional form,” he recalled. Stravinsky’s times you encounter very quick changes use of four percussive pianos in Les noces followed by sections of continuous —MIHO AND JOSHUA SAKON sur Incises — written specifically for the was among his sonic models. instrumental combinations.” “ musicians of EIC — similarly occupies a lofty position in the Boulez canon. A prime A good deal of the work’s fascination Wanting to do away with “the idea of exemplar of the composer’s labyrinthine lies in Boulez’s endlessly inventive compartments in a work,” Boulez refers creativity, it proliferated from a brief, combinations and juxtapositions to the example of Proust, “where you find occasional work: Incises for solo piano, of texture. The instrumental cast that the narration is continuous.” Even which was written for the contestants of characters dramatizes a kind of though Proust’s great novel is divided into in the 1994 Umberto Micheli Piano deconstruction of the piano as sound- chapters, “the work has to be read in one Competition in Milan. Boulez defined producing object, which is then go. That is one of my main goals in music “Incise” as “a rhythmic unit of several “reassembled,” as the musicologist (for large works). I don’t want any breaks notes analogous to a motif.” In 1996 he Wolfgang Fink observes: “the harps in the music, but you can introduce new expanded to Incises as a birthday gift represent the piano strings, while the ideas and abandon some other ideas, like for the music patron Paul Sacher’s 90th resonators of the bells, vibraphone, and the characters in a novel.” birthday. The labyrinth is never linear: in marimba represent its soundboard” —THOMAS MAY ”

34 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 35 Matthias Pintscher (b.1971) J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Sunday, June 14, 2020 | 8:30am 4° quartetto d’archi (“Ritratto di Gesualdo”) (1992) Contrapunctus Nos. 1, 3, 4, and 9 from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 (1740s) Libbey Bowl Salvatore Sciarrino (b.1947) Gesualdo senza parole (a 400 anni dalla morte) (2013) Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) Mémoriale (…explosante-fixe… Originel)(1985)

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER 4° quartetto d’archi (“Ritratto di Gesualdo”) Calder Quartet Benjamin Jacobson violin Tereza Stanislav violin Jonathan Moerschel viola Counterpoints and Memorials Eric Byers cello

During uncertain times, “zero hour” chromaticism brings to mind the wildest, the music of Gesualdo, turning to a piece SALVATORE SCIARRINO Gesualdo senza parole (a 400 anni dalla morte) thinking becomes especially tempting. The most contorted images of Mannerist from Book III of his madrigals (published I. Libro III: XI. “Non t’amo” impulse to wipe the slate clean and start painters. in 1595): Sospirava il mio core (“My Heart II. Libro XIV: XI. “Sparge la morte” over from scratch can take the form of Sighed”). III. Libro VI: I. “Se la mia morte brami” Cartesian doubt — Philip Glass subtracting Gesualdo’s destabilizing harmonies and IV. Libro VI: II. “Beltà poi che t’assenti” his way down to the most fundamental depictions of melancholic extremes Pintscher’s response, from near the Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) elements of music — or it can be wrapped of pain represent his musical penance beginning of his compositional career, Matthias Pintscher conductor in Oedipal fantasies of slaying the father. — as the myth at least would have it. makes for intriguing contrasts and Pierre Boulez attacked one of the icons of His story has resonated widely among comparisons with the subtly gestural modern and contemporary artists. musical voice he has developed in his J.S. BACH Contrapunctus Nos. 1, 3, 4, and 9 from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 Modernism in “Schoenberg est mort,” his obituary-as-polemic, and later rhetorically “These strange products of a Counter- other works that would have been Calder Quartet declared that the great opera houses Reformation psychosis working upon a heard on this summer’s program. The should be destroyed. late medieval art form,” as Aldous Huxley poem’s images of sighs elicit Gesualdo’s PIERRE BOULEZ Mémoriale (…explosante-fixe… Originel) describes his music in The Doors of characteristically sensitive, almost over- But building bridges to the past can be Perception, also provide “a kind of bridge reactive, word painting, which Pintscher EIC as radical as burning them. Echoes that back to the human world … At least you in turn stretches to new extremes — “to Matthias Pintscher conductor re-emerged after centuries of oblivion aren’t lulled into a sense of false security the point of showing where ardent became recognized as “music of the by some merely human, merely fabricated expectation turns into obscurity and

future” with the rediscovery of Carlo order.” aloofness,” as the composer puts it. “The Gesualdo (1566-1613) by such figures as music draws its tension from states of Stravinsky. The intersection of scandalous In 1995, the year the filmmaker Werner flamboyant ecstasy and all-consuming crime with a profoundly original musical Herzog released his fictive “documentary” stupefaction, which occur in close voice in the case of Gesualdo continues on Gesualdo, Death for Five Voices, succession.” Pintscher manipulates the to exert its eerie fascination. Notorious Matthias Pintscher’s 4° quartetto d’archi source material through techniques to his contemporaries for murdering his (“Ritratto di Gesualdo” [“Portrait of that intensify, prolong, or isolate ideas in first wife and her adulterous lover in 1590, Gesualdo”]) was given its premiere by Gesualdo’s score. Gesualdo, also known as the Prince of the Auryn Quartet. Then in his early Venosa, later retreated to his castle in 20s, the young artist had increasingly Salvatore Sciarrino has interacted with the the countryside outside Naples — with taken to composing during his studies legacy of his late Renaissance compatriot Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org impunity, a privilege of his aristocratic as a conductor. He wrote his Fourth in a constellation of works, starting with status. There he continued to compose String Quartet in 1992 as “both a musical the preparations for his 1998 opera Luci madrigals and sacred music whose intense psychogram and a metamorphosis” of mie traditrici (“Oh My Deceitful Eyes”).

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36 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 37 CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE uses the Latin term “Contrapunctus” corresponding to B-A-C-H) but was the piece,” writes the Boulez authority COUNTERPOINTS AND MEMORIALS for the compendium’s sequence of 13 left incomplete upon the composer’s Jonathan Goldman, “the gulf between the completed fugues (unaccompanied by death. This ramification in the direction pure sound of the horns and the veiled preludes, as they are in the WTC). These of increasing complexity is a hallmark of sound of the fluttering flute is traversed, When he learned that Russian composer face” instead of enhancing the status of “a This stunning simultaneity of voices and arrangements for string quartet — Bach’s Pierre Boulez’s oeuvre. Mémoriale belongs and the difference in the two sonorities, Alfred Schnittke was also working on a relic.” Gesualdo’s visionary music of pain eras might be seen as an elaboration of score specifies no instrumentation but to a group of works the French composer on the acoustic level, is bridged.” Gesualdo-inspired opera — the Prince and ecstasy is filtered by a contemporary the art of counterpoint — the musical was likely intended for the harpsichord — derived from a two-page score he of Venosa haunts several music theater sensibility, but its strangeness and mystery miracle that allows multiple voices to be include excerpts from Sections One (Nos. published in Tempo magazine as a tribute Written in 1985, Mémoriale involves an works of the past two decades — Sciarrino are not familiarized. heard without the domination of one. 1, 3, and 4) and Three (No. 9). The Art of to Stravinsky following the latter’s death in additional layer of commemoration, as substituted a similarly salacious love- What might seem doomed to chaotic Fugue proceeds in order of increasing 1971. Originally published as ... explosante- Boulez dedicated it to the young principal murder scenario from the same period. With the minutest precision and attention entropy becomes glorious architecture, complexity, all the while treating the fixe … but without instrumentation, Boulez flutist of the Ensemble intercontemporain, But he has remained spellbound by to the fragility of his soundscapes, nowhere more so brilliantly than in J.S. same D minor theme. No. 1 presents a experimented with acoustic and electronic the Canadian Larry Beauregard, who had Gesualdo’s musical language, by how he Sciarrino deploys his ensemble of three Bach’s final summa,The Art of Fugue. paradigmatic four-voice fugue on the mixtures in several later elaborations, recently died at the age of 28. Further foreshadows a future that came to be winds, three strings, and percussion Advancing on such similarly encyclopedic theme, while No. 3 and the considerably eventually arriving at the large-scale connecting the chain of “memorials” is the without any direct links back to him. — according a prominent role to an projects as the two books of The Well- longer No. 4 flip the theme on its back work of that title for solo midi flute and fact that Stravinsky had commemorated enlarged marimba (marimbone) — in Tempered Clavier and The Musical (an “inversion”). In No. 9, Bach combines ensemble in the 1990s. Debussy — who himself used the flute Gesualdo senza parole (“Gesualdo countlessly surprising ways. The effect is Offering, The Art of Fugue, which Bach the theme with an impetuous new theme to invoke his Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Without Words”) was composed for the of a seance, or perhaps an act of musical began in 1742 and worked on up until in a form of counterpoint classified as a Mémoriale grew from the solo flute part faune, which Boulez regarded as the Freiburg-based ensemble recherche in ventriloquism, as Gesualdo appears to his death eight years later, spans the double fugue. However fascinating his that made up the section titled Originel “origin” of modern music. But Stravinsky’s 2013 to mark the 400th anniversary of speak the language of late Beethoven, of universe of counterpoint as it was known thematic transformations, the interstices in Boulez’s first working-out of the tribute sounds “extremely different” from Gesualdo’s death. Sciarrino made a kind Romantic lieder, or of the avant-garde at the time: from its origins in simple and counter-themes that bridge the abstract Tempo source. Scored for solo Debussy’s musical universe. Similarly, of suite from his purely instrumental Sicilian Sciarrino himself. Most startling is imitation and canon to levels of dazzling way exhibit a remarkable art of transition flute and an octet of two horns, three Mémoriale is an homage whose hints versions of four madrigals (one each from the last madrigal, Beltà poi che t’assenti super-complexity. alongside the art of fugue. violins, two violas, and cello, it expands of the musical past (Stravinsky, Varèse, Books III and IV and two from Book VI, (“Beauty, Since You Have Consented”), with tremendous refinement on a core Messiaen) are subliminal. From this which was published in 1611). These go whose unmoored, chromatic sidesteps The formal discipline of “fugueing” already Intended as the capstone to this seven-note figure (Eb-G-D-Ab-Bb-A-E) palimpsest of memories emerges the beyond the category of “arrangements,” would be at home in the score of Tristan seemed “old-fashioned” to his peers, magnificent edifice, the final piece in as many sections, gravitating toward unmistakable voice of Boulez. and they involve more than a subjective und Isolde. Stravinsky also incorporated but Bach’s mastery of counterpoint has (Contrapunctus No. 14) was envisioned Eb (standing for Stravinsky’s initial, “S,” —THOMAS MAY re-interpretation of Gesualdo’s music this source into his ballet Monumentum repeatedly spurred his successors on to as a quadruple fugue (on four themes, in the German convention of pitch by his 21st-century successor. Sciarrino pro Gesualdo commemorating the make unprecedented breakthroughs in the last being a coded signature nomenclature). “Over the course of observes that his concept of transcription composer’s 400th birthday. their own art. Bach’s manuscript score resembles the “revelation of a new virtual

Libbey Bowl Frank Zappa (1940-1993) The Perfect Stranger (1982)

Gustav Mahler (arr. Glenn Cortese) (1860-1911) Das Lied von der Erde (1908-09; this arrangement: 2006) EDGARD VARÈSE Octandre I. Assez lent II. Très vif et nerveux III. Grave-Animé et jubilatoire Strange Familiarities Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC)

FRANK ZAPPA The Perfect Stranger The urge to look to Europe for validation end of his too-short life, by the Frankfurt- adds unusual instrumentation to the mix EIC is a recurring thread in American art. Yet based Ensemble Modern (which gave a (including a single string, double bass — an Matthias Pintscher conductor already by the turn of the last century, the long-overdue performance of Zappa’s instrument Mozart himself included in his gaze was being returned with a special final project,The Yellow Shark, at the 2010 “Gran Partita” Serenade). fervor of its own. Dvořák’s “Symphony Ojai Festival). GUSTAV MAHLER Das Lied von der Erde (arr. Glenn Cortese) from the New World” ranks among the But this is a far cry from Stravinskian Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde” (“The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow”) most famous examples. Late in 1907, The trajectory between Old and New neoclassicism, even though Octandre Der Einsame im Herbst (“The Solitary One in Autumn”) Gustav Mahler set sail for New York, which Worlds was never a simply linear one. stands apart from Varèse’s body of Von der Jugend (“Of Youth”) could become home base for most of Varèse left Europe for New York during work as the only piece he divides into Von der Schönheit (“Of Beauty”) his final three years. Mahler had just been the chaos of the First World War and discrete movements. Solos from different Der Trunkene im Frühling (“The Drunkard in Spring”) confronted by a series of overwhelming became a dynamo in the new music instruments initiate each of these (oboe, Der Abschied (“The Farewell”) crises. America beckoned with the scene. The title Amériques (completed piccolo, and bassoon, respectively). And in 1921 but not premiered until 1926) though this is the only piece Varèse scored Tamara Mumford mezzo-soprano promise of new beginnings. — his first major work since coming to without percussion, Octandre displays Andrew Staples tenor Edgard Varèse would within less than a America — hints at the abundance of his his signature focus on sonic color as the EIC decade trace a path similar to Mahler’s. impressions of New York as an exhilarating true source of musical interest — even Matthias Pintscher conductor Still back in Europe, the ambitious young symphony of street noises, sirens, in the counterpoint of the “animated composer even met with Mahler in 1909 foghorns, and construction projects. and jubilant” final section. The number to ask for his support. The older master eight — the botanical title refers to was sufficiently impressed to write a Varèse, declared John Cage, “fathered flowers that have eight stamens — is also letter to a Vienna colleague, in which he forth noise into 20th-century music,” and determinative. suggested that the young Frenchman “will Boulez also became a major advocate. interest you greatly.” But not even the radical Amériques Controversially, Boulez limited the exiled all thoughts of Europe, to which repertoire of American composers the composer returned for a period he conducted; he made full-length Fast forward to mid-century, when the starting in 1928. Allusions to Debussy recordings of the music of only two: self-taught Frank Zappa — then a high and the Stravinsky of The Rite of Spring Elliott Carter and Frank Zappa. Even during school student in San Diego — was abound in this score. Varèse composed the experiment-happy golden age of feeding his insatiable musical curiosity Octandre two years later, in 1923 — rock, Zappa stood out with his flair for Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org with a fusion of blues, early rock and the year in which Stravinsky’s Octet innovation and what he termed “electrical roll, and European modernism, including announced a different kind of revolution chamber music.” He credited Boulez as whatever music of Varèse he could get in the unfolding saga of Modernism: the one of his influences on the cover of his hands on. Zappa’s ongoing fascination “anachronistic” reclamation of idioms Freak Out! — his debut album from 1966 with the avant-garde eventually led to his from the past. Varèse, for his part, alludes

embrace by Pierre Boulez and, near the to the serenade tradition of Mozart but CONTINUED }}

40 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 41 Listening to Das Lied von der Erde CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE STRANGE FAMILIARITIES The tempestuous life force dominates in “Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde” (“The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow”). with the Mothers of Invention. From his Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Mahler never had a chance to hear his vis-a-vis the full orchestral score. Each return of the tenor refrain is pitched side, Boulez remarked remarked that he Earth”) makes a radical shift in perspective meditations on finality:Das Lied was Mahler’s Eighth Symphony had marked higher. After the horn’s opening call, the found Zappa “extremely sympathetic and for Mahler toward the East — even if this first performed some six months after the first time he used the human voice upper strings play a three-note motif interesting” when they met in the early is an East delimited by contemporary his death in 1911. The leave-taking is all throughout. That work’s longest section that is the germ cell of the whole cycle 1980s. Boulez invited him to compose Western appropriation. It inaugurates the the more poignant in that Das Lied is sets the final scene of Goethe’sFaust , a (A-G-E). A sparer soundscape, in which for his Ensemble intercontemporain. first in a final trilogy of works (including infused with acute, poignant awareness locus classicus of the Western worldview the oboe has a prominent role, is unfolded The result was The Perfect Stranger, the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies) that of life’s joys as well — above all, of love. of striving individualism. When he took up in “Der Einsame im Herbst” (“The Solitary one of three tracks that appear on the address last things and the condition Musically, the complex chromaticism Das Lied two years later, in the summer One in Autumn”). 1984 album Boulez Conducts Zappa: of impermanence. Das Lied is often of Mahler’s style here gives way to the of 1908, it was from a drastically changed The Perfect Stranger (the other two described as the composer’s strategy to restraint of an Eastern pentatonic scale. perspective. Mahler poured out his The biographer Jens Malte Fischer being Naval Aviation in Art? and circumvent the “curse of the ninth” and At the same time, his exquisite blends and anguish in a letter to one of his protégés, compares the next three songs — the Dupree’s Paradise). cheat death soon after he had been made timbral contrasts mark a new phase in this Bruno Walter: “I have lost any calm and Impressionist “Von der Jugend” (“Youth”), aware of his own serious heart disease. masterful orchestrator’s ability to “create peace of mind I ever achieved. I confront “Von der Schönheit” (“Beauty”), and “Der Zappa’s note for The Perfect Stranger is But it also arguably contains the opera he an entire world” by building soundscapes. nothingness, and now, at the end of my Trunkene im Frühling” (“The Drunkard in as follows: never wrote: Yuval Sharon’s collaborative The score’s moments of chamber-like life, must learn again to walk and stand.” Spring”) — to the composer’s earlier lieder digital staging with the Los Angeles intimacy, a feature of the original for large Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the “in terms of their character and length.” A door-to-door salesman, Philharmonic two years ago posited a orchestra, are all the more arresting in Earth”) was crucial in Mahler’s process accompanied by his faithful gypsy- hidden narrative of lovers facing a final this arrangement by Glen Cortese. Mahler of learning to be reborn. He judged it to “Der Abschied” (“The Farewell”) is divided mutant industrial vacuum cleaner separation. considered his own version of Das Lied be “the most personal thing I have yet into three sections and includes a vast (as per the interior illustration on the for piano and voices to be equally valid created.” orchestral interlude before the final Chunga’s Revenge album cover), The immediate source for these texts section. Nearly as long as all that has —THOMAS MAY cavorts licentiously with a slovenly is Die chinesische Flöte (“The Chinese come before, “Der Abschied” is the most housewife. Flute”), a recently published anthology symphonic of the six movements in style poems attributed to the classical T’ang and scope. Here, for the first time in his We hear the door bell, the Dynasty poets Bai/Li Bo (701-761), Qian Qi work, Mahler introduces the sound of housewife’s eyebrows going up (710-782), Meng Haoran (c. 689-740) , and the celesta: “The dear earth everywhere/ and down as she spies the nozzle Wang Wei (699-759). But the connection blossoms in spring and grows green through the ruffled curtain, the sound to these sources is tenuous: all of the anew!/Everywhere and forever blue is the of the little bag of “demonstration poems were translated by a German horizon!/ Forever … Forever …” dirt” being sprinkled on the rug, and poet, Hans Bethge, who himself knew no assorted bombastic interjections Chinese but had worked from secondary representing the spiritual qualities sources. Mahler chose seven of the of chrome, rubber, electricity, and poems, two of which are linked together household tidiness. The entire in “Der Abschied”; he also altered a few transaction is being viewed from a lines to suit his purpose. In short: these safe distance by Patricia, the dog in texts are filtered through a fin-de-siècle the highchair. European lens.

Libbey Bowl Angélica Negrón (b. 1981) Triste Silencio Programático (2002)

Steve Reich (b. 1936) A Concert for Ojai Drumming (1971)

GABRIELA ORTIZ Lío de 4 A Concert for Ojai: Pulses and Patterns ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN Triste Silencio Programático Calder Quartet Benjamin Jacobson violin The 2020 Ojai Music Festival programs A generation younger and a native of second movement examines the dramatic Tereza Stanislav violin designed by Matthias Pintscher have Puerto Rico, Brooklyn-based Angélica contrast between light and shadow, Jonathan Moerschel viola alluded to numerous threads and Negrón is a composer and multi- while the third movement explores the Eric Byers cello connections, bridges and transitions — all instrumentalist who has received destabilized characters and their inner resulting in the enticingly varied menu accolades for her idiosyncratic use mind with their complex psychological of today’s scene. We’ve encountered of toys, electronics, and robotic states. Triste Silencio Programático is a STEVE REICH Drumming a mixture of leading European and instruments. One of her current projects, piece of music in black and white.” Joseph Pereira, Steve Reich and American composers, reflected on Pierre for National Sawdust, is Chimera, a Percussion All Stars Boulez and his ties to the natural setting work-in-progress she describes as “a lip It was during the 1966 Summer Festival of Ojai, and sampled from the legacy of sync opera for drag queen performers (programmed by Ingolf Dahl) that Steve figures from the post-Boulez generation and chamber ensemble exploring the Reich’s music made its Ojai debut: Michael like Olga Neuwirth, Unsuk Chin, and ideas of fantasy and illusion as well as the Tilson Thomas played his Two Fugues for Pintscher himself. The music of Steve intricacies and complexities of identity.” Piano. By an ironic coincidence, Boulez Reich completes this summer of creative paid his first visit to Ojai that same year. juxtapositions — and fills in a missing link Triste Silencio Programático (2002) is His inaugural season as music director between the realms of European and one of Negrón’s first compositions and followed in 1967, and Boulez would return American musical innovation. was inspired by the 1920 silent filmThe over the span of nearly four decades Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as well as by the as music director at Ojai more often But first, we turn to a pair of pieces by aesthetic of German Expressionist cinema. than any other artist. Yet he had a blind two other contemporary composers to Directed by Robert Wiene and written by spot for major contemporary American start off this Concert for Ojai. Based in her Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, Dr. Caligari composers. Dismissive of Minimalism in native Mexico City, where she grew up in a involves “an insane hypnotist [who] uses general, he never programmed any Reich. family devoted to the traditions of Mexican a somnambulist to commit a series of Yet the Ensemble intercontemporain, folk music, Gabriela Ortiz explores crimes,” the composer explains. “At that founded by Boulez himself, would later intersections between the realms of avant- time, I played violin and Celtic harp in commission Reich and won his admiration garde, jazz, and folk. Her opera Camelia a band called Sinestesia and one of our for its precision perfection in interpreting La Tejana: Only the Truth was presented earliest gigs was to compose and perform his music. by Long Beach Opera in 2013. Written a live score to go along with this film.” to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Completed in 1971 after a year of work, Festival artists’ bios and music playlists available at OjaiFestival.org Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Lío de 4 Triste Silencio Programático draws on Drumming is one of the acknowledged is a brief and playful piece that focuses some of the themes she wrote for this early masterpieces of Minimalism and on the potential of rhythmic elegance score. “The first movement focuses on a pivotal work in Reich’s development. and vitality. the dark mood of the film as well as On the surface, it must have seemed far the visual style with its unusual angles

and distorted sets,” writes Negrón. “The CONTINUED }}

44 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 45 Phase Music CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE Festival: Future Forward A CONCERT FOR OJAI: PULSES AND PATTERNS In the mid-1960s, Reich experimented with material he taped from an African American San Francisco street preacher removed from the concerns of Boulez Depending on the number of repeats that Let me add my voice of thanks to all of you for your continued The focus will be on a number of brilliant young composers who are named Brother Walter. He lined up and his fellow avant-gardists in Western are played in performance, Drumming support and your passionate engagement with the Ojai Music bringing such fresh new ideas and expression to American music, identical loops taped live from Brother Europe — with the exception of György lasts between 55 and 75 minutes and is Festival. I have been so touched to read the various messages of joined by a roster of vibrant artists and ensembles. My favorite Walter’s fire-and-brimstone speech-song Ligeti. Reich once referred to Ligeti as Reich’s longest composition. His unusual support and understanding from many of you about your own experiences at Ojai have been those of discovery, to encounter commentary on Noah and the Flood “the European composer who has best scoring calls for four tuned bongo drums, devotion to the Festival, made more pronounced by its absence this artists and works that I didn’t yet know I loved. I can promise you and played them back on two cheap understood both American and non- three marimbas, three glockenspiels, year. This time of separation reminds us vividly of the people and many happy discoveries as well as works of such central figures machines. By accident, the machines grew Western music.” and piccolo, plus an alto and a soprano; experiences we cherish the most. My own experiences at Ojai are of our time as Philip Glass, Louis Andriessen, Laurie Anderson, and slightly out of sync with each other as they whistling is also part of the soundscape, among the most precious memories, so I am so grateful and full Steve Reich. We will not neglect the Ojai tradition of unexpected continued playing from the same starting Reich’s teenage love of jazz — in contributed by one of the singers or a of joy to be taking on the role of Artistic Director, beginning next and fresh juxtapositions of older works, such as happens when point. This overlapping echo created particular, Kenny Clark’s artists with the percussionist. Reich recalls that the long month. Debussy meets Rameau, just to cite one example. fascinating rhythmic patterns in which Modern Jazz Quartet — led him to take decay of the marimba is what suggested the identical strands slowly separated as up percussion and form his own band. In the idea of incorporating women’s voices, A few weeks ago, I had the And let me just extend our horizon one year further to the 2022 they went out of phase and then came 1970, a few years after his breakthrough which sing the “sub-patterns” that result most wonderful phone Festival, when our Music Director will be the collective AMOC together again in cycles. By manipulating experiment with phase music [see sidebar], acoustically from this resonance. He conversation (yes, just plain (American Modern Opera Company), which is anything but an the phasing — multiplying the individual Reich traveled to Ghana to study the also compares the vocal patterns to Ella phone, no Zoom!) with our opera company but rather a cooperative among some of the strands and so forth — Reich found that indigenous drumming traditions of the Fitzgerald’s style of scat singing, which he 2021 Music Director, John most gifted artists to emerge in recent times. It is led by composer he could build a dense web that acquires Ewe people. Ligeti would follow his lead listened to often while exploring jazz in Adams from his home in Matthew Aucoin, whose Eurydice had a notable success at LA Opera a hallucinatory quality as it lifts the listener in the next decade, similarly drawing his early years. A similar process results in Berkeley, CA. We opened that recently, and director/choreographer Zack Winokur; the company outside ordinary time. inspiration from African sources. the whistling and piccolo patterns in the magical door that unlocks includes such favorite Ojai alum as soprano Julia Bullock, cellist Jay glockenspiel and final ensemble sections. when you have a destination Campbell, and bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Through close study with a master as creative and as welcoming drummer of the Ewe tribe in Accra and Notice the absence of bass instruments — of adventure as the Ojai The Ojai Festival lives! And we will continue to thrive with your his daily recording of lessons, Reich in fact, the first three parts of the four-part Music Festival. We quickly help. Join us virtually as we honor the spirit of the 2020 Festival familiarized himself with the patterns work spiral successively upward in timbre began trading ideas of artists, with newly created programming online. And then it’s only a matter and structures of African drumming. The until all of the forces join together in the composers, events, individual of time until we gather again in Libbey Park, the surrounding most important influence of his stay in fourth and final part. The whole work is works, and suddenly a festival began to take shape out of the air. mountains turn bewitchingly pink for a fleeting moment, the lights Africa, according to the composer, is that shaped from a single core pattern. As Given this season of disappointment and postponement in the come up on stage, and the 2021 Festival brings us all together. “it confirmed my intuition that acoustic Reich describes it: “Drumming begins world of the performing arts, talking with John was like breathing instruments could be used to produce with two drummers building up the basic oxygen again. —ARA GUZELIMIAN music that was genuinely richer in sound rhythmic pattern of the entire piece from Artistic Director Designate than that produced with electronic a single drum beat, played in a cycle of Next year, we celebrate our milestone 75th Ojai Festival. John has instruments.” Upon his return to the twelve beats with rests on all the other always been one to face forward, to seek new voices and new United States, he composed Drumming, beats. Gradually, additional drumbeats avenues of music. John’s career is full of extraordinary era-defining which was premiered by the Steve Reich are substituted for the rests, one at a works but his musical curiosity and sense of adventure keep him Ensemble at the Museum of Modern Art time, until the pattern is completed. The looking ahead. Although we both have huge reverence for the (in the film theater) in New York City in reduction process is simply the reverse, Festival’s history, John is eager to turn to a new generation in 1971. where rests are gradually substituted this newest incarnation of this Festival we both love. This festival for the beats, one at a time, until only will have a distinctly American voice, with a particular rooting in a section leads to a build-up for the California as is only fitting for such an anniversary. We come home drums, marimbas, and glockenspiels to Ojai. simultaneously.”

—THOMAS MAY

46 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 47 2019-2020 Annual Giving Contributors 2019-2020 Annual Giving Contributors

THANK YOU! In the midst of these unsettling times, we have a chance $50,000+ $5,000-$9,999 $1,000-$2,499 $500-$999 to reaffirm what is important in our lives. Our loved ones. Our health. Our The Estate of Carolyn Huntsinger Amphion Foundation Susan and Michael Addison + Catherine L Albanese + Ojai Festival Women’s Committee Ann and Olin Barrett + Betsy Atwater William Arnold + communities. And yes, powerful, innovative music. Ojai Music Festival Barbara Barry Karen Bailey + Scott Brinkerhoff + $25,000-$49,999 Margaret Bates and Scott Johnson + June and Shed Behar Alan Brock + donors supported planning for the 2020 Festival which could not be realized Marjorie Beale and William Meyerhoff + Beverlee Bickmore and Jim Kelly Cynthia Chapman and Neil Selman Carolyn and Jamie Bennett+ Susan Bienkowksi and Wang Lee Barbara and Bob Bragonier Cindy Collins due to the worldwide pandemic, a pivot to online performance archives Cathryn and Thomas Krause + Judy and Merrill Blau + Barbara and John Cummings Jane Deknatel and John Seddon Nancy and Barry Sanders + and education programming through the spring and summer, and future Evelyn and Stephen Block Michael Dunn + Robert Eaton + Jill and Bill Shanbrom Lily and Thomas Brod Scott Dunn Anne and James Edwards + Shanbrom Family Foundation + planning for the 75th Festival in June 2021. Your steadfast support has Pamela Burton and Richard Hertz + Dutch Culture USA Jennifer Fain Smith-Hobson Foundation Hyon Chough + Carol Ann Dyer Hung Y. Fan safeguarded musical creativity and adventure. We are grateful to you, Esther and Tom Wachtell + Jill Cohen and Norman Siderow + Betty and Robert Emirhanian + Susan Feder our Festival Family, for your vision and commitment. Barbara Delaune-Warren + Doris and Caleb Finch + Jain Fletcher $15,000-$24,999 Mary and William Duxler + Ronald L. Fleming Gloria and Tom Forgea Anonymous (2) Ruth Eliel and William Cooney + Caitlin and James Freeman Janet Greenberg and Mark Kempson + SUPPORT YOUR OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL Michele Brustin + Lennie and Bernie Greenberg + Fariba Ghaffari Caroline and Ralph Grierson + NancyBell Coe and Bill Burke + Mechas and Gregory Grinnell + Melissa Gorris Steven Halpern + ONLINE OjaiFestival.org Kathleen and James Drummy + Leslie Lassiter + Elizabeth A. Greenberg Katie and Jeff Haydon Kathleen and Jerrold Eberhardt + Raulee Marcus + Susan and Kim Grossman + Ian Hinchliffe CALL Joy Kimura or Anna Wagner at 805 646 2094 Fred Fisher and Jennie Prebor + Ida and Glenn Mercer + Naomi and Michael Inaba Eleanor Howells + Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation Anne and Stephen J.M. Morris + Diane and Louis Jackson Hannah and Marshall Kramer EMAIL [email protected] Daniel Lewis, Thomas W. and Jane Morris Judith and Howard Jelinek LA Phil Young Composers + [email protected] in honor of Ara Guzelimian and David Nygren + Ojai Valley School & Barbara Smith Fund Carol Krause Gerald McIntyre + David Nygren for World Musics Carole Lambert and Deborah Smith + Trisha and Todd Mills Ojai Civic Association Ann and Harry Oppenheimer Kathryn Lawhun and Mark Shinbrot + NIA Gilbert Fund Catherine and Barry Schifrin Linda and Ron Phillips Janet Levin and Frank Gruber + Judy Ovitz John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation Cheryl Lew + Peter Reynolds $10,000-$14,999 Ventura County Community Foundation Karen and Craig Lewis + Sandy and Richard Schulhof Gary L. Wasserman, Virginia and William Lincoln Lucinda Setnicka California Arts Council Wasserman Projects Fund Carolyn McNight and Rajeev Talwani + Richard Snyder + The Colburn Foundation Jane and Richard Weirick + Pamela Melone Edda Spielmann + Constance Eaton and William Hart Wilson Family Fund Myrna and Raffi Mesrobian + The Steele Family Stephan M. Farber, Susanne and Blake Wilson + Susan and Joseph Miller + Susan Suriyapa and Luca Ferrero + Sound Post Capital, LLC. + Charles Mosmann William Ulrich Michael Gorfaine, Victoria Nightingale + Sandra Wagner + Gorfaine-Schwartz Agency $2,500-$4,999 Cynthia Nunes and Barbara Nye + Jeanne Wanlass + Sharon McNalley + Marianne and A. A. Afifi + Joan Oliver Ralph E. Wiggen The Ojai Vineyards, Barbara Aran and Lawrence Hawley + Patagonia Zephyr Investment Management Helen and Adam Tolmach Kate and Barney Barnhart Christian Perry + Claire and David Oxtoby + Jean and John Berghoff + Frederick Peters + Pacific Harmony Foundation Kyle and Rodney Boone + Diana and Bijan Rezvani + Abby Sher and John May + Sandra Buechley + Sandy Robertson Maurice Singer + Diana Burman + Joyce Avery Robinson + Shelley and Gregory Smith Elisa and Eric Callow + Rotary Club of Ojai Bridget Tsao Brockman and Bruce Brockman Castagnola Family Fund, Helen and Justus Schlichting + Santa Fe Community Foundation + Richard Shafer City of Ojai Arts Commission Anita Rae Shapiro Jan Decker and Arnold Friedman + Emmanuel Sharef Ruth Gilliland and Arthur Rieman Jackie Sherman and Fred Rothenberg Ara Guzelimian and Janet Clough, Ruth Simon + in memory of Lawrence Morton Christine Steiner E.J. Harrison and Sons Rachel Ticotin and Peter Strauss Joan Kemper Patricia Toppell Marisa Silver and Ken Kwapis + Joseph Walker Tricia and Perry La Marca Nita Whaley and Don Anderson Stefanie Ann Lenway and Thomas Murtha + Limoneira Foundation Fund

+ includes 2020 ticket donations Dottie Loebl + includes 2020 ticket donations * deceased Geneva Martin and Patrick Garvey + * deceased Hope Tschopik Schneider + Christine Upton + Merrill L. Williams + Soni Wright CONTINUED }}

48 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 49 2019-2020 Annual Giving Contributors BRAVO Music Education Program

$250-$499 $150-$249 $149 and under A Year in Review Lisa and John Adair Jeannine and George Cobb Joy Atrops-Kimura and Greg Kimura Joyce and Ron Allin Robert Eisler Harry E. Baldwin Lisa and Leslie Anderson + Maudette and Frank Finck Rosalyn Bloch As a response to the Patricia and Martin Angerman Rachel Fine and Christopher Hawthorne Susan Bloom COVID-19 pandemic and the BRAVO BY THE NUMBERS Anonymous + Andreas Georgi + Susan Boiko and Martin Schwartz Ojai Unified School District 2,335 Children served Ginny Atherton Barry Gold Caryn and Charles Bosson closure in the spring, the Linda and Robert Attiyeh + Nancy Hill + Suzanne Casey 540 Workshops presented Kay Austen + Jill and Gerben Hoeksma William Clark + BRAVO music education Richard Bentley + Terry Hoffman + Nova Clite program immediately 15,160 Year-round direct experiences Marsha Berman Louie Hopkins and Douglas Mirk Ross Conner and Emmett Carlson “answered the call” to Rex Boone William Ireland Peter Corrigan Priscilla Lambert Brennan Ana Kozak Sheila and Stephen Cox + continue bringing quality Joseph Bullock + Mary and Robert Lynch Donald Crockett music experiences to local Nancy and Martin Chalifour Carole and Charles Magnuson Diane and Allan Eisenman Ojai students and families. INSTITUTIONAL FUNDERS Francine and Herb Cooper Mary Ann Makee Patricia and Roger Essick In partnership with Ojai Susie Edberg and Allen Grogan + Kori Martodam + Barry Forman Ojai Arts Commission Karen and Don Evarts Elaine Meyerhoffer Vernon Franck + principals and teachers in the Ojai Festival Women’s Committee Diana Feinberg Deborah Mintz + David Gilbert and David Farneth public schools, we offered John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation Richard Friedman + Joan Petty E. Louise Gooding* online video sessions as an Ojai Valley School/ Andrew Gilman Maureen Robinson Martha Groszewski + extension of our program for Nicholas Gitomer + Hazan Samaniego and Maurice Bamburger Kimberly Grubbs Barbara Barnard Smith Fund Gina Gutierrez and Gary Richardson Eric Sather Ann Haberfelde classrooms, from transitional Rotary Club of Ojai Carole and Roger Hale David Spiro Marica and Paul Herman kindergarten through third Susan and Steven Hodges + Sandra and Charles Sledd Susan and David Hirsch + grade. Kathleen Howe Noreen Stimac and Thomas Powers Susan and Steve Hodges John Johnston David Tochen Jeff Ingram Marion Joy + Susan Tova and Lawrence Clevenson + J Frederick Janka In addition, we launched online music activities, called Song and Play Thursday, to provide Pat Kennedy + Cynthia Ulman and Lyle Novis Margaret and John Kaufman children and families a language based music program in which song, movement and interactive Kathleen Kottler + Glen Wallick Clare Kiklowicz play promote emotional, social, cognitive, and musical development. Each week, the videos and Mike Lang + Geoffrey Winterowd + William Knox curriculum notes are available at OjaiFestival.org. Scott Lewis + Bruce Woollen Lynda and Stan Levy Mary McConnel Bonnie Wright Dottie Loebl, Sue McDonald + Mary and Jerry Zinser in memory of Dorothy Voogd Earlier in the year, BRAVO was able to offer our free annualImagine Concert through continued Angela and Jeffrey McGregor Elaine Martone and Robert Woods collaboration with the Ojai Valley School and the Barbara Barnard Smith Fund, where more than Donald Pattison Amanda McBroom and George Ball 1,000 students and adults enjoyed music from the Sandhi Indian Ensemble to learn about world Vickie Reynolds Pepper and Murray Pepper + Lisa McKinnon music. Caitlin Praetorius + Kevin McMahon Joan Roberts Ann and David Millican Carli Rogers + Ojai Valley Women’s Club The Music Van, staffed by a large group of dedicated volunteers, including our Ojai Festival Peggy and John Russell Robin and Audrey Riley and Richard Lancaster Women’s Committee, visited eight local Ojai elementary schools, and appeared at community “Thank you, Laura. Your smile and Sara Sackner and Andrew Behar Abby and Mike Robyn + events as the Instrument Petting Zoo. One by one, each of these more than 400 children learned Nikki Scandalios Stephen Rochford those cute, funny songs will make the Gretel Stephens + Frank Scholz + by interacting with the instruments, plucking and banging away. Teachers tell us every year that Nancy and Rob Stewart, Kristin Storey many of their students are inspired to sign up to play an instrument in the following year’s program kids so happy during these lonely days. in honor of Nancy who is My Heart Ann and Steven Sunshine at their school. Your music classes make my week.” Mark Summa Charles Talmadge Aryna Swope and Phil Caruthers Jinny Webber + —LAURA WALTER “ Alice Terrell and Alex Matich + William Weirick —MS. HUGHART, SECOND GRADE Anna Thomas Libbey and Sandy Treadwell Judy and Art Vander The BRAVO education and community program is an essential part of the Ojai Music Festival, Ventura Water Store This list includes donations received between May 16, 2019 which is committed to fostering a new generation of musicians and engaging students in the Anna and Bill Wagner and May 15, 2020. Ojai Valley. Through its free student music education workshops, internship program, symposia, Robin and James Walther and community concerts, the Festival is dedicated to providing music learning to all ages. Each Barbara and Jack Wells We have made every effort to accurately acknowledge each donor and regret errors or omissions. If you have any year, BRAVO presents more than 500 in-school workshops and works with 2,200 public school questions or a correction, please contact Joy Atrops-Kimura students in the Ojai Unified School District, engages over 100 seniors and people with disabilities at 805 646 2094. + includes 2020 ticket donations in five assisted living centers in the valley. Learn more about the program at www.OjaiFestival.org. * deceased Ojai Festivals, Ltd. Is a 501c3 non-profit tax exempt organization. 50 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL” EDITION PROGRAM 2020 | 51 Staff

JAMIE BENNETT AMBER YOUNG JEANNINE COBB President Operations & Events Manager Finance/Bookkeeper

GINA GUTIERREZ JOY ATROPS-KIMURA LAURA WALTER Chief Operating Officer & Development Manager BRAVO Education Coordinator Director of Marketing NICHOLAS SVORINICH ANNA WAGNER Patron Services & Director of Development Digital Marketing Manager

Festival Production

TAYLOR COMEN NICHOLAS HOUFEK KARI FRANCIS Festival Producer Lighting Designer/ Ojai Talks & Concert Insights Light Board Operator Producer VICTOR PINEDA Production Manager MIKE’S TECHNICAL SERVICES/ LOUIS ALMARAZ MIKE TREGLER Retail Buyer/Manager FIONA DIGNEY Ancillary Event Engineer Associate Producer SHEILA COHN RICHARD NEWSHAM Festival Concierge DANIEL MALLAMPALLI Green Room Manager Artistic Administrator DAVID BAZEMORE DOOJIE SELINGER Photographer DUSTIN DONAHUE Stage Crew Ojai Dawns Stage Manager EVAN DAUM/LIVE CONCERT MICHAEL COOLEY PRODUCTION MELISSA SOMRACK GORRIS Rigger Live Streaming Stage Manager STEEL DECK NIKKI SCANDALIOS MARK GREY Stage Extension Public Relations Sound Design/ Chief Recording Engineer RAY SULLIVAN SIERRA DUDAS On-Site Libbey Park Manager Social Media Intern MOMENTUM MEDIA/ VINCE PECCHI DEIRDRE DALY MIMI ARCHIE Lighting Provider Housing Manager KATHLEEN KENNEDY Graphic Design DEREK BAKSA, KIRK ZAHARRIS, DANIEL RAMIREZ JEFF CLINTON House Manager BITVISION TECHNOLOGY Lighting Assistants IT Providers MIRANDA GASENICA CLAIRE CLEARY Head Usher Lighting at Zalk Theater/ Stage Assistant

Special thanks to the countless number of Festival volunteers, who share their passion, efforts, talent, and time each year!

Gina Gutierrez, managing editor 2020 Ojai Music Festival program Thomas May, program book editor and annotator Ojai Festivals, Ltd. © All rights reserved. Doug Adrianson, June Behar, editorial assistants PO Box 185 Ojai CA 93024 Kathleen Kennedy of Waller Design, graphic designer 805 646 2094 | [email protected] Printed by Custom Printing, Inc. Oxnard CA | www.CustomPrintingInc.com www.OjaiFestival.org

Photo credits: Inside front and back cover by Erin Ellwood; Ojai scenic on page 6 by Ray Powers

52 | 74 TH OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL | VIRTUAL EDITION PROGRAM 2020 ARA GUZELIMIAN artistic director

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